Sunday
Jesus’ actions and his physical healings consistently rearrange faulty relationships—with people’s own self-image, with others, with society, and with God who is henceforth seen as on their side.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
While we tend to send them to therapists instead of holy people, in general, the only cure for negative possession is a positive repossession! Jesus is always “repossessing” people—for themselves and for God.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
My disabled body is a temple for the Holy Spirit. I have the mind of Christ. To suggest that I am anything less than sanctified and redeemed is to suppress the image of God in my disabled body and to limit how God is already at work through my life.
—Amy Kenny
Wednesday
Faith is a performance of transformation, of old made new, of lost found, of dead made alive. And the whole cosmos is filled with the singing of ex-lepers, the saints of God who attest that gifts from the holy God are given that make for life.
—Walter Brueggemann
Thursday
What would it look like if we were the friends lowering our sister before Jesus? What would it look like if we came as a community around our people in need and said, “My friend, I got you in this time of need”? How does the church create a space where people feel safe and comfortable enough to come and say, “I need help; I’m in danger”?
—Kamilah Hall Sharp
Friday
We desperately need healing for groups, institutions, marriages, the wounds of war, violence, racism, and the endless social problems in which we are drowning today. But we won’t know how to heal if we don’t learn the skills at ground zero: the individual human heart.
—Richard Rohr
Week Five Practice
Sometimes It Stings
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. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. —Luke 13:11–13
Reflecting on Luke’s Gospel, author Nadia Bolz-Weber considers how healing can be a painful process:
I found myself wondering if it hurt … not just the pain of standing up straight for the first time in nearly two decades, but because it can sting to be healed—to be freed from what binds us especially if we overly identify with our afflictions. It can hurt to be healed and freed from the things that we think make us special. It can hurt to be fully seen even if it is the thing we long for most. Like blood returning to frostbitten fingers….
Perhaps you are pulled down by the spirit of perfectionism
or by the spirit of addiction
or by the spirit of comparison
or by the spirit of unmet expectations
or by the spirit of arrogance
or by the spirit of self-pity or self-loathing
or pulled down by the spirit of a world that will break your heart and tell you it doesn’t matter (I myself have felt the gravitational pull of each at different times), but none of that is who you are.
I do not know what you have healed from, or what current pain that, God willing, you will be healing from in the future.
But no matter what it is in your life that is seen or unseen by others, no matter what you have already healed from, no matter what pain remains hidden, no matter no matter no matter, God loves you too much to leave you unseen and (at least) emotionally unhealed.
Reference:
Nadia Bolz-Weber, “Sometimes It Stings,” The Corners (Substack newsletter), August 30, 2023. Used with permission.
Gabriel Jimenez, Untitled (detail), 2017, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Humble soil and saliva are base elements and essential to one of Jesus’ healings. The capacity for healing need not be elaborate or ostentatious.
