18th Sunday after Pentecost 12.10.14 Healing on the inside
Our Lord is challenged as to His authority to forgive sins. He responds by healing the same man of his sickness. He thus indicates that He has a great deal of power at His disposal. He can demonstrate only so far as human vision is capable of going. But the inference is that He can do a lot more things that are beyond human capacity to perceive.
The overall message is that He is someone we should trust. You could safely buy a used car from this Man! The car would run.
Our Lord is showing us He has the power and the desire to heal the whole person, body and soul.
He wants to give us as much as we are prepared to receive. There is no limit to His power but there usually is a limit to how receptive we are. We tend to obstruct the grace of God because we cling to our present state.
He offers light, we prefer the dark. He offers freedom, we prefer the chains of sin. Why do we prefer the negative alternative? It is what we know. We are afraid of changing too much too soon, so we cling to our vices. Sometimes we want to be healed and we have flashes of brilliance. Other times we do not want the healing and we crash back into sin.
We think this is normal, this zigzagging between good and evil. We don’t believe it is possible to be good all the time. Partly we don’t believe it; partly we don’t want it.
But with whom are we dealing here? Someone who can put together the whole universe.
The crowd were impressed when Our Lord raised the sick, or the dead. Who is this Man? What is He not capable of? He could have worked a lot more miracles. He could have raised every sick person and every dead one, for that matter. With just a word, or a nod.
There is no doubt of His power; yet still we may not respond. We can still be stuck in a very narrow vision of what is possible in our own case.
It can be that we have little expectation, and little desire, to change our lives. We would not mind changing circumstances, such as having less problems; but we don’t expect our attitude or behaviour to change.
So we resist His power to heal us on the inside, even if subconsciously.
We do want to change, after all. We want it and we don’t want it. We accept His grace and we resist it.
We find we need His help to receive His help! Lord, I do believe, help my unbelief (Mk 9,24).
Transform me within, so that all my desires and thoughts will be according to Your holy will.
If possible, heal my body too. The body is the one thing we cannot guarantee because it is subject to frailty and must eventually die. Still it is always worth a try to seek bodily healing through prayer.
But it is always God’s will to heal us in the soul. He may will us to stay sick in the body, but never would He want us to remain in a state of sin.
We are not condemned to a lifetime in jail – we can walk free from selfishness, pride, lust, and all the rest.
Our Lord proved He had great power. He also has the knowledge of where we most need healing. He knows our deepest need and can meet it.
Our deepest need is this: to be forgiven for our sin; to be totally cleansed of its effects; to be transformed so that we now desire good as much as previously we desired the fruits of sin.
This is the happiness to which we are called. We will achieve it if we let Our Lord deal with us on His terms not ours. Let Him take us to places that we may not have wanted to go, or thought possible. But when we get there we will be glad we did.
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