Peace Inside Out

They have treated superficially the brokenness of My dear people, claiming: Peace, peace, when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they acted so abhorrently? They weren’t at all ashamed. They can no longer feel humiliation. Therefore, they will fall among the fallen. When I punish them, they will collapse, says the LORD. – Jeremiah 8:11-12

Americans are nothing if not shallow. It’s almost a badge of honor these days. Skin-deep relationships are considered normal and acceptable. The effects of our rampant superficiality range from religion to education, politics to medicine.

Education is shallow because it is about graduation rates, competency tests, and SAT scores rather than teaching citizens to think and grow intellectually. Politicians refuse to govern by principles, focusing, instead, on polls and short-term fixes. Responding to the current problem is much easier and more lucrative than addressing the underlying cause. The same is true of medicine which finds there is more money in treating symptoms than in curing people or preventing illness. Religion, too, has abandoned foundational issues to work on creating positive results.

Pragmatism is misleading. A few nights past Larry King was talking to Donald Trump about Bernie Madoff – an unholy trinity if ever there was one. King was complaining that he had lost money in Madoff’s vast Ponzi scheme. Trump was almost mocking the fact that Larry had invested in the scam. Larry’s response was: “He never had a down month.” Trump gleefully countered, he never had an up month either. The collapse of Wall Street was the result of “pragmatic” investment strategies. The current bankrupting of the United States government is a “pragmatic” response to the economic collapse.

A steroid user looks like a robust, strong, healthy person – for a while. Someday the price must be paid. Pumping chemicals into the body or surgically enhancing it seems practical. It appears to have the same results as clean, healthy living. It appears to prolong youth and beauty.

When the soul is seriously diseased and deeply wounded, the inclination is to seek immediate relief and salve over the problem. If we follow the pop culture, and even pop religion trend, we will ignore the depth and seriousness of the injury. We will fool our friends, and perhaps even ourselves with happy self-talk and a cleaned up appearance. Like the Black Knight we insist it is a mere scratch – merely a flesh wound. The wound it covered over with positive thoughts, television trances, incessant activities, achievement, and good deeds.

Prayer and meditation are shunned because they will show us the malignancy of our condition. There is nothing pragmatic or practical about spending time, alone and silent, in the presence of God. It seems pointless at best. It may even be painful. Who wants to dredge up faults and flaws and failures? It sounds like the old joke. If it hurts when you do that, then don’t do it. If it hurts when I thoroughly examine my heart, then skip the examination and go on as if I were all right.

But God says I am not all right. Saying, “Peace” does not give me peace. Look, God is the Healer. That’s what He does, but He cannot heal where I do not allow Him access, if I do not allow the probe to go all the way to the festering rot at the bottom. The Lord heals from the inside out. As long as my “religion” is external and practical, results-oriented or performance-based, I will remain mortally wounded.

How to Light a Candle with a Lightning Bolt

Right away a leper came and knelt before Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”

Reaching out His hand He touched him, saying, “I am willing; be made clean.” Immediately his disease was healed.

Then Jesus told him, “See that you don’t tell anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses prescribed, as a testimony to them.” – Matthew 8:2-4

Perhaps God can meet our need, but will He? We do wonder for the mind of God is mysterious beyond our understanding. Experience leads us to think that there is some unknown – a constant, perhaps, that we must factor in to get the equation to work for us. One side of the equation is my lack. On the other side is the creative, wonder-working power of the Almighty, El Shaddai, the All Sufficient One. In a way it seems like there is almost too much on God’s side. He is transcendent, the great Creator; I and my problem are so tiny and insignificant. It would be like trying to hook your hairdryer into a line coming straight off the dynamo. Too much of a good thing. How can we balance things out? What makes it work for the lepers, the blind, and the lame of the New Testament, but not for me?

I can see one element that must be added in on my side: humility. Pride will get nothing from the Lord for it will never really ask anything of Him, truly. Walking in pride, I might demand of God, say to Him that He ought to do it for me or that He owes me, because, after all, look how wonderful I am. Surely if anybody is worthy of a blessing it is me. The leper came in humility, kneeling at the Master’s feet, feeling unworthy to even stand before Him.

Another factor must be that recognition and acknowledgement of the efficacy of God’s power in our particular situation. We believe, perhaps, that God can do “anything”, but do I truly believe that He could heal, deliver, or provide for me right here and now? The leper had no doubt that Jesus could make him whole. The poor man might have questioned if he was worthy to receive the blessing, if his sins would come between him and his healing, if he had brought this thing upon himself and so deserved to suffer on in loneliness, pain, and torment. But he was clear that he believed Jesus had the power to change his life.

Jesus. The constant that makes the equation work is the Constant One, Jesus -- the same yesterday, today and forever. The leper received a healing because he took the one all-important step: he met Jesus. Jesus is the Transformer, the Great High Priest who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He modulates the raw power of God that causes mountains to melt like wax because He understands our weaknesses. We are the bruised reed He will not break. He is gentle and humble in heart. We find solace and help in Him.

I need to meet Jesus.

…the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father. I will also love him and reveal Myself to him. (John 14:21)

If I recognize something lacking in myself, I can be made whole by meeting Jesus, but Jesus reveals Himself only to those who love Him. It is something of Catch-22. How can you truly love someone that you do not know, when you can only see Him if you love Him?

It depends on how you define the word “love”. If by love we mean a feeling, an emotion, or an affection, that’s one thing. Yet there are many that have a “soft spot”, sympathy, or “warm feelings” for Jesus who do not appear to know Him, to whom He has never been revealed.

If we look at the first part of John 14:21, Jesus tells us this: The one who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me. As the song says, love is not a feeling, it’s an act of the will. I do what Jesus tells me. If I do that, by His definition – the only one that counts, He says that I love Him.

OK, so, Lord, what are Your commandments?

This is My commandment: that you love one another just as I have loved you (John 15:12).

I was afraid of that.

I was kind of hoping it would be something grandiose and spectacular. I was also hoping it would be easier than loving my neighbors. Crawl up a flight of stairs on my knees. Go on a three day fast. Sit in a sweat lodge. Lay off cookie dough ice cream. Vote Republican. Run a marathon. Build a skyscraper. Pass some laws. Give up television.

I’ve actually done a couple of those things anyway. Can I get extra credit?

Love one another just as I have loved you, Jesus says. To love as Jesus loves us we, too, must be willing to lay down our lives -- not necessarily to the shedding of blood, but to the setting aside of our own desires, our own dreams sometimes. Love is expressed in sacrifice: giving for the benefit another what I wanted for myself, whether material or energy, treasure or time.

In that obedient love, though, Jesus will reveal Himself to us. We will see Him – perhaps when we least expect Him, in the least of these.



When you gonna wake up,
When you gonna wake up,
When you gonna wake up,
and strengthen the things that remain.
-- Bob Dylan

Jesus Practices Affirmative Action

By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Hebrew, which has five colonnades. Within these lay a multitude of the sick – blind, lame, and paralyzed [-- waiting for the moving of the water, because an angel would go down into the pool from time to time and stir up the water. Then the first one who got in after the water was stirred up recovered from whatever ailment he had.] One man was there who had been sick for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had already been there a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the sick man answered, “I don’t have a man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”

“Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your bedroll and walk!” Instantly the man got well, picked up his bedroll, and started to walk. – John 5:2-9

The bracketed part about the angel is missing from some manuscripts. Whether John wrote it or it was added as a commentary doesn’t matter, for we can see that those sick people who lay in the porches around about the pool were there waiting for something to happen. According to the text that is in all the manuscript versions, the man explains to Jesus that someone always got into the water ahead of him, thereby denying him the opportunity for healing.

“Do you want to get well?”

The wisdom of Jesus is such that He does not simply assume a sick man wants to be healed. I wonder what I would say if Jesus walked up to me and asked, “Do you want to be whole? Do you want Me to break that chain? Do you want to be free of that habit? Do you want liberty? Do you want peace?”

God is not going to push His favor upon us if we prefer something else. If I want ugly ersatz instead of the genuine for the same price, He will not snatch the imitation from me and force me to embrace the real and the beautiful. Some of us seem to like being victims. After all, we can’t all be here to “help others” – some of us have to make the sacrifice and be helped. Children will sometimes have a problem that gets them more attention and special treatment. Why get rid of it? Adults often do the same thing in relationships. Some groups take advantage of their special victim status on a national scale.

This man’s answer to Jesus’ question tells us about expectations, “I don’t have anybody to help me. Somebody else always gets there first.” There are many who think because they don’t have the “advantages” they cannot overcome their difficulties and circumstances. Jesus says this is not true. To overcome I do not need someone else to help me – I need to respond to Jesus.

If you read on in this passage you will find that Jesus commanded this man to get up, pick up his bed and walk on the Sabbath. The healed man was then confronted by the religious authorities, and, when asked who had told him to “work” on the Sabbath, he admitted he did not know. In fact, only later was the man able to positively identify the Man who had healed him as Jesus.

If you’ve ever heard Christians who believe in healing talk about it, you will hear a lot about faith, and seeking and fervent prayer. This man had no faith in Christ; he had no idea who He was. The sick man was not seeking God – he was hanging around in the shade waiting for another person to help him get into the water. I suppose you could say he was seeking a healing and had some faith in the miraculous nature of the pool, but it was not necessarily a belief that looked to God.

I have never understood why Jesus picked this man out and healed him. Neither have I ever understood how this person who comes off as rather indolent and dismissive of God received a healing.

The man is questioned by the authorities, says he doesn’t know who told him to get up and walk, then look what happens:

After this, Jesus found him in the temple complex and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin any more, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

Can you believe that? He had to know that this would cause Jesus trouble. I don’t like this guy. I never have. He wallows in his victim status. He whines that he doesn’t get any help. He is miraculously healed without really any effort on his part, and then he rats out the Healer. What an ingrate!

As far as I can remember this is the only time the Gospels report Jesus seeking someone out after the fact and telling them to be avoid sinning, and tied sin to physical disease in just this way. He did tell the woman taken in adultery in John 8 to “go and sin no more”, but the circumstances were vastly different.

Like this man beside the pool, people hear God’s voice all the time. They benefit from responding, but they have no idea who is talking to them. People are directed by God, blessed by God, and even do God’s work without ever realizing the Source of their inspiration. For His part, as Jesus demonstrates here, God is no respecter of persons. He is good to everyone, even those who do not know Him.

The man at the pool of Bethesda did not even give a straight answer about wanting to be healed. The only thing he did right was stand up. When he heard Jesus tell him to get up, he got up. He obeyed.

Sometimes, that’s all it takes.