WEEK 6—JOURNEY TO THE CROSS

Sunday, April 6—Day 33
Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”
Matthew 9: 35-38

The Compassion of Christ
Edward Knippers’ imaginary painting, The Pest House, graphically portrays our Lord in the midst of a “fever shed,” or quarantined building, set aside for those suffering from communicable diseases. These makeshift hospitals were popular in the nineteenth century, when epidemics swept through villages and cities with decimating destruction. In the painting it appears that Christ has invaded an iniquitous den of leprosy where death reigns unchallenged. He is seen with His back towards the viewer, extending His hand in a gesture of curative mercy.

Christ’s healing ministry resulted in holistic restoration, not only of the subject’s diseased body but of their mind and spirit as well. I can only imagine what it must have been like, being the recipient of one of His earthly miracles. Those Gospel stories are some of the most powerful narratives of compassion and self-denying love ever recorded. Day in and day out He brought hope to the hopeless as He poured himself into serving those in need. There was no one that Christ refused to help; no place that He would not go.  And wherever Christ went, dramatic change followed in His wake.

The Risk
Marcella Marie Holloway

You take a risk when you invite the Lord

Whether to dine or talk the afternoon

Away, for always the unexpected soon

Turns up: a woman breaks her precious nard,

A sinner does the task you should assume,

A leper who is cleansed must show his proof:

Suddenly you see your very roof removed

And a cripple clutters up your living room.

There’s no telling what to expect when Christ

Walks in your door. The table set for four

Must often be enlarged and decorum

Thrown to the wind. It’s His voice that calls them

And it’s no use to bolt and bar the door:

His kingdom knows no bounds of roof, or wall, or floor.

Sometimes in our own day, through fervent intercession or an unexplained benevolence, what we refer to as a miracle takes place. Many of these occurrences seem to transpire in parts of the world where hardship, suffering and an intense, childlike faith collide. We also know that since Christ’s return to Heaven, His followers have been called upon to be His witnesses and healing hands. Miracles were/are not acts performed by Christ alone (John 14:12), but by His disciples as well. There is a beautiful story from 19^th century Christian history that poignantly illustrates this truth.

Father Damien (1840-1888), felt the call of God to leave his native Belgium and become a missionary to the Hawaiian Islands. Arriving in 1864, he ministered in several churches on the island of Oahu before sensing a second call to serve a colony of 600 lepers on the remote island of Molokai where they lived in bleak isolation. The first thing Damien did was to build a church so that his new flock could worship. One source says, “This colony of death soon became a colony of life as grass shacks turned into painted houses, neglected land was organized into farms and the jobless were taught construction. He was not only their priest, but had to be their doctor, too. He dressed their ulcers, made their beds, built their coffins and dug their graves.” Damien’s healing devotion infected everyone, winning them to Christ. In 1884 he contracted leprosy himself, dying four years later. Today Father Damien is remembered as a lover of lepers, outcasts, and all who suffered from incurable diseases. God used him in profound ways to bring spiritual and emotional healing to those no one else cared about. 

Healing is risky business. Miss Holloway’s poem indicates that to be in the presence of Christ transforms everything. The Lord does not leave until each chamber of one’s dwelling/being is made new. Annie Herring passionately sings, “I’m like the man who was crippled from birth, crippled until you walked in. You not only healed me and made me whole, but you took away my sin!” In response I cry with all that is in me, “Lord, Heal this desperate sinner of all his diseases, so that in some small way I might become an agent of healing to others.”
Barry Krammes, CCCA Staff

Prayer
Healing power of Jesus Christ,
fall afresh on me,
Healing power of Jesus Christ,
fall afresh on me.
Touch me, stir me, unfold me, love me.
Healing power of Jesus Christ,
fall afresh on me.
(Howard Booth)

Holloway, Marcella Marie, “The Risk,” Robert Atwan, George Dardess, & Peggy Rosenthal, editors, Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) p 362-63