21st Sunday after Pentecost

 The lame walk,

…yet blessed is the one who is not offended in me (Matthew 11:5-6).

This morning I walked, all by myself, from our bed to the bathroom. The successful journey marked a turn of events from four weeks ago when I got out of bed and couldn’t take a single step. My legs went lame. After five hours in the operation room, the surgeon phoned my wife Linda to let her know he was able to, in his words, “fix it.”

There’s something yeoman like about the surgeon’s words. He doesn’t make big claims. He just opened up my spine and “fixed it.” That’s what medical people do. They fix broken down bodies in hopes of giving us a few more good years on God’s beautiful green earth.

It’s miraculous. Yet, not exactly a Jesus healing—too much pain, medication, tormented nights and a long agonizing rehabilitation. Maybe that’s why Jesus, sensing our disappointment, said, “Blessed is the one who is not offended in me.”  Offended by what? Maybe offended, or disappointed, or even discouraged because we had hoped things wouldn’t be this painful, difficult and always so human.

Until Gabriel blows his horn, we live with our pain, medications and sleepless nights; troubled, yet grateful for a few more earthly years to enjoy our children and our children’s children; our larger family of brothers and sisters in Christ; and, “the goodness of all people” (Gal 6:10). Even patched up life is worth living. It’s a gift.

18th week of Pentecost

 Luke, the beloved physician (Colossians 4:14):

Today I go to the Kaiser Hospital in Oakland where Dr. Huang will seek to enable me to walk again by operating on my back. He makes no promises. He does his best, and there’s a good chance, if all goes well, the operation will bring healing. It would be unchristian of us not to honor such physicians and their healing institutions.

As Ben Sirach, writing between the Testaments, instructs (Sirach 38): “Honor physicians for the Lord created them; their gift of healing comes from the Most High. …Give the physician his place, for the Lord created him; do not let him leave you, for you need him. There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians, for they too pray to the Lord that he grant them success in diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.”

18th Sunday after Pentecost

 The Lord spoke to you out of the fire. (Deuteronomy 4:12)

Though “God” does not make an appearance in the Constitution; our Declaration of Independence that precedes the Constitution and without which we would not have a Constitution; does speak of God: “The Laws of Nature, and of Nature’s God.” And, that humans receive their “unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” by “their Creator.” The Declaration concludes by offering up the just cause of our revolution “to the Supreme Judge of the world.”

The Constitution protects our freedom to worship “Nature’s God” as we choose—as our Lord who speaks out of the fire. Something like the “tongues of fire that seemed to rest” on those first worshipers at Pentecost (Ac 2:3). There’s something fiery about the God we worship. Maybe that’s why I spend my mornings around the fire pit.