October 23, 2011 – Deuteronomy 34.1-12; Matthew 22.34-46
Deuteronomy 34.1-12; Matthew 22.34-46
Healed by Love, Healed for Love [Sermon for Healing Service]
19th Sunday after Pentecost [Lectionary 30] – October 23, 2011
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
We’ve come to the end of Moses’s story.
We’ve had to skip over quite a bit between last week and this week,
but he’s continued to lead the people to the land promised them by God.
To the place where they can begin to live out the things they have learned in the wilderness:
manna-sharing and mercy-giving, living for the common good.
A place where they can be free to live for love of neighbour and the love of God,
a place of healing and life,
a place where God’s intentions for our lives and our relationships can come true,
a place very unlike exploitative, hierarchical, oppressive Egypt.
Moses has led them there, to the very edge of the land.
But he won’t be able to enter it with his people.
It hardly seems fair. There are some reasons given in the Bible as to why he can’t enter,
but none of them are very convincing.
He is given a sweeping vision of the land in today’s story,
beginning in the north and sweeping to the west and to the south.
He can see the fulfillment of the promises made long ago, but he will not enter there.
And we don’t really know why. The story today simply says he won’t.
This moment in Moses’s life speaks, I think, to our own disappointment and our own sense of
dreams that have gone unfulfilled.
It speaks to our longing for healing, to our longing for wholeness, to our longing for wellness.
There are some things that Moses cannot, finally, have.
And yet he has lived a full life in many, many ways.
He has reached the maximum age of a human life in biblical terms: 120 years.
He has remained full of vigour this whole time.
He knows that the mission with which he was entrusted will be fulfilled under Joshua:
all they’ve to do from here on in is just wade across the Jordan river.
He has interceded for and advocated for his people with God and has saved their lives.
And most importantly, we are told in today’s story that he has known God face to face:
he’s had an intimate and full relationship with God.
He’s loved God. He’s loved his neighbour. He’s played his part in God’s mission to
heal this broken world: He’s had a whole life.
There were some things God had to heal him from when God called him to play this part.
His guilt over having killed an Egyptian in his youth. His sense of incompetence for the task.
His fear of what would happen to him: God healed him of these things.
Moses was healed for a purpose, so he could play his part in God healing mission in this world.
Possibly the most prominent thing about Jesus’s ministry was his healing of many.
And in almost every single case, those he healed are healed for the purpose of
loving God and loving the neighbour.
A paralytic and a crippled woman are healed in order to glorify God (Luke 5:25 &13:13) and
Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is healed in order to serve (Luke 4:38-39).
A man filled with demons is healed in to declare that God is at work healing (Luke 8:39) and
a man is raised from death in order to look after his widowed mother (Luke 7:15).
When Jesus comes, the poor are healed of invisibility so they can follow Jesus (Luke 18:35-43).
When Jesus comes, the rich are healed of their need to hoard, like Zacchaeus, so
they can share generously with those in need (Luke 19:1-10).
When Jesus comes, the hungry are healed of the disease of hunger so they can be filled and live (Luke 9:10-17).
When Jesus comes, those who have done wrong are forgiven so they live into a new day
and be free to love again (Luke 7:36-50).
Jesus was the great healer who heals us most of all by coming to know us face to face.
And when we are healed, we are healed for a purpose.
Sometimes, maybe often, healing comes but not in the way we expect it or want it.
Mother Teresa lived most of her life, we now know, in a debilitating darkness and doubt,
feeling estranged from God for the last 40 years of her life,
feeling God’s complete and utter absence as the overwhelming reality in her life.
She prayed fervently for healing from this every day but healing came in a different way for her.
With the help of fellow Christians she came to see that her ailment could help her to
identify with those she was called to serve who felt abandoned by God just like her:
the poorest of the very poor.
She was able to use her ailment in her ministry of loving her neighbour,
and so even though there was no cure, healing came, and it came through Jesus.
She knew full well what the Promised Land looked like, but it wasn’t given to her to enter there.
But there was healing nonetheless.
Friends: we ail from many things in this fallen world.
And those we love and care about ail from many things in this fallen world.
And billions we don’t even know ail from many many things in this fallen world.
We may not all get to the Promised Land, to the place of final wellness, in this life.
We may not receive all the healing that we long for. We may not be fully cured.
But beloved: we can be healed: we can find a wholeness in our relationship with God that will
allow us to do the things we were made for: loving God and loving our neighbour.
When we can do those things, we are well. We are healed. We are saved.
We can love God this very morning by offering not only our love-filled petitions to God,
but also our love-filled thanksgivings and praises.
And we can love our neighbours this very morning by praying for those who ail in any way,
and by praying for those among us who come forward for laying on of hands.
I’m going to also invite you this morning to love your neighbours by laying your own hands
very very gently on the shoulders and backs of those who are receiving
laying on of hands by the assisting minister and me.
So if you are next in line, or if you just wish to come forward with a family member or friend,
I invite you to lay your hands gently on the person in front of you as they’re prayed for.
For healing is a ministry of this whole community,
for it is only together that we are Christ’s body on earth,
and healing comes through Christ’s body. Healing can come here.
We may have come to the end of Moses’s story this morning,
but we’re not at the end of God’s story yet:
God has promised to journey with us through thick and thin,
to bring us the healing we need, and finally to heal us even from death and
bring us finally to fullness of life. So let the assembly say, Amen.
Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
