(7th Sunday after Pentecost) (August 7, 2005)
Have you ever seen, or known, someone who was blind, and had their vision restored to them? Have you ever known someone who was unable to speak and recovered the ability to do so without effort or therapy? I can’t say that I have ever seen such a thing, or known anyone of whom this can be said.
At the end of today’s Gospel reading, we hear that our Lord Jesus Christ, having given sight to two blind men, and the ability to speak to a man who was mute, went about all the land, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and healing every sickness and disease among the people. This is a frequent theme of our Lord’s ministry; and it occurs as well in the life of the Church – which is to say, in the lives of many of the faithful. We shouldn’t be surprised. After all, our Lord told His disciples at the Last Supper that they would do the things He had done, and more, because He was departing, but He would send the Holy Spirit to them, so that they could do what He had done. In the “Acts of the Apostles,” we hear of people being healed by St. Peter and St. John, and by St. Paul; some are healed by the touch of the handkerchief of an apostle – and even by the touch of a shadow! Why don’t we see these kinds of healings taking place today?
Many Evangelical Protestants will say that this is because these miraculous healings were meant to assist the early Church in its proclamation of the Gospel; but that this time came to an end with the close of the apostolic period of the Church. In that part of the Protestant spectrum that is called “charismatic,” the response is that, because God does not change, the Holy Spirit is, indeed, present and active, and so expects to see – and perform – such healings today. The Orthodox position falls somewhere in between. We would agree that many of the hallmarks of the apostolic period – the time when the Church was led by the apostles themselves, before their repose – are not meant for today. But we also know that the saints, across time and space, have often been blessed with the power to heal the sick – although not in the way that the charismatics practice. No, our answer to the question of why such healings do not take place today is that we are not the people – the saints – we are meant to be. This shouldn’t surprise anyone; for, after all, how can we expect to do what our Lord did, when we are not laboring to make real in ourselves the life He has given us – His life, risen from the dead? How can we expect to find in ourselves, or in the Church, the power to heal, when we are not seeking to acquire the Holy Spirit? If we do not seek the kingdom of God, and the way to enter into it, why should we think that we will be able to manifest the signs of the kingdom, such as giving sight to the blind, or speech to the dumb?
The saints set themselves apart from us precisely because they did labor to bring into the reality of their lives the life of our risen Lord. They did leave behind the kingdom of this world, and seek to enter the kingdom of God, by prayer, and fasting, and the giving of alms, and the giving of themselves; and by struggling to replace their passions with the virtues, and to overcome their sins with a holy life: replacing anger and pride with patience and humility, lust with chastity, greed with generosity, gluttony with fasting and self-denial. Having been baptized into Christ, they put on Christ. They were transformed by acquiring the Holy Spirit through faith in God, and devotion in prayer and the way of life in the Orthodox Church. They grew deeper and stronger in the image, and after the likeness of God – and, by their holy way of living, and the power of God active in them, they proclaim to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the coming of the kingdom of God, in which the sick and the suffering shall be healed and comforted and made whole.
Brothers and sisters, called to be saints: We have a job to do. We are meant to declare the good news of our salvation in Jesus Christ. We are meant to preach the coming of the kingdom, and the return of the King. We speak of these things both in our words, and in the testimony of our lives. Each of us needs to consider what message we give by the quality of our lives. Do others see the presence of God in us? Or do they see only the ways of the world?
No comments:
Post a Comment