Texts: 2 Sam 5:1-5,9-10; Psalm 48; 2 Cor 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the state of health care in our nation. I like to listen to talk radio and news radio as I drive around, and there have been a number of different proposals offered to address the twin problems of the rising cost of health care and the rising number of those who are un-insured.
If you stop and think about how we use our health-care, how we tend to use medicine, you will quickly see that there is most typically a disconnect between how we handle the symptoms and the cause of disease.
If you go to the doctor because you have some pain which is affecting the quality of your life, will you be content if the doctor discerns the root cause, fixes the underlying problem, but yet your symptoms – your pain – remains?
We Americans consume vast amounts of pharmaceuticals, far more, I believe, per capita than any other nation. Of course, we are not taking these pills to fix our root problems. We take them to tame whatever symptoms we have so that we can get back to work, back to our busy lives.
When our Lord returned to his hometown of Nazareth, the people liked to hear him teach, to see him heal a few sick people, but they were not about to allow this home-grown prophet to change them. They would not accept a call to repentance from this man. They could tolerate Jesus as long as he stayed on the surface-level, but when he probed deeper, they resisted.
St. John Chrysostom, the great preacher of the 4th century, and one of the greatest preachers who ever lived, understood the basic stumbling block over which we human beings always seem to stumble: our distaste for dealing with the root causes of problems. Listen to these striking words from one of his sermons:
“The truth is, a person goes to the doctor for relief of the symptoms of
disease, not disease itself. The doctor, on the other hand, knows that the
symptoms cannot be relieved unless their cause is overcome. Similarly, when we
declare ourselves to be disciples of Christ, we claim that we want him to cure
our spiritual and moral disease. Yet in truth, we want him to relieve the
symptoms, such as misery, discontent, despair, and so on. Jesus, by contrast,
knows that he cannot relieve these symptoms unless he overcomes their deep,
inner cause. And this is where the problems arise. While we would like to be rid
of the symptoms, we stubbornly resist the efforts of Jesus to penetrate our
souls. We do not want our deep-set feelings and attitudes to be changed. But
only when we truly open our souls to the transforming grace of God will the
symptoms of spiritual disease begin to disappear” (On Living Simply: The Golden Voice of John Chrysostom, p. 75).
Today we have the joy and privilege of welcoming Kimberly Louise Baker into the family of God. Today, Kimberly takes her place within the body of Christ. Today (through baptism) she is grafted onto the root, the vine which is Jesus Christ.
The Church has always viewed baptism as addressing the root cause of the human dilemma. At our core, our quandary is the fact that we have separated ourselves from our Creator through willful disobedience, through selfishness, through sin. Baptism is the means of applying the fix. Baptism is provided as a means of re-creating a new humanity, a new human body, connected to our head, Jesus the Messiah.
Unfortunately, after baptism, our sin continues as we learn to grow into our inheritance, as we take on the full measure of our new life in Christ. But the root cause of our distress is relieved, because our life now grows and is built up on a different foundation. And that foundation is solid rock. That foundation for the life of the baptized people of God is Jesus, the powerful Master, the wise Teacher. As long as we continue to truly open our souls to his grace, as St. John Chrysostom preached, then his healing touch will continue to work in our lives and we will experience more and more abundant life in his love.
Now, there are many areas of life where we can see this classic human struggle between addressing root causes of problems or dealing only with surface-level symptoms. Yesterday was Independence Day, and I think it is clear to say that the founders of our nation sought to create a new community, an ideal experiment, a new possibility where the root causes of basic societal ills might be addressed. The means of addressing these root causes was through the right of self-determination, the ability and the right of free peoples to make decisions for their own lives.
We all know the words they left us. They changed the course of human history. They cannot be mistaken for a superficial treatment of a passing situation. They cut to the core of humanity, going to the root of what it means to live together as human beings.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
It is an unfortunate truth that this experiment is under constant threat from those who gain power and who seek to use that power, not for the benefit of the nation, but for their own personal benefit. Yesterday I read a disturbing article about federal employees using our tax dollars to pay for such things as laser eye surgery, first-class trips to Hawaii, tickets to concerts, dinners at Gentlemen’s Clubs. Problems such as this need to be addressed, but they are only symptoms of what is wrong in human society. For the cure, we must be willing to go deeper, to have the courage to cut to the root of our dilemma.
The Founding Fathers of our nation found the courage to do just this, to go beyond mere circumstances, and to envision a bold new reality in these American states.
May God grant us the grace as a nation to continue to push deeper, to not settle for an easy fix to our problems, but to stay firmly on the path of freedom and responsibility.
May God grant us grace as the baptized people of Jesus Christ to be bold and brave in opening our souls to the great Physician, so that he may apply his healing power to those things deep within us which we would rather keep hidden.
And may God grant grace to Kimberly Louise Baker, and to all those being baptized around the world this day, to learn to live as a disciple of the Master, to sit at his feet, to learn from him how to live this human life, free and joyful and fruitful. Amen.
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