We all know people for whom illness is a way of life. It is not just incidental, it is every day. Every day is spent dealing with sickness or pain. Every day is invested in physicians, treatments, medications, therapies. People who struggle just to stay alive, or to manage pain. Their lives are dominated by disease. There are things they cannot do because of illness. There are things they must do to deal with the illness. There are costs they must pay because of illness. Illness is a way of life.
As bad as that is, it must be infinitely worse to be sick and not to know what is wrong. It must be terrible to struggle with not knowing what is happening. The tests are inconclusive, the symptoms are strange, nothing adds up, and the doctors don’t know what the diagnosis is. That has to be tough.
When we are sick, we want a physician who can diagnose that illness correctly. It’s not easy to get it right. Getting the diagnosis right takes a practiced eye and sometimes just an inspired hunch. One of you told me that when you were in the hospital, every morning there would be a parade of young people in white coats coming in to stare at you. Invariably the leader of the pack would lift up your sheets, point to certain rather private spots, and ask the others what the diagnosis might be. Their answers were varied and sometimes way off! It’s not easy to get the right diagnosis. But if you are sick, you want the physician who can diagnose your illness correctly. You would not be interested in the doctor who would shrug his shoulders and say, “Who knows? Let’s just leave it alone and see what happens.” Nor would you feel so good if you went to the drugstore and the pharmacist said, “Well, these pink pills are pretty, let’s use them. And I’ve got a special deal, just for you, on these green ones.” No, that wouldn’t get it. If we are sick, we want the real deal. We want the right diagnosis.
Or do we? Or do we? Maybe not always. I’ve known people who didn’t want to hear the truth. If their physician was about to tell them they had cancer, they just wouldn’t hear it. If they were hospitalized because of congestive heart failure, they called it something else. If they were found to be diabetic, they proceeded to eat as if there were no tomorrow. We don’t always want to hear the physician’s diagnosis, because treatment means change and change is painful. The diagnosis might force us to a new way of life, and we don’t want that.
So when the Great Physician Jesus comes to diagnose our spiritual illnesses, sometimes we don’t want to hear Him either.
Chapters eight and nine of Matthew’s Gospel are filled with accounts of the healing work of Jesus. Time and again He confronts the illnesses of humanity and He heals. He heals, however, with a very special touch. It is more than just taking care of sickness. This Jesus deals with the whole person. He deals with mind and body and spirit. Some respond and get well. But others resist. Some are healed; others refused to be healed.
I
Jesus diagnoses the illness of some of us as an illness born of unresolved spiritual issues. Jesus is able to see beyond fevered brows and disoriented minds and twisted limbs to a spiritual illness that is every bit as serious as the physical illness. Jesus diagnoses some of us with unresolved spiritual issues.
The first story in Chapter 9 concerns a paralyzed man lying on a bed. His friends have brought him, hoping that Jesus can do something that no one else has been able to do. Their friend cannot walk; just why no one knew. Since they didn’t know where his illness came from, they couldn’t make it go away either.
Now what does the Great Physician do? What is His approach? Does He say, “Let me have a look at those legs”? Does He prescribe some drug or assign some exercise? No, Jesus starts at an entirely different place: “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” Jesus connected physical illnesses and spiritual diseases. There is a spiritual as well as a physical basis for much that ails us.
Paralysis. I read once about a man who was an accountant in a business firm. His arm began to give him a lot of trouble. He found it harder and harder to do his bookkeeping work. His doctors found no muscular problems, no nerve damage, nothing. But he just could not operate. He went to see his pastor, almost in desperation. The pastor began to ask him about what was happening in the workplace. As they talked, finally the accountant blurted out the truth: that he had been embezzling funds. He had cooked the books over several months’ time, taking thousands of dollars. Here was the problem. His guilt, his dishonesty, his spiritual sickness, created his physical sickness. His body just rebelled against him. Paralysis.
I’m thinking it can go the other way too. The other night I was in a committee meeting, and someone mentioned that several years ago a couple of church members would call the deacon chairman and report the pastor if he wasn’t Johnny-on-the-spot at 8:30 every morning. What do you think my reaction to that was? Not what you think it might be. You think I might just shrug that off, “Give me a break. Get a life.” You might think I would want to defend myself against that. But that’s not what I felt. That’s not what went on inside of me. Inside I felt, “I guess I’m not really all I ought to be. I guess I need to get up earlier and stay up later.” Something inside of me pushed my guilt button and I began to think about ratcheting up to warp speed.
Oh, but that is guilt talking. That need to be busy and to make sure that you think I’m busy, that is a spiritual sickness. There’s something in me that isn’t forgiven yet. There’s something in me that isn’t whole yet. And if I am not yet sick because of it, it’s only a matter of time, unless I live out of grace, I will be sick. Unless I let forgiveness take over. “Your sins are forgiven.” How I need to hear that, way down deep! I’m cleansed! I’m forgiven! I don’t have to work frantically to prove anything. “Your sins are forgiven.”
Jesus healed the man who was paralyzed by forgiving sin. I hope he can heal the man who thinks he ought to be the energizer bunny by forgiving sin.
I’ve talked with several of you lately who are clearly struggling with stress, and you have physical symptoms to show for it. Our bodies will react when we have not dealt with our spiritual issues. They just will. We are built that way. I read this week about a young woman with something called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She can barely function at all – she is totally exhausted, most of the time. Drugs won’t help, surgery would be pointless, no customary treatment helps. It’s spiritual as well as physical.
Maybe you are not feeling well, and it’s more than a virus or a germ. Maybe it’s that relationship that is filled with hostility. Maybe it’s that job that calls on you to be less than honest. Maybe it’s that pressure to do more and more, and it’s never enough. Spiritual issues. Spiritual illnesses. Then hear the words of Jesus, “Your sins are forgiven.” Hear the command of Jesus, “Stand up, take your bed and go to your home.” You don’t have to be what somebody else wants you to be. You don’t have to succumb to somebody else’s expectations or. You can be what God calls you to be. You can be His child. “Your sins are forgiven.”
The Great Physician diagnoses our illness, and finds that they are spiritual as well as physical.
But – and just hold on to this for a moment – but, as Jesus forgave this man’s sins and then sent him on his way, healed, there was a murmur and a complaint. Did you hear it? Some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming” This man is a threat to us. A murmur of complaint, even in the face of this healing. Why? Hang on to that for a few moments.
II
Sometimes the Great Physician diagnoses our illnesses, and finds that they are more spiritual than physical. But sometimes He goes farther than that. Sometimes Jesus diagnoses our illnesses as diseases of the connective tissue.
Huh?! Diseases of the connective tissue? Now the pastor is speaking in tongues! Well, you know, physicians speak of the connective tissue – like what happens in your joints when they are inflamed? That’s a connective tissue disease.
Well, spiritually, sometimes that’s what’s wrong with us too. We don’t connect with others. We are isolated from our brothers and sisters. We cut off brothers and sisters; we keep them at arm’s length, and we create illness.
The second story in this chapter of Matthew has to do with Matthew himself. Matthew is sitting at his tax table, doing his thing. But remember, his thing was hated by the people. His thing was extorting money to pay the hated Romans. Nobody liked tax collectors. Nobody in his right mind would invite Matthew over for dinner, nobody would hang out with Matthew. What do you think that felt like? What kind of person would that make? Isolated and disconnected?
It makes a hostile, ingrown, unhappy, resentful, angry person. It makes a never-ending spiral. Matthew does something against the people, and they respond in hatred, which makes Matthew unhappy and hostile, so Matthew does something more against the people, and they respond with more hatred, which make Matthew even unhappier and even more hostile, so Matthew does yet more against the people … do you see? A never-ending spiral of resentment.
It’s a disease of the connective tissue. A spiritual sickness that isolates and puts people in a corner, where they get sicker and sicker. Here we are again, right back where we were after Columbine. The name of Santana in California will be added to the roll call of places where threatened and lonely young people get sicker and sicker and finally snap. They can’t take it any more. And just look at the consequences! A young man who was taunted and called a nerd, made to feel inferior, on the margins. A child whose home was conflicted, whose friends were three thousand miles away, and whose life was little more than trying to fit in with those who made no effort to fit him in. You say, aren’t you forgetting, this young man is guilty? Of course I’m dismayed at this young man. Of course I’m dismayed at guns in the hands of juveniles, really in the hands of anybody. But most of all I am totally dismayed at people young or old who do not understand what they are doing when they put somebody out on the margins. They are creating a sickness that will pay off in horrific consequences.
When will we learn what hate does? When will we learn what happens when people are disconnected? I heard the other day about an old preacher who wanted to see if he could figure out what language they spoke in the Garden of Eden. His theory was that if children never heard modern languages, they would come up on their own with the original, God-given, Garden of Eden language. Well, not only was that a goofy idea. It was a fatal one. Because, since everyone was ordered not to speak to these children, they ended up dying! We cannot live without human connection and love!
Jesus came to a tax table and saw a sick man named Matthew. Sick and lonely and tired and angry. But Jesus’ simple, direct words, “Follow me”, utterly transformed Matthew’s life. “Follow me”. It meant, “I trust you, Matthew. I care about you. I see value in you. I want to be with you” Jesus healed Matthew’s sickness by a simple and direct act of love and acceptance. Edwin Markham has it right in his classic little poem, “He drew a circle that shut me out – Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: we drew a circle that took him in.”
Oh, men and women, that’s why we have church. What does it mean to be a part of the church of Jesus Christ? It’s not just a place to go on Sundays to see and to be seen. It’s not just a social convention to obey. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a hospital for sick sinners, a hospital where the patients care for one another under the guidance of the Great Physician. The church is a place where love grows.
Here, in this place, in this fellowship, somebody will reach out to you and love you. You will be healed. Here, in this place, in this fellowship, somebody will love you unconditionally. “Follow us” and be healed. Before this day is over, some of us are going to hold our children, some of us are going to hug our teenagers, no one is going to leave this house today without knowing a touch of love! It will transform us. The church, love grows here, and it heals.
Once I was attending a meeting of pastors and physicians. Everybody was being introduced as Doctor This and Doctor That. The one in charge said, “This is Doctor Jones, he does internal medicine. And this is Doctor Brown, she does surgery.” Then he came to me, and introduced me, “This is Doctor Smith, but he’s not the kind of doctor who can do you any good.” Wow! But praise God, a professor who was there spoke up quickly and shook his finger and said, “Don’t you ever say that about a pastor. If you don’t know that we need spiritual physicians as well as MD’s, you don’t know anything at all.”
Men and women, the church. Love. Acceptance. Care. Compassion. Belonging to one another. The Great Physician diagnoses our illnesses and shows that not only are they spiritual. They are also connective, interpersonal. And they yield only to love. Only to love. Matthew, follow me, I love you.
But now hang on. I asked you a while ago to notice that there was a little grumbling going on. Some negativity was happening back there when Jesus healed the paralytic. Now did you notice that it popped up here too? Not everybody is happy with this Jesus who connects with the untouchable Matthew. They said, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” There’s a touch of suspicion in that. They don’t like it.
III
That brings us to the Great Physician and His diagnosis of a fatal disease. There are, after all, some diseases which will end in fatality. There is an illness unto death, a sickness so deep and so profound that if you have it, you are not likely to get well. That is the disease of stubborn resistance to all that God is doing. Stubborn, willful resistance to God’s work.
Jesus had healed a paralytic man by forgiving his sins. He showed that his sickness was closely tied to his spiritual condition, and that forgiveness was the way to health. And then Jesus had healed the heart of Matthew the tax collector, simply by loving Matthew and inviting Matthew into fellowship. Jesus had diagnosed two of the most difficult diseases of humanity.
But there had been grumbling. There had been negative responses. They didn’t like what they saw. It didn’t sit well with them. They complained.
And so in a flash the Great Physician diagnosed the most serious illness of all. Some came to Jesus and said, “Why do we … fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” “How come you guys are having so much fun, and we aren’t? How come you guys talk about God and sing and smile, but we don’t. We don’t like it!”
In a burst of eloquence, with passion in His voice, Jesus cries out, “New wine [is not] put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins.” You see, Dr. Jesus understands that when God is at work, old ways, old stuff will not contain Him. The deepest disease of all is blindness that will not see God at work, deafness that will not hear God’s voice. Sometimes we just have to move on with the Lord and let old habits go, or they will poison us.
When my father was a young man, he went to Texas to work at laying concrete culverts. In the heat and the swamps, with all the mosquitoes, he caught malaria. The doctors got him past that crisis with penicillin, but all his life he would occasionally suffer after-effects. For no apparent reason he would get sick and would have to be treated with penicillin. However, I remember one of those times, he took so much penicillin that his tongue turned black. The old disease and the old treatment, together, just built up and built up, and he wouldn’t get better until his doctors used a new generation of sulfa drugs.
Some of us are like that. We have old, unresolved conflicts in us. We keep on dealing with them with the same old same old. But it doesn’t work any more. Not when we simply don’t see the new wineskins that God wants to give us for the fresh new wine of the good news. We need something new from God.
I look around and I see new members, I see fresh faces, filled with possibility. Will we attempt to contain them in the old wineskins? Will some of us who have been here a hundred years or so close our arms and our circles and shut them out? That would be a sickness unto death.
I look at us and I see new ideas, new ministries, new energies, new plans. Will we attempt to confine them in the old wineskins? Will we hedge them with rules and strap them with regulations so that they cannot fly? That would be a sickness unto death.
I look at the community and I see new needs, new people, new possibilities. Do we tell this community, “You have to look like, sound like, feel like, and smell like we do”? Or do we see the power of God at work, bringing us new gifts?
I do not know what the future holds for this community or for this church. I only know what I dream and what some others dream. I know that God wants to do tremendous new things through us. But I also know that the Great Physician diagnoses every illness and can heal them all but one – the disease of denying what God is about.
This is a filled-up moment. This is a ripe time. This morning, will you trust Christ with your very life, to heal all your diseases? Will you give Jesus your very heart, to bring you into a fellowship that will heal? Will you offer Him your future, your hopes, your dreams, your possibilities, in order that He may burst the old wineskins and fill you with the fresh new wine of His good news?
I do not know what the future hold, but I do know who holds the future. “The great physician now is here, the sympathizing Jesus; He speaks the wounded soul to cheer, oh hear the voice of Jesus.”
