What Do Healing and Comforting Have to Do With Hospitality?

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part I of our series on Healing and Comforting

There’s a fascinating story about illness and healing in John 9:1-7.  This story is dripping with insight about how God views illness and what he has in mind through the Work of Mercy called healing and comforting:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him,”Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him,”Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.

Before we dive into this amazing story, we need to get a few other Scriptures on the table to orient us. The first one comes from Paul in Galatians 4:9-10. Though the Galatians “have come to know God, or rather to be known by God,” Paul says, they have “turn(ed) back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world” and they “observe days and months and seasons and years.”

Their discipleship, in other words, has gone off track.

Certain practices—which Paul calls “weak and worthless”—have turned them to a “different gospel” (Gal. 1:6). So in this moment, in Galatians 4:19, Paul gives us a crystal clear picture of the purpose of discipleship when he says:

“…my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!”

The goal of discipleship? “Christ in you, the hope of glory”—that’s what Paul calls it in Colossians 1:27.

It’s the principle we come back to again and again: God creates human beings to bear his image. When sin and death enter the world through Adam, that vocation is lost because the image of God is distorted. Christ, the second Adam, comes to restore that vocation by living a sinless life and offering himself as what John in 1 John 2:2 calls “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Through Christ’s death and resurrection, he creates a way for God to dwell in the human spirit.  As he says in Revelation 3:20,

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

Christ opens his home to us, on earth and in heaven. And he comes to us through his messengers, seeking hospitality. Those who receive him and those who don’t are repaid accordingly.

Oh, the deep, deep connection between salvation and hospitality! 

It may not be obvious yet–this deep, deep connection. But hang with me through the next two posts while we examine the theme together. What we’ll see is that one of the reasons we Christians have such confused theologies of healing…is because we don’t understand hospitality very well either, and the two (as we’ll see this week) are joined at the hip.

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Don’t Give to Fund-Raisers. Become One.

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part IX of our series on Visiting and Remembering

I want to close this series on Visiting and Remembering with a few comments specifically related to financial giving.

When we maintain a regular visitation schedule, it changes how we think about financial giving. Once we are in the habit of personally visiting widows, orphans, the sick, and the imprisoned in the name of Jesus, we become a lot less likely to give by making donations online or by dropping money in the offering plate so that the church can hire someone to visit these people. Instead, we become more likely to buy an extra carton of milk when we are at the store, or to try to figure out how to schedule and pay for a clinic appointment for someone in need, or to pick up a study Bible and have it engraved with the initials of a new believer in prison. We gradually stop thinking about these gifts as charitable donations and instead start to think about them simply as family expenses.

In fact, as we visit people in person, we stop giving to fund-raisers and instead become fund-raisers. As John Wesley says:

You might properly say in your own case, “To beg I am ashamed;” but never be ashamed to beg for the poor; yea, in this case, be an importunate beggar; do not easily take a denial. Use all the address, all the understanding, all the influence you have; at the same time trusting in Him that has the hearts of all men in his hands.

What can you do, today, to transition from giving to fund-raisers to becoming a fund-raiser?  If you’re at a loss, perhaps the answer is simply this: visit someone.

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Why It’s Good When Your Visitation Brings Out the “Amazing Stupidity of Others”

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part VIII of our series on Visiting and Remembering

By loving others and caring for them in their time of need, we mirror God’s care to them in both body and soul during times of great need.  That was the message of our last post.

This care for the whole person culminates in achieving the purpose for every instance of visiting and remembering: imparting the life of God.

That’s also the purpose of praying for one another.

Prayer and sacraments are how God becomes visible to both the visitor and the one being visited. You can see this in Scripture when Jesus appears to the disciples on the Emmaus Road right after his resurrection. Pay attention to how Jesus conducts the perfect visitation by imparting life through the Word of God, prayer, and the breaking of bread:

That very day [Easter] two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad.

Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

And he said to them, “What things?”

And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.”

And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

So they drew near to the village to which they were going.He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them.

When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while heopened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:13–32)

You can see from Jesus’ example that a prayer that invokes God’s presence and aid is something more than just saying, “God, please be with this person.” John Wesley has some great guidance here. His best point is that we should pray to God about what we should pray about!

Be sure to conclude every meeting with prayer. If you cannot yet pray without a form, you may use some of those composed by Mr. Spinckes, or any other pious writer. But the sooner you break through this backwardness the better. Ask of God, and he will open your mouth.

Whenever, therefore, you are about to enter upon the work, seek his help by earnest prayer. Cry to him for the whole spirit of humility, lest if pride steal into your heart, if you ascribe anything to yourself, while you strive to save others you destroy your own soul. Before and through the work, from the beginning to the end, let your heart wait upon him for a continual supply of meekness and gentleness, of patience and longsuffering, that you may never be angry or discouraged at whatever treatment, rough or smooth, kind or unkind, you may meet with.

Be not moved with the deep ignorance of some, the dullness, the amazing stupidity of others; marvel not at their peevishness or stubbornness, at their non-improvement after all the pains that you have taken; yea, at some of them turning back to perdition, and being worse than they were before. Still your record is with the Lord, and your reward with the Most High.

“The amazing stupidity of others”—that’s a great phrase, isn’t it? But notice that Wesley says that this amazing stupidity is actually a blessing because it ensures that we are visiting for the right reason.

We shouldn’t do the Work of Mercy of visiting people just because we enjoy meeting new people or cheering others up when they are sad.

Instead, we should do it as an act of self-emptying—our reasonable service of worship to God.

When have your efforts at Christian love been met with the “amazing stupidity of others”? What did you do about it?

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