Does Healing Have a Schedule?

 11 Pentecost, C p 16,  August 21, 2022

Jer. 1:4-10   Psalm 71:1-6

Hebrews 12:18-19,22-29  Luke 13:10-17

Lectionary Link

Today's Gospel reading provides us a lesson regarding the human effort to schedule and to qualify time with calendars and clocks.

We use the phrase, "time management" and of course we do not manage time; time is the continuity of the flow of life.  We try to manages what we do in our lives within the times of our lives.

Every year we go through the "time changes" in switching our clocks by an hour to "save day light."  And this of course, is but an arbitrary decision of the human community to match our living schedule with the natural clock of the amount of sunlight at various times of the year.

Our lives are full of time management strategies as they are known in the pleroma of calendars which purport to schedule our lives.  We have lots of calendars from the main one, our Gregorian one, but also the many specialized calendars for the different areas of our lives.  For elections, for concerts, for sports, for school, and we have the liturgical calendar of the church.

One might make the case, that the Book of Common Prayer is essentially a "prayer calendar," a prayer schedule for invoking the presence of God into our lives in the ways in which we experience time; as chronological time, as sacramental time or life crisis time, rite of passage time, and as special times in the anniversary of telling events which stand out among the mostly quotidian reality of our lives.

Scheduling of time would seem to give us as humans a sense of control within time, but such control may only be anchoring behaviors to prepared us for what does not submit to our control.

In the field of probability of what might happen to us, things arise which we know can happen to us, but what we do not know is "when" they will happen to us.

Chief among these mysterious unplanned happenings are sickness and death.  Sickness and death cannot be scheduled; they do not fit our schedules.

Jesus of Nazareth is one who illuminates this conflict between human schedules and the unplanned probability of sickness and death.

In the great creation story, it is written that God rested on the seventh day from the divine work of creation, and this rest became the exemplar for a day of human rest, known as the sabbath.

And as much as humans may want to schedule perfect days of sabbath rest, when human energy can be rested into contemplative worship of the great One, the work of probable events do not yield to our "sabbath" schedules.

The quotable Jesus in another Gospel offered, "humanity was not made for the sabbath; the sabbath was made for humanity."

Time was changing in the early community of the followers of Christ.  The Roman and Gentile communities did not honor the ancient Hebrew scheduled sabbath time.  How could one be on Roman Empire time and Hebrew sabbath time?  One could not honor both.

But what else in life does not rest and honor sabbath time?  Death and illness does not rest; they do not honor the supposed perfect liturgical time of God for rest.

So what does one do if one is trying to rest on the sabbath when death and illness do not?  Death and illness are very inconvenient for sabbath time and for anytime in our lives.

Those who are sick and those who mourning cannot be denied the healing and comforting energies ever, including on the sabbath.

The voice of Jesus as projected by the writers of the Gospel, insisted that healing time, salvation time cannot take a break, even on the sabbath.

Those who forbid the work of healing at anytime for the pride of maintaining their personal time piety surely misunderstand the God of love who lives with the probabilities of what may happen in time, including illness and death, and this God of love and comfort calls us to heal and comfort within all of the times of our lives, especially when the exigent and inconvenient events of suffering arise.

The long and short of the Gospel is this:  Healing and comfort has no liturgical schedule; it must be done whenever need for it arises.  This is what God of love proposes, and healing and comfort need not be seen as incompatible with our ordinary disciplines to schedule our lives for good strategies of management and discipline.

Just as illness and death upset our preferred lifestyles events, the loving words of Jesus indicate that healing and comfort should always be the recommended response to illness and death.

Comforting and healing have no restrictions in time and to follow Jesus is to be committed to always, already be willing for the work of healing and comfort.  Amen.