Reflection on the Word for the Sunday of August 21, 2022
WE ARE A NEW CREATION
LUKE 13:10-13 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.
13:11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 13:12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." 13:13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”
Jesus was accused in the synagogue, that he seemingly broke the Sabbath by healing the elderly woman on Sabbath day. However, Jesus did not brake the Sabbath law, because the Law itself says, that on Sabbath it is permissible to save life, moreover it is not only permissible, but even mandatory, as the sanctity of life precedes the sanctity of the Sabbath.
In the Gospel of Luke it was a bickering level indignation from the synagogue leader to condemn the action of Jesus as breaching of the Sabbath. Nonetheless, the exact rules of the Sabbath had been disputed among the sages of the old tradition for millennia, going into hair-splitting, tiny details, thus, sometimes it was a matter of opposing opinions.
In any synagogue, the purpose of saving life was so important, that any rules of the Sabbath would have been overruled on the spot. Nonetheless, it could have been an open question, that what severity of an illness was considered to be a real emergency, or when was a life in a direct danger in order to attempt to save it without any delay.
However, the accuser completely misdiagnosed the situation, not the seriousness of the ailment of the woman, not its life threatening or not directly life-threatening condition, but he misdiagnosed the healing procedure itself, because, it was not a work, but a miracle.
Many times we hear about miracles from the field of conventional healing within the modern health care systems, beside the many sad news.
It happened once, somewhere in the United States, that a woman, who had lost her eyesight some 20 years before, and the eye doctor told her that she had to accept the fact that she is blind, and she will never be able to see again; this blind woman had a small accident and ended up in the district hospital in 2018. The doctor at the traumatology did a full check-up, and told her that she should see an ophthalmologist, as well.
The blind woman was more than skeptic, stating that the specialist had declared 15 years ago that she has an incurable eye disease. However, a few days later the new examination in 2018, revealed that she did not have an incurable eye disease, just extremely thick cataracts on her eyes. She had been misdiagnosed 15 years before. The eye surgeon promised that they will be able to somewhat improve her vision. However, after the surgery she regained her perfect vision, as they say, the 20 / 20. Without her accident and ending up in the hospital, she could have stayed blind for ever.
As we know, cataract eye surgeries belong to the modern day medical miracles, where often 80 and 90 years old people are able to read again the small classifieds in the newspaper without glasses. Medical sciences advanced so much in the last 50 years and especially in the digital era, that a lot of medical achievements feels like miracles, and more coming.
It just happened in Montreal, almost nowadays, that a women, who had lost her eyesight decades ago, was selected by a so called bionic program. They surgically implanted a small electronic device into her retina, a tiny computer, which was wirelessly connected to the video-cameras embedded into her specifically designed pair of glasses, and now she is able to see images in black and white, including the silhouettes of her children, though a little bit like an ultrasound picture. It is like a miracle, however it is not a miracle, it is science.
The healing procedure in the hospitals and clinics follows scientific methods, using surgery, chemicals, medical knowledge and digitalization in a complex, but rational way. However, what Jesus did in the synagogue, it was a completely different method. He healed the old woman, in a similar way, as he healed the man, who was blind from his birth.
When Jesus met the blind man, Jesus “spat on the ground, made mud with saliva, anointed the blind man’s eyes with the mud, and said to him, ‘ Go wash in the pool of Siloam”. So he went away, washed, and came seeing.” The mud making does not sound too hygienic today, nonetheless Jesus performed a prophetic action, imitating the creation motive by using the elements of the Earth and the Water.
The ointment did not serve as a healing cream on the eye, because Jesus did not attempt to repair his eyes, but recreated them. That is why he did not need eye examination, labs and assistants, x-ray machines, MRI, ultrasound, chemicals, etc., because, the One, who knew how to design the human eye at the very time of its creation, that One is able to recreate it anytime.
In the synagogue the sick woman suffered from a spine deforming illness, probably some form of arthritis as most researchers assume, but Jesus did not need physical examination to see what is wrong inside her spinal structure. He did not need to repair what was broken or damaged, he simply recreated the health of the bones and the tissues within a moment, just as prophet Elisha send the leprosy stricken Syrian general, Naaman, to wash himself in the water of the Jordan, and the general were healed from leprosy on the spot, though leprosy was incurable that time. It was a prophetic action, somehow it works through analogy.
Just look at the church building, to have it, it must have been built.
Before it was built, it had to be designed, it had to be dreamed about. Thus, the church existed before its physical manifestation, as a dream and in its numbers. Imagine, that somebody, powerful enough, has the power to change the numbers of the existing church, for real. Like what is the number of the height of the walls, what is the angle of the roof.
If somebody were able to change its numbers in the realm of the mathematical reality, then the physical appearance of the church would follow the numbers, for real. Our cells look physical enough, but the physicists know that within the cells, in the human DNA everything depends on the code language, and the code language depends on its relevant numbers, and the numbers depend on the Holy One, who created the whole Universe out of nothing.
The people in the synagogue realized that a miracle happened, it was not a human effort to heal the old woman with human remedies, but it was the presence of God’s Spirit, flown through Jesus, healed the woman. It is written in this Gospel, that “the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that Jesus was doing.” Just as it happened during the Exodus, that the magicians of the Pharaoh had to give up their matching up efforts, acknowledging to the Pharaoh that what Moses was doing, it was the finger of God.
We know, that no physical miracle is that mysterious than the change of the heart of people when they change to believe. Most of the miracles happened to make us understand, that God, who is able to heal the body, is able to heal the heart as well, as it is written by the prophet Ezekiel that “ I will also give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you (...) and cause you to walk in my statutes. ”
May we pray everyday for the renewal of our hearts, as the Apostle insists that we are a new creation in Christ, and “The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.” May the Lord be blessed, who is the Healer and the Redeemer, AMEN.
