The Sickness and the Salve

The Sickness and the Salve--December 6, 2017

"We have all become like one who is unclean,

     and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.

 We all fade like a leaf,

     and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

 There is no one who calls on your name, 

    or attempts to take hold of you;

 for you have hidden your face from us,

    and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; 

     we are the clay, and you are our potter;

     we are all the work of your hand." [Isaiah 64:6-8]

Sometimes you only find out what the sickness was by learning what cures you.

It was a few years ago, a day in winter if I remember correctly, when I woke from the twilight of anesthetic on a hospital bed in one of those classy hospital gowns (what I maintain are the clothing equivalent of the mullet, which is to say, as the line goes, "business in the front party in the back").  I was waking from having had a colonoscopy, and the first things I recall were being handed a ginger ale and being told, "We found a polyp, and we removed it."

A great deal of information came and went in that short little sentence, and all so unceremoniously.  That lone sentence, a mere two independent clauses glued together with an "and," carried the specter of death and the relief of life all in the space of two and a half seconds of speech.   The polyp, had it gone unnoticed or undetected, would have (said the doctor) become cancer--and in my early thirties at that time, I wouldn't have even had it on my radar to be thinking about the C-word.  But there in one instant of time, the doctor simultaneously alerted me to the problem and to the solution that had already been provided.  I was waking to find myself saved, but at the very same time, the knowledge of the saving alerted me to the need to have been rescued in the first place.  I went into the procedure not knowing that there was any concern at all to be worried about, and came out of it hearing that there had been a problem... and that it had been dealt with while I was unconscious.  

In a very real sense, I did not even know what the real threat was until I was hearing that it had already been resolved.  The name of the malady came up in the process of telling me how it had already been treated.  And honestly, it had to be that way, because if you would have asked me before that morning if there was anything "wrong" with me, I would have sworn up and down that I was fine (at least medically--in terms of personality and character flaws, that list is a mile long).  I wouldn't have known at all what kind of "cure" or "treatment" I needed, because as far as I could see of myself, I was already just fine.

Sometimes you only find out what the sickness is by hearing what will heal you... or even hearing that the healing has already been provided for.

I want to propose that as our starting point here on this journey to know and love and to be shaped by Jesus.  I want to propose that we don't really know what our need is, until we see what Jesus does for us.  We do not know how we have distorted our humanity until we see the fullness of Jesus' humanity--and then we see how our own hearts are shriveled and bent, how our own courage and strength is stunted, how our own fear and hatreds are overgrown like an untended grapevine, and how we have disfigured ourselves with violence and avarice and insecurity and petty childishness. 

Catch us on an ordinary day without considering Jesus in the picture, and we would all swear up and down that we are all "just fine"... or at least, we would each say, "Well, I know that I--and people "like me"--am just fine.  If there's a problem, it's with... those people," and then we each trot out our own personal list of boogeymen, bad guys, villains, and identified patients.  The problem is "them"--the ones who think differently from me, the ones who don't look or act or pray or vote like me, the ones who make me feel insecure because they are "other"... because they are "they."  And, again, without having Jesus in the picture to compare ourselves to, we each have a way of inserting halos on to our own self-portraits, while adding secret devil horns to the pictures of the ones we don't like.

With that kind of view of the world, we will always, always, always diagnose "the problem" as something "out there"--you know, away from me and the people-like-me... the problem is "them." And if only somebody would do something about "them," then the world would be a better place.  You know, the problem is "those bad guys" over there, who are making it rough for "us good guys" here where I am... right?

We are all in this state of blissful self-righteousness like me before going under the anesthetic--all convinced that "I" am "just fine."

That's part of why preparing for Jesus is difficult--at least to do honestly.  See, if Jesus really is the healer, the salve (from the same Latin root as "salvation" and "savior," mind you), the help we deeply need, then to come face to face with Jesus is also come face to face with the diagnosis at the same time: I am not okay.  We are not okay.  We are, to borrow the line from the Joni Mitchell song, "so hard to handle, selfish, and sad."   We find that out the moment we compare our stunted, underdeveloped hearts (two sizes too small, like the Grinch) with the disarming love of Jesus... and yet that is exactly the same moment in which we find ourselves embraced by that same love.  The diagnosis and the cure come in the same breath. 

But that does make it scarier, in a sense, to face Jesus.  It means admitting, like the courageous old seer put it, even "all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth." It means I no longer get to break the world up into neat and tidy piles of "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys," not because all actions or words are morally equal, but because there isn't a single one of us who is immune from the sickness of the stunted, shriveled spirit--we are all "bad guys," at some level, and what we require is One who can make us well, not someone who can "get rid of THOSE bad guys OVER THERE." 

There are bad guys right here, wherever "right here" is--there is one typing at my computer right now.

This season is, for the intentionally out-of-step community called "church," one of hope and expectation, with our eyes trained on Jesus, the One we believe is the "savior of the world," the one whose coming is "good news for all the people," as one angel put it.  And it is with good reason that we are hopeful about the coming of Christ.  But to be honest with ourselves, really preparing for Christ's entry into our lives is rather like waking up from a colonoscopy--we should be prepared for the reality that we will find there was something wrong inside us at the same time we hear the news of healing and of a Healer.  The coming of Jesus means facing that we need a savior, because there is something inside each of us that is killing us.  The problem, like a cancer, is not some external foreign agent or body "out there" that came into make us sick--the problem is something inside each heart that has gone awry and twists our deepest selves to be bent inward.

For centuries in the life of the church, these days called "Advent" were solemn and sober, not because people were afraid of Jesus showing up and seeing their sins and then zapping them with lightning for not being good enough, but because it is precisely at the point we come face to face with Jesus that we see ourselves and our stunted humanity, and none of us can bear such a long and truthful look in the mirror. Only once we have come face to face with that stark reality will we truly be hopeful about the good news of Jesus, who not only shows us what our humanity was meant to look like all along, but who makes us truly human as well in his embrace. 

The diagnosis and the cure come all in one moment.

Lord Jesus, show us yourself.  And show us ourselves in your light... and then show us what you are making us into, so that we will not despair.