Bad News about Heaven

If you're just wanting Jesus to heal you, then I have some bad news about heaven.... 

See, we say it all the time, especially when we are watching someone we love struggling in their human flesh. We look forward to the day when Jesus just takes them home because they will finally be healed of all of this. Because they will finally get their body back. 

We look at our loved ones in wheelchairs, and we imagine them running. We look at the amputee who lost their legs in battle, and we see them, like the man in the Temple, stretching out their limbs again. We look at the blind and know that they will see us. We are confident that when we all get to heaven (what a day of rejoicing that will be), we will all be full and whole and well and the things that ravaged our bodies down here will be no more. 

But...maybe not? 

Jesus Himself said that if your hand causes you to sin, you should cut it off because it's better to have only one hand than to be thrown whole into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. Because it's better to only have one eye than to have both and be bound to hell by the one. 

And it was Jesus who was crucified, with nails piercing His hands and His feet, who came back from the grave and showed those physical scars to Thomas. Did not just show them to the disciple, but let the unsure young man put his fingers through the holes. 

So tell me again how we believe that God is going to restore our bodies to perfectly and beautifully functional and whole when Jesus Himself says the hand that would throw us into hell is better off amputated and He showed His own physical, earthly scars to a disciple after His own resurrection? 

Yesterday, we asked what it is that we're believing God for and saw that from very early on when Jesus was walking this earth, it seems like a lot of folk were believing Him for their healing. 

What if...Jesus doesn't heal you? 

Not because He can't. We know that He can. Not because He doesn't want to. We know that He wants to. But what if...that's just not the way? 

What if all the things that you've lost in this body are not coming back to you in the next life? 

On the surface, this seems like a damning question. It's too hard. It's...unfathomable. God won't heal me? God won't make me whole? My child who has been bound in a wheelchair, my husband who lost his legs in combat, my wife who suffered a traumatic brain injury, my friend who went blind...they're going to be crippled...for eternity? 

What kind of God is that? 

But that's exactly the point. That's exactly the question. If you aren't believing God for your healing, is there something worth believing Him for? 

I think it's good to engage our sanctified imagination this way. I think it's good to think about the things we might be missing because the answers we've already settled on are too comfortable for us, too close. One of the best ways we fall more in love with God is by thinking about the things we don't normally think about, by thinking about more than we've settled for in our too-familiar faith. 

What other things can you dream of with your eyes wide open? 

Healing and the Kingdom

Let me ask you a question: what are you believing God for? 

Not why do you believe in God, but what are you believing He will do for you? If God in the flesh showed up this afternoon, what is the thing you would expect most from Him? 

This is an important question because God in the flesh actually did show up once, and if you pay attention to the way that the Gospels develop, it reveals something interesting about the human condition. 

I've been reading through the book of Matthew lately...again. And one of the things that jumps out to me as I read this year is the number of folks who brought their loved ones, their friends, their kids, whoever to Jesus for healing. The number of blind men who stand on the sides of the road. The number of crippled and diseased and outcasted men who come to the Temple and the synagogue to seek Him. 

I know what you're thinking: so what? Jesus's healings in the Gospels are very well known. 

But...they weren't. 

When Matthew first tells us that the crowds were bringing the sick and the lame and the blind and the diseased and the afflicted and the outcast to Jesus...he also gave us no record at all of any previous healings Jesus had done. The people were just...bringing the broken. 

Because they heard that God was among them. 

Maybe God. Maybe a prophet. Maybe a crazy man. Whoever They had heard stories about the kind of authority with which this Man spoke, about maybe how a dove descended from the heavens, maybe about a voice booming with love for Him. We're not really sure what kinds of rumors were circulating about Jesus in the very early days of His ministry, but somehow, everyone was getting the idea to bring their sick to Him. 

Is this what we most expect from God? 

Do we believe that the first thing that God would do if we were ever to encounter Him is to heal us? 

Is that what we want Him to do?

It's interesting that yes, Jesus healed the sick. He gave sight to the blind. He made the lame walk. He stretched out deformed hands. He stopped chronic bleeding. He cast out demons. He called the dead out of the grave. But He didn't actually teach all that much about healing. 

No. Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God. 

About the first being last and the last being first. About the reward being great for anyone who has made sacrifice. About loving God and loving others. About being honest and upright and righteous and forgiving and gracious and merciful. Not about being healed. Not even about healing. But about the Kingdom. 

And yet...they kept bringing their sick to Him. And He healed every one of them. 

But...what are we believing Him for? Just for this? 

It's a good question to be asking ourselves. 

Dill

Jesus tells a parable about the wheat and the weeds. We've been looking at this parable for a couple of days. First, we discovered that He is right - it's better for the weeds and the wheat to grow together. Yesterday, I confessed that sometimes, I'm the weed in somebody else's wheat field. 

As I was writing that reflection, I was thinking about all the things that grow in the wild that we think are weeds, but we've found out they're actually not. 

I watch a lot of survival shows. You know, the kinds of things where humans challenge their ability to live without all the tools and modern conveniences of life as we know it. And they always take these folks and drop them off in some remote place far from home and they're just like, "Go for it." 

I'm never more amazed than when one of these survivalists is walking through some overgrown place, chopping through vines and avoiding thorns and stepping on ants and untangling spider webs and just trying to get through the darkness into some kind of clearing they might be able to call home for awhile when all of a sudden, they just stop, walk a couple of steps off in one direction or another, take a delicate leaf in their hand, sniff it, and declare some magical knowledge about it. 

"Ah! This is the snufugrappy plant. It is useful for purifying water and healing bug bites and it kind of tastes a little bit like watermelon." 

I'm just sitting at home like, it's the what now?

Or they'll bend over into an overgrowth of something that all looks the same to me, dig through a mess of tangled weeds, and pull up this one little tiny thing and declare, "This is actually edible. I can eat this." 

How do you even know? 

And as I consider these moments, these times when I am just absolutely blown away by the knowledge that these survivalists have about these sorts of things that all look the same to me, I think about this parable. 

It makes me wonder if everything I think is a weed in my life really is a weed after all. 

Maybe...it's an herb. 

The herbs are great. They bring out so much flavor in our food, as well as often providing medicinal properties. But I wonder how long it took human civilization to walk right by the sage, clear it out, destroy it, do everything we could to eradicate it, before we realized it might actually be a benefit to us. It's not like God planted Eden with grocery labels; we have discovered, over the course of our lives, what might actually not be a weed, even though it might look like one. We have discovered, over the course of living, that all the things we thought might be choking the life out of us might actually not be. 

That's kind of a big dill. 

(Sorry. Couldn't help myself.)

But then, I read the parable of the weeds and the wheat, and I wonder - what might we discover in the "weeds" if we let them keep growing with us? What is the next thing we're going to stumble upon in the overgrowth? 

How does it change the story if one day, we stop for just a second, take a step or two off the beaten path, pick up one of those weeds in our fingers, smell it, and declare, "Ah, yes! This is the snufugrappy plant. It is useful..." 

It is useful.  

A Weed

Jesus tells a parable about the wheat and the weeds. We looked at this parable yesterday and at what seems to be a common response to it. 

We know the weeds in our lives, and we think we'd be better off without them, but we're often wrong; Jesus is right. (And ain't that always the case?) 

But one of the things that I think with this parable about as I continue to mature in the faith is not just the weeds in my own life. 

I think about the ways in which I am a weed. 

Because listen, I'm not perfect. I've got things about me that seem to grow out of control. I've got things that are toxic to the others around me. I've got roots that go down and kind of suck up all of the nutrients around me in a space, leaving very little for the good things that other folks are trying to grow. 

Am I proud of this? No. Am I resigned to this? Not really. I'm always doing everything I can to make sure that I'm not a weed. But do I understand that this is one of the realities of being human? Absolutely. 

So I try to be mindful that sometimes, I am the thing that is keeping others from growing. I am the poison in the well. I am the thief in the night. I am the one taking away the opportunity for the wheat to thrive. 

And...sometimes, I'm the one thwarting God's work, too. 

I'm the one believing it's not worthwhile. I'm the one believing it's not possible. I'm the one grumping around because grace is for me and not for thee. I'm the one looking around trying to figure out just who is the wheat and who is the weed and not realizing that that giant weed that I see right in front of me is nothing more than my own reflection in a mirror. 

This is nowhere more true in my life than when I am wanting the whole thing to be wheat. 

Than when I am looking around and wanting excellence for everyone. Than when I have extremely high standards for what goodness looks like in a certain place. Than when I'm certain I know what's best...what works, what is good, what is meaningful, what is valuable. 

I can be kind of a big weed if you're not doing things the way that I think is right. 

But give me some time, and I usually come around. I usually start to see the ways that the roots are tangled together, the ways that sometimes, even the difficult things help us to grow better. The way that we're not actually fighting for water, but we're better able to access it because we're all trying to draw it this direction...even if there's still something in me that thinks you're trying to steal it...even if, in fact, I'm the actual thief. 

I'm working on it. It's a lifelong process. But these days, I can't read this parable without recognizing how much a part of it I am. 

Not just because I am the wheat. But sometimes, because I am the weed. 

And God is still giving me the grace to keep growing here. 

The Weeds

Jesus tells a parable about the weeds and the wheat. And it goes something like this: 

A farmer went out to his field and planted a bunch of wheat. Unbeknownst to him, some enemy came along and threw a bunch of weed seeds into the field. In season, then, the wheat started to grow, but so did the weeds. There were so many weeds that his workers wondered if they shouldn't start pulling them up, but the farmer said no. If you pull up the weeds, you'll uproot the wheat. You'll ruin the whole field. Just let it be; it will sort itself out in the end. 

And we read this parable, and we think about all of the weeds in our lives. We think about all the things that seem to be ruining our fields. 

And we kind of get indignant. Because we know our lives would be better without the weeds in them. We know that the wheat is better without the weeds. We can identify the things in our lives that are miserably insufferable and seem to be sucking the very life out of our being. 

How can God say to just let the weeds grow? 

Yet, there really is wisdom in this. For if we really sit down and think about it, getting rid of the weeds in our lives is also a threat. It may uproot more than we count on. 

Maybe you've got a weed in your family. You think there would just be so much more harmony and fun and wellness in the family if you stopped inviting Cousin Jessica to the gatherings. It's just better for everyone. The wheat will thrive without that wheat there. 

But the empty chair condemns you. The absence creates a bigger suck than the presence ever did. The bitterness runs steady under the whole thing like an underground stream, and everyone knows...yes, you're having a better time, but at what expense? It's harder than you think to cut out even a weed. 

Maybe you've got a weed in your body. It seems obvious to you that things would just be better without that battle, without that struggle. 

But what you don't know is that healing one thing often requires healing something else. Because over time, your body has compensated in ways that you never even notice, let alone understand. If you walk with a limp for five years and then suddenly fix that limp, it doesn't take you long to notice that your other muscles aren't trained to work right any more. So now, you have to break them and heal them in new ways and put yourself back together. All of a sudden, what seemed like a simple fix becomes a long journey of one fix after another after another and honestly? You didn't feel this broken when you were actually broken. 

Maybe you've got a weed at work. The solution is very clear: the whole place would run more smoothly if you got rid of that weed. Sometimes, that's true. But what often happens is that removing one piece shifts around the work in a way no one expected. You're suddenly missing a piece of your operation, and you might not have even realized what that person was doing. The whole dynamic shifts in a way you weren't prepared for. 

So wait...am I saying that God was right? That you should just let the weeds grow with the wheat? 

Yup. (I mean, no surprise, right? My general default position is that God is right.) 

Because it's true. Try to uproot some of the weeds in your life, and you'll find pretty quickly how intertangled your roots actually are. And, well, maybe the wheat doesn't thrive as much as you thought it would without the weeds. Maybe the root is too damaged from the pickin'.