Thursday, October 18

Today’s Lectionary Readings: Psalm 27 & 141; Habakkuk 2:1-11; Luke 18:31-43; Romans 7:7-12

In working on last Sunday’s sermon on the ten lepers (the story of the nine lepers who failed to return to Jesus to give thanks following their healing and the one Samaritan who did return), I made an interesting discovery. In working with the New Revised Standard Version of the bible that is generally regarded by biblical scholars as the most accurate translation of the Bible, I did a search on the phrase that Jesus used in many of the healing stories: “Your faith has …” I wanted to see how Jesus completed that sentence. What I found surprised me. In two instances, Jesus completed the phrase by saying, “Your faith has saved you” (Luke 7:50 & Luke 18:42) and in five instances Jesus completed the phrase by saying, “Your faith has made you well” (Matthew 9:22; Mark 5:34; Mark 10:52; Luke 8:48; & Luke 17:19). Nowhere in the New Revised Standard Version did Jesus say, “Your faith has healed you” or “Your faith has cured you”. This got me thinking about what it means to be healed in new ways. You see, so often when we or a loved one are facing sickness or death and we pray for healing, we find that we are really praying for a return to “normal” or to “the status quo”. But what does it mean to be made well. Is it a return to “normal”, or could wellness be a return to something else? Something that transcends the status quo. Today, I invite you to prayerfully consider what it means to be made whole and how that might impact an area of dis-ease within your life. This might cause you to think about healing in a whole new light. Til next time…