Text: Isaiah 35:5-8 and Luke 10:1-9
Beloved
in Christ: Doctors! Who needs them? You go and sit in the waiting room until
they get back from their golf game. Then you are invited back to a room where
you are told to put on this gown you can’t quite tie in the back. Meanwhile,
the staff turns down the thermostat to 55 degrees. Then in walks the doctor
with a stethoscope that has been in the freezer for the last 24 hours. They
place it on your chest and tell you to breathe—as if you needed any incentive
after feeling the cold metal on your chest. They draw blood and tap your knees.
Then at the end of the visit they hand you a list of prescriptions that you can
ill afford. So who needs doctors?
We
might feel the same about the spiritual medicine practiced by Luke as he
doubles as a physicians of the soul as well as of the body. At least Luke
wasn’t out on the golf course while his patients were waiting. But in his
writings (Luke and Acts) he uses the law to poke and prod our souls, which makes
us uncomfortable. We are diagnosed with a horrible spiritual condition, for we
are selfish people who rebel against God and think little about our neighbors
and their needs. The only salve that can cure our condition is beyond our
ability to afford. So what good is it to have someone give this diagnosis?
But
a good diagnosis is important. Yes, there must also be a cure, and we’ll get to
it soon enough, but we need to welcome the diagnosis for what it is: a valuable
insight in how we are really functioning so that we can deal with reality
rather than fantasy. And there’s a lot of denial out there. People talk about
the world getting better all the time. Well, in many ways our lives are more
comfortable than they were a half century ago. But in other ways we haven’t
improved at all and in fact have gotten worse. Therefore, we have to learn to
confess that we are broken and ill—and live in a broken and ill world.
How
bad is it? Look at how Isaiah describes it in today’s Old Testament reading. We
live in a world where people suffer from debilitating conditions such as
blindness, deafness, and paralysis—and even far worse medical conditions. In
the physical world around us we see uninhabitable wildernesses and otherwise
beautiful places scarred by drought. We try to build beautiful cities and make
something of ourselves, only to see that eventually they become “the haunt of
jackals” and wild beasts. Even worse, wickedness flourishes. Wickedness even
wants to travel on the Highway of Holiness, and in this world often seems to do
so successfully, as hypocrisy reigns.
But
what’s worse is the fact that the problem isn’t just “out there.” It is “in
here,” too. We bear in our bodies all sorts of frailties. Even those of us who
are in relatively good health now have to acknowledge the injuries and diseases
we’ve had over the years. And once you get out of your twenties you start
seeing that the body doesn’t bounce back quite the way it once did. You start
developing chronic conditions, even if you learn how to live with them. You see
that it isn’t just the people out there who are wicked, but that you too have a
heart that goes astray. You are a cesspool of envy, anger, greed, lust, pride,
and any other selfish attitude that you can muster. If one of those vices
doesn’t appeal to you, another one most certainly will. And so in body and soul
we are sick, and so is the whole creation.
Furthermore,
this was not the way it was meant to be. We just assume that getting older
means suffering more pain or at least wearing out. But that is not the case.
God created a beautiful world and designed people to live forever. We are the
ones who have messed it up beyond repair.
Well,
that is the diagnosis. What about the cure? Well, there is one, but you cannot
afford it, and you wouldn’t be able to endure the treatment. You see, if we suffered
in hell, we could make up the damage we have done to ourselves, others, and all
creation. But, unfortunately, people who suffer in hell just get more and more
obstinate, more and more defiant against God, and so they don’t get better in
the long run. If anything, they get worse. (That explains why hell lasts for
eternity.) So we are not able to afford the cure on our own or endure the
treatment.
Fortunately,
we have a Great Physician, who has come to heal us in body and soul and at His
own expense rather than ours. He started the healing process by taking on our
human flesh Himself. He wasn’t tainted by our sin, but in every other respect
He was like us. He grew tired, became hungry, and experienced every other
frailty of humanity that we are likely to encounter. Then, when He began His
earthly ministry, He made a point of healing many people and bringing order to
a disorderly creation. He made the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the
paralyzed to walk. He even raised the dead. He calmed the winds and the waves
and was undeterred by the wild beasts when He was in the wilderness. Granted,
those victories over death, disease, and disorder were temporary. Eventually,
the people whom He healed or raised would succumb to some other disease or to
plain old age and die. But already in His earthly ministry He wanted people to
get a taste of what He was about.
Then
He submitted Himself to the greatest injuries and frailties a human being could
know: He was beaten and then crucified, all while bearing the guilt of mankind.
He experienced Himself being ripped apart, as He was torn from fellowship with
His Father and His body and soul were sundered. But because He bore our sins
and paid their penalty and because He went into death and the grave, He was able
to deal with these worst enemies of mankind. Then He rose from the dead so that
He could impart life where death reigned, healing where disease held sway, and
forgiveness where sin and guilt had dominated.
We
have to wait until the Day of Resurrection to experience that healing in full.
Only then will Isaiah’s vision be completely true. But already the basis for
that resurrection life has been established. Our sins even now have been
completely forgiven. We know the troubles we have gotten into because of our
bitter and broken heart, but God has forgiven those sins that flow from it.
More than that, He puts a real heart in us that knows God and His love. Even if
the rest of the world around us remains the same, we have been given a new
heart—a heart where the forgiveness of sins is what we see life as being all
about. We begin to delight in fellowship with God, even if we are not yet quite
as holy as we will be when we go to be with the Lord. And that new heart makes
a difference in the way we handle other people and the world that God created.
All
this comes free of charge. It is a cure that we cannot obtain on our own, but
one that is offered freely to us. But what good is a cure if nobody knows about
it or is offered it? Think of how in the Third World there are dozens of
diseases—from rickets to malaria, from cleft palates to tetanus—that can be
easily treated or prevented by modern medicine. But there are still millions of
people around the world who suffer from these conditions because they don’t have
access to these treatments. That is why there are all sorts of charitable
organizations that try to bring the healing power of modern medicine to those
who need it. In the same way, the gospel is a very simple yet powerful cure for
what ails us most. But how is it going to reach those who need it most?
Christ
commissioned first His twelve apostles and then seventy-two other disciples to
bring the healing message of the gospel to every place in Galilee and Judea
that they could get to. He still commissions pastors to preach this word and He
sends out every Christian to their neighbors to bring the good news of Christ
to those who need to hear it. These people are all spiritual physicians under
the Great Physician, our Lord Jesus Christ.
And
so we come back to considering Luke. He was a physician by training, but was
used by God to write a little over a quarter of the New Testament. The blurb
about Luke in today’s bulletin suggests that he was one of the seventy-two.
That is the first time I encountered that idea. Usually people suggest that he
came from Antioch in Syria or was the Macedonian man that Paul saw in his
vision before heading to Europe. And so I am a bit dubious that he was one of
the seventy-two. Nonetheless, he was like the seventy-two in this respect: he
was not an apostle and yet was called to carry out a similar evangelistic task.
I am sure that he still used his medical craft to heal people in their bodies,
but he saw that he had an additional calling, namely, to care for people’s
souls and heal them with the gospel.
Consequently,
we shouldn’t dismiss Luke as one more quack, but honor him as a wise doctor—of
the soul as well as of the body. We should hear his message of hope and
healing. We should enjoy the new creation that God brings about in us through
the gospel preached by Luke and others. And we should be quick to point others
to our Great Physician, by whom alone we have perfect healing. In Jesus’ name.
Amen.
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