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Many who saw Ray Charles sing and play were first struck by the tragedy of his blindness. However viewers soon forget that Ray was blind and become lost in his music. And so did the Georgia State Legislature. There was foot tapping and hand clapping and many a tear-filled eye. Finally, thunderous applause as the master of the blues piano intoned, “Lord, I believe it’s raining all over the world.” Ray Charles was physically blind but his insight into the depths of the soul was penetrating. And so it was to Ray Charles that my mind turned as I read the texts from both the Old Testament and New Testament for today: “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.” (Isaiah 35:5) “All that Jesus does, he does well. He even makes the deaf to hear and the speechless to speak.” (Mark 7:37) Blind, deaf or speechless, how difficult life must be under those terms and conditions. Life does begin to be difficult when, for any number of reasons, one begins to lose one’s senses. It is one thing to see the years pass. It is quite another to see them less and less, to hear them less and less and the result is less and less energy for living, and in some cases the onset of depression and anxiety. In addition to physical blindness, there can be spiritual blindness, spiritual deafness and spiritual speechlessness as well. Being smitten by these spiritual or existential handicaps (indeed I am suggesting that the words “spiritual” and “existential” are interchangeable.) is described by Harvard psychiatrist Erik Erickson as, “1000 little disgusts.” (Childhood and Society, p. 269) These disgusts are characterized by being annoyed and dissatisfied with much of life. The unusual thing about these thousand disgusts is that they do not add up to one big disgust. Somehow that would be easier. Perhaps we have met such a disgusted individual. I know a minister (not in this presbytery) with 1000 little disgusts. He can be a pleasant fellow, but someone else must make him pleasant by distracting him from his disgust by being superficially optimistic. He always looks on the negative side of things. He’s always dissatisfied about something. Interestingly enough, he is frequently sick. He’s always fighting 1000 little ailments, publicly. This spiritual handicap also manifests itself in boredom. A bored life is one without ecstasy. I’m not speaking of physical excitement or sensual pleasure. Chronic boredom is much deeper than the absence of excitement. A bored life is the kind that takes no chances. Perhaps you’ve heard of that tombstone epitaph:
A life of boredom is a life without hopes, dreams and heroes. This spiritual infirmity can also be called stagnation. (Ibid p. 266) Like the word suggests, stagnation is the opposite of fresh, like a stagnant pond, or a stinking slough. Sadly stagnation of the soul is a common infirmity. It means that a person has a few ultimate concerns, and surround one’s self with false intimacies and indulgences as if they were their own child. Stagnation is also the inability to guide and establish oneself and an inability to guide and establish one’s children, and inability to pass on one’s values. Stagnation is the opposite of generation. Interestingly enough, Erik Erickson also notes that existential stagnation can produce physical stagnation, such as the premature onset of senility or invalidism. Of course, just because someone has a physical limitation does not mean that they are emotionally stagnated. The most obvious example is, of course, again, Ray Charles. It is interesting to look at the healing stories of Jesus as extended metaphors no so much about physical illness as about existential or spiritual illness. Thus, blindness can be the tendency to be disgusted with things we see, deafness can be the tendency to not hear the exciting things in life, and speechlessness can be constant superficial chatter, the lack of something fresh or insightful to say. How differently do we hear our scripture lessons of the morning if we hear them as not only about physical illness but also about spiritual and emotional illness? “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.” (Isaiah 35:5) “All Jesus does, he does well. He even makes the deaf to hear and the speechless to speak.” (Mark 7:37). Did you ever notice as you read the gospels and the stories of the travels of Jesus that he always seemed to be teaching and healing together? For example, just before our reading of the morning from the seventh chapter of Mark are two teaching lessons about clean and unclean, the Pharisees and their hang-ups. These teaching lessons are followed by two healing accounts: the healing of the Syrophoenician woman, and, then our story, Jesus’ healing of the man who is both deaf and speechless with his spit. Maybe the gospel editors are trying to tell us something about the context of the message of Jesus. I think they are trying to tell us that spiritual and physical health go together. James Lapsley, one of my seminary professors, says, “the synoptic Gospel writers make no clean-cut distinction between the words, ‘to heal’, and the words, ‘to save’.” (Salvation and Health p. 36) Thus salvation and health are interwoven to a significant degree. So the gospel pattern is the juxtaposition of teaching and healing. Jesus doesn't do one without the other. Healing needs to be interpreted. We intuitively know this. In order to be healed, one needs to be prepared for it; one needs to be taught about it. One of the crucial differences which distinguishes the practice of modern medicine from its pre-World War II practice is the amount of pre-treatment education given to the patient. The development of the website, “Web M.D.,” speaks to our need to know before the surgeon cuts, our need to be saved from anxiety and despair in dealing with the illness we are facing. In order to be completely whole, to be saved from our disease, we need more than physical treatment. Thus it is in the interaction between teaching and healing that anxiety and despair are lifted and we are saved. But we will get sick again. We will need to be made whole again. We know that healing is not a one-time fix. Salvation is not a one-time fix. Contrary to popular opinion, salvation is not fire insurance. Salvation is life assurance. Like our health, salvation is a lifelong constant development. Our sense of our salvation rises and falls with the circumstances of life. Just ask someone who has been laid off from work how lost or saved they feel. Just ask someone who has been diagnosed with cancer how saved or damned they feel, even damned by God. Disease is not the punishment of God, but many people jump to that conclusion because a diagnosis can feel like we have been abandoned by everyone and God. Thus, the linkage between salvation and health, between knowing and healing, is very, very real. This past week Paul Wlodarczyk completed his usual excellent creation of the adult faith development catalogue and brochure for the coming program year. The brochure will arrive in our homes this coming week. I’d like to take a chance this morning and say that we can experience the healing touch of Jesus, that is both emotional and physical, by investing ourselves in our adult Christian education program here at Third Church. A first reaction might be, “Rod, you’ve got to be nuts. There is no way that cancer can be cured by going to Sunday school.” I wouldn’t be too quick to jump to conclusions. Perhaps by participating in a regular diet of adult education, one can develop existential resources to deal with cancer or heart disease or heart break. Perhaps after one gets a spiritual handle on one’s infirmity, be that literal or figurative blindness, deafness or speechlessness, a change in condition can take place. In order not to be disgusted, bored or stagnant, we need to know that there is an alternative. In order to find another way of living, we need to put ourselves into a learning situation where a new way of living can be revealed to us. The location of that new learning situation is the community of faith. The community of faith gets specific in Christian education, worship and mission. It gets educationally specific on the 500 block of East Avenue, in this building, from 9:30 to 10:30am every Sunday morning, beginning September 20. I daresay if we engage in a regular diet of this 9:30 to 10:30 Sunday morning activity that Monday through Saturday, will be less stagnant and more generative, will be less despairing and more integrating and our emotional and physical health will be significantly enhanced. To repeat, the linkage between salvation and health, between knowing and healing, is very, very real. There is one more thing about this healing story of Jesus that is strange but true. And that is Jesus’ use of his own spit to heal the man who was deaf and speechless. It sounds a little disgusting doesn’t it? But apparently in biblical times saliva was seen as a healing agent. I remember as a little boy that my mother’s saliva had medicinal powers. It sounds a little disgusting doesn’t it? Whenever I would get a splinter my mother, using an old Swedish treatment, would get a piece of bread put in her mouth and chew it up a little bit, put it on a piece of tape and put that poultice on my splinter. Many, many times that spit and bread poultice would draw the splinter right out of my flesh. So, based upon the linkage of the healing of Jesus and the teaching of Jesus, the linkage between salvation and health, here’s my thesis of the morning: Christian education at Third Presbyterian Church is the healing spit of Jesus.
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