Sick Folk

When you begin to look closely at a church, you start noticing that the people who make it up are not quite as righteous as you might have thought.  You find that they have attitudes, that they don't always have the best motives, that many of them lack abundant faith, that they look suspiciously human, that some are downright hypocrites.

When you begin to look closely at a church, chances are you are going to be disappointed with much of what you see.  You are going to be disappointed with how many are in need of change, with how many need an infusion of faith, with how many are so infected with worldly thinking, with how many are spiritually sick folk, in need of healing.

You begin to wonder, "Are these people really called by Jesus?"  These people look so much like what I see in society around me, can they really be the Church?  Can these emotionally, spiritually, financially, relationally sick people really be who Jesus had in mind calling together to establish kingdom?

The religious leaders and the Pharisees wondered the same thing when they saw Jesus socializing "with tax collectors and sinners" (Mk 2:16) and questioned the disciples on his fellowship choices. Jesus, on hearing what they said, did not dispute their qualification of the crowd he ate with, instead he said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (17).

The church is not meant to be a gathering place of the religiously elite, a sort of spiritual social club.  The church is rather to be a hospital for the spiritually sick and the religiously in-firmed, a place where they can come for help, a place where wounds are bound and sick folk are invited to seek healing.  All of us, by the way, are in need of healing, "No one is righteous, not even one" (Rom 3:10).  I may be further along in the healing process, but I am not healed.  Neither are you.

The answer to our infirmities is not to withdraw from other sick people in some sort of spiritual isolation room, separating ourselves from those who are obviously more sick then we, but rather to  engage with each other, openly talk about our weaknesses and our spiritual brokenness, "Confessing our sins to each other and praying for each other so that we might be healed" (Js 5:16a)

Oh, by the way, those directed to pray for each other so they might be healed are promised that "the prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective" (16b).  The righteous?  Aren't the sick confessing and praying for each other?  Who are the righteous?  The righteous ones are the sick folk who know they are sick and seek healing from the Lord.  We aren't perfect, just forgiven.

The sick folk are us.  We all stand in need of healing.  We all "sin and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 6:23).  We all need to be praying for one another so that we might be overcoming our sin condition by the grace of God, who assigns us righteousness based on His Son's perfection, not ours.  Jus' Say'n.