4th Epiphany 2019, Requirements of Destiny

4^th Epiphany 

Matthew 8: 1 – 13

When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “Take care that you speak to no one about this. But go, show yourself to the priests. Make the gift of offering that Moses prescribes, as a proof to them.”

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a Roman officer, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my boy lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”

Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

The centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Speak just one word, and my boy will be healed. For I myself am a man with people above me, and with soldiers under me. If I tell this one, ‘Go,’ he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness of external existence where human beings live, wailing and grinding their teeth.”

Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go now! According to your faith, so let it be.” And in that same hour, the boy was healed.

4^th Epiphany

January 27, 2019

Matthew 8: 1-13

These two human beings, the leper and the centurion, show us different sides of the ideal human relationship with Christ.

With the leper, the desire for his own healing is balanced by an implicit and humble acceptance of God’s will. “If you are willing,” he says. And the Son of God answers, “I am willing.” 

God is always willing to heal. But healing is not the same as a cure. Conditions need to be met from the human side—then healing is possible, even when no cure can be found. Perhaps, in this case, the man’s humility, his awareness that his own desires were not necessarily sufficient reason for a cure, was what was necessary for both a healing and a cure.

With the centurion, too, there is humility. Now it is coming from someone who is not only himself in a position of power, but also from one who is asking on behalf of someone else. The centurion recognizes a power stronger than his own, one that transcends time and space. It is evidently his implicit and full trust in that higher power which allows his request to be fulfilled.

Christ himself lives both sides, the active healing side, and the receptive,

Gethsemane, Karl Bloch

suffering side. God, in a human body, was learning about human prayer from those he encountered. And their attitudes of soul he would elevate to a kind of perfection in the garden of Gethsemane. There, he was no longer able to keep body and soul together. He was dying. And he asked his Father for a cure, for just one more day, in order to fulfill what he understood to be his mission to die on the cross the next day. “If this cup of death can pass from me today—if it can wait until tomorrow—but—whatever is fitting, according to your will.”

He is our greatest example. “Lord,” we can say, “my trust in you provides the connection through which healing can flow from you. My awareness of the laws of destiny lets me know that in all humility, I am perhaps not the best judge of what I, what others, what the world needs. Only if the requirements of destiny have been fulfilled will a cure be possible. But whatever happens, nonetheless you heal, you make whole. Your will be done.”

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3rd Epiphany 2016, Letting Go

3rd Epiphany

Jesus Heals Leper

Matthew 8, 1-13

When he came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him. And behold, a man with leprosy approached him, and kneeling down before him said, “Lord, if you are willing, you are able to make me clean.”

Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.”

And immediately he was cleared of his leprosy. And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one. But go and show yourself to the priests and offer to them the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony of your cleansing.”

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a Roman captain, leader of a hundred soldiers, approached him, pleading with him and saying, “Lord, my boy lies at home, paralyzed, suffering great pain.”

Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

The centurion answered, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Just say a word, and my boy will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. If I say one word to this one—‘Go, ’  he goes, and if I tell another ‘Come,’ he comes. If I tell my servant ‘Do this,’ he does it.

Jesus Heals Centurion's Boy

Hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, the truth I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great power of trust. And I tell you, that many will come from the east and from the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the darkness of [godforsaken] external existence, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go home.  Let it be done to you as you have believed.”

And the boy was healed in that hour.

3rd Epiphany

January 24, 2016

Matthew 8, 1-13

If we hold a stone, we trust that if we let go, it will fall to the ground. If it is a helium balloon, we trust that if we let go, it will rise to the sky. It does no good to demand that they do otherwise than what God has ordained them to do.

In the gospel reading, a lowly outcast approaches Jesus, and in courage and trust asks to be healed. He trusts that Jesus will heal him if Jesus wills it. And a high officer does the same. He approaches Jesus in humility for the sake of another. He trusts Jesus the same way he would trust his own commanding officer. It is their trust in Christ that allows for their healing. The souls are healthy; only the body is ill. They ask, and then they cede control; they let go and bow in humility before God’s will.

Roland Tiller

In our lives, too, we can trust in Christ’s destiny guidance. We can ask in humility for cleansing and healing. And in humility we can let go of control, trusting in what God has ordained.

And at the same time, we can trust that whatever the outcome, whether we rise or fall, Christ is accompanying the direction of our lives, and especially the direction of our souls. As it says in the service, our ‘housing’ may be sick, yet Christ’s creative word enables us to change and evolve; our souls can become healthy. Our humble courage and trust in asking for soul healing makes straight the paths of the Lord of Karma into our lives.

3rd Epiphany 2008, Sweetness of Soul and Body

3^rd Epiphany

Matthew 8, 1-13

When he came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him. And behold, a man with leprosy approached him, and kneeling down before him said, “Lord, if you are willing, you are able to make me clean.”

Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.”

And immediately he was cleared of his leprosy. And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one. But go and show yourself to the priests and offer to them the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony of your cleansing.”

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a Roman captain, leader of a hundred soldiers, approached him, pleading with him and saying, “Lord, my boy lies at home, paralyzed, suffering great pain.”

Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

The centurion answered, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Just say a word, and my boy will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. If I say one word to this one—‘Go, ’ he goes, and if I tell another ‘Come,’ he comes. If I tell my servant ‘Do this,’ he does it.

Hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, the truth I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great power of trust. And I tell you, that many will come from the east and from the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the darkness of [godforsaken] external existence, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go home.  Let it be done to you as you have believed.”

And the boy was healed in that hour.

3^rd Epiphany 

January 20, 2008

Matthew 8.1-13

At a certain point in the life cycle of a plant, the carefully protected seeds are ejected and separate from where they had been harbored. Without this separation, there is no possibility of new life.

Lepers were forced to the very edges of their community—despised and rejected. Yet this individual leper in the gospel reading bears the seed of a new life. He takes the initiative to find his way back into community again. He does so by approaching the source of healing itself—Christ, who in turn reaches out to touch him. Drawn by the World Physician the leper is integrated back into community again.

We are all outcasts in this life, feeling separated from all friends, relations and the divine beings who live in the spiritual world. That is why Christ came to us—because we could not enter the higher community. Now, because He has come, and is here, we can help form together and enter the higher community from here on earth. Christ heals the rift between soul and soul, spirit and spirit, within and among us.

St. Francis of Assisi speaks of his own healing:

This is how our Lord allowed me

to begin my healing: While I yet walked

in sin, the mere sight of lepers was as

a bitterness I could not bear. Therefore

the Lord Himself drew me to life

among them, and so doing gave me

to have mercy on them. By the time

I left them, the bitterness had turned

to a sweetness of soul and of body.[1]

Separation is a phase of life. But as St. Francis says, through Christ’s healing in one’s destiny, the bitterness becomes mercy and the sweetness of a new life for soul and body.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] “Mercy”, St. Francis of Assisi, in Love’s Immensity, Scott Cairns, p. 80.

3rd Epiphany 2010, One Word

3^rd Epiphany

Matthew 8, 1-13

When he came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him. And behold, a man with leprosy approached him, and kneeling down before him said, “Lord, if you are willing, you are able to make me clean.”

Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.”

And immediately he was cleared of his leprosy. And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one. But go and show yourself to the priests and offer to them the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony of your cleansing.”

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a Roman captain, leader of a hundred soldiers, approached him, pleading with him and saying, “Lord, my boy lies at home, paralyzed, suffering great pain.”

Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

The centurion answered, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Just say a word, and my boy will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. If I say one word to this one—‘Go, ’ he goes, and if I tell another ‘Come,’ he comes. If I tell my servant ‘Do this,’ he does it.

Hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, the truth I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great power of trust. And I tell you, that many will come from the east and from the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the darkness of [godforsaken] external existence, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go home.  Let it be done to you as you have believed.”

And the boy was healed in that hour.

3^rd Epiphany

January 24, 2010

Matthew 8: 1-13

An object cast into the water creates ever expanding, ever widening circles of ripples. Once they reach the shore, the ripples turn back toward their origin.

The Gospel reading shows us the expanding circles of healing. The Jewish leper, alone and outcast, asks for Christ’s willingness for his own healing. By healing him, Christ carries him to the shore of his own community.

The Roman centurion asks for healing for his servant. Perhaps here there is a relationship that needs healing. The centurion clearly knows how to operate within a power hierarchy—taking orders from above, commanding those below. Naturally he treats his servant as he would an underling. But an authoritarian relationship has its limits. Perhaps the boy is reaching an age, in which an individual’s will needs to begin to exert itself. The boy’s will, however is paralyzed. By submitting to Christ’s spiritual power and authority, the centurion steps aside, so that Christ has direct spiritual and healing access to the boy himself. It is a relationship lesson for all of us.

The ripples of Christ’s healings expand beyond the borders of his own people. His healing works within the trust element that anyone places at His disposal. Physical distance is no hindrance.

In the Act of Consecration of Man, there is the moment when we too, place ourselves trustingly within the ever-broadening stream of Christ’s healing will. Like the centurion, we acknowledge that we are not worthy to have Him enter under our roof. But at the same time, in perfect trust, we acknowledge the power of His word to heal and to strengthen our own will. In the words of David Whyte,

  

It is not enough to know.

It is not enough to follow….

It is not enough to see straight ahead,

You must go to the place

where everything waits,

there, when you finally rest,

even one word will do,….

One word, one word only.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] David Whyte,  "It is Not Enough," from Where Many Rivers Meet.

3rd Epiphany 2012, Pernicious Self-Pity

3^rd Epiphany

Matthew 8, 1-13

When he came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him. And

Wierex Bible

behold, a man with leprosy approached him, and kneeling down before him said, “Lord, if you are willing, you are able to make me clean.”

Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.”

And immediately he was cleared of his leprosy. And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one. But go and show yourself to the priests and offer to them the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony of your cleansing.”

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a Roman captain, leader of a hundred soldiers, approached him, pleading with him and saying, “Lord, my boy lies at home, paralyzed, suffering great pain.”

Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

The centurion answered, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Just say a word, and my boy will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. If I say one word to this one—‘Go, ’ he goes, and if I tell another ‘Come,’ he comes. If I tell my servant ‘Do this,’ he does it.

Hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, the truth I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great power of trust. And I tell you, that many will come from the east and from the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the darkness of [godforsaken] external existence, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go home.  Let it be done to you as you have believed.” And the boy was healed in that hour.

3^rd Epiphany

January 22, 2012

Matthew 8: 1-13

The small child trusts that the world is a good place. When it gets sick, it suffers in the moment; but deep in its soul, it knows that soon things will get better.

By the time we are adults, things get more complicated. Our illnesses may be chronic. Our hopes may have been dashed so many times that our souls are chronically despondent.

The gospel reading speaks of two souls whose relationship to illness and to the divine world is the opposite of despair. In fact the nature of their relationship, both to their illness, and to the divine world, is so healthy that it makes physical healing possible. For indeed it is the unhealthy soul that is the ultimate cause of bodily illness.

The leper suffers from a chronic disease that destroys the human form. Yet he does not wallow in that pernicious form of egotism we call self-pity. Instead he humbly states to the One Higher that if it is God’s will, he could be cleansed. It is not even a request; it is a simple statement, a testament to his trust that God knows best.

The Roman centurion was actually in a position of great power over this itinerant Jewish healer. Yet he too recognizes his place in the great hierarchy of the universe. Not only is he willing to humbly ask for a healing on behalf of his servant; he is also willing to acknowledge that the Logos, the Word of God, commands great power, even at a distance.

The words at the communion echo those of the centurion. We humbly acknowledge that the dwelling into which Christ is entering is unhealthy; but even greater than our humility is our trust in the power of God to heal our souls. For we know that all true healing comes from God.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

3rd Epiphany 2013, Not My Will

3^rd Epiphany

Matthew 8, 1-13

When he came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him. And behold, a man with leprosy approached him, and kneeling down before him said, “Lord, if you are willing, you are able to make me clean.”

Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.”

And immediately he was cleared of his leprosy. And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one. But go and show yourself to the priests and offer to them the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony of your cleansing.”

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a Roman captain, leader of a hundred soldiers, approached him, pleading with him and saying, “Lord, my boy lies at home, paralyzed, suffering great pain.”

Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

The centurion answered, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Just say a word, and my boy will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. If I say one word to this one—‘Go, ’ he goes, and if I tell another ‘Come,’ he comes. If I tell my servant ‘Do this,’ he does it.

Hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, the truth I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great power of trust. And I tell you, that many will come from the east and from the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the darkness of [godforsaken] external existence, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go home.  Let it be done to you as you have believed.”

And the boy was healed in that hour.

3^rd Epiphany

January 20, 2013

Matthew 8: 1-13

If one wants to go to a place, one has to take steps to get there. Mere wishing, even strong desire, isn’t enough. One has to get on one’s feet and make one’s way, step by step. One has to walk to the place of the destiny meeting.

In today’s reading, the two men receive the healing they ask for because they each made their way to their destiny meeting with Christ. They walked not only the outer path to Him, but also an inner one. They each found their way to the place of paradox, an inner place where they could be both active and at the same time humbly receptive. The leper is sensitive to the Christ Will—if You are willing… he says. The centurion is humbly devoted to the potency of the Christ Word—just say a word, he says.

Both of them operate out of an archetypal health-bringing attitude; this attitude is to be cultivated in all human suffering— Christ Jesus, the divine human Himself portrayed it in Gethsemane—Not my will, but Thine be done.

For God Himself has a road in mind for humanity to walk—an evolutionary road toward a higher awareness of our divine human purpose. What role we as individuals have to play in the greater picture is not always obvious.

The leper wants healing for himself, so that he can rejoin his community. May we approach Christ to cleanse us of leprous thoughts, of contagious malignity, so that we do not bring our soul illness into the community. The centurion, well ordered into his human community, asks for healing for another. May we so care for those in our community that we too are active in approaching Christ on their behalf. 

www.thechristiancommunity.org