Scripture Readings, January 10, 2025

1 John 5:5-13, Psalm 147:12-15, 19-20, Luke 5:12-16

If the letter from John is written for people who need to be reassured of what faith in Jesus means, the man in today’s gospel doesn’t need to read it. This man falls at Jesus feet and literally pleads for his help. There is no doubt about Jesus and what he can do. The situation is absolutely straight forward, he sees Jesus and pleads to be healed. He knows it’s just a question of whether Jesus wants to. “If you wish” he says.

Isn’t it interesting that roughly 70 years later John’s community of believers is getting confused about who Jesus is and what that means for them? For the man with the skin disease it was simple. Jesus healed people, would he heal me? I suspect there wasn’t any theology involved at all. The man wasn’t concerned about whether Jesus was the Son of God or not. He needed help, this was his chance.

Jesus wasn’t trying to teach this man anything either. There’s no instruction about how to live his life he just sends him to the Temple to fulfill the Jewish requirements for cleansing. If anything, Jesus is trying to keep it quiet. But that isn’t working because people are passing along the information, the “good news.”

It seems to me there’s a lesson here about keeping things simple and honest. About sticking with what you know. Jesus healed the man because that’s what he was about. The Psalm says God does that kind of thing all the time. For Jerusalem, “he strengthens the bars of your gates.” God has: “blessed your children,” “granted peace,” and filled people with the “best of wheat.” However, we are far more removed from the person of Jesus of Nazareth than John’s community and we often aren’t sure anymore what he can do. We wonder who he is. The challenges to understanding what meaning there is to human life come from way beyond variations in Christian faith to non-Christians, non-theists, humanists and even those who have no interest at all. So I think it’s important to know and hold on to what we believe. We need to understand what gives meaning to our lives. There are plenty of alternatives within easy reach.

For the man in the village, “when he saw Jesus,” he knew what he wanted. Maybe the problem is we don’t see Jesus anymore? Have we made Christian principles so abstract they are no longer connected to their source? Has it become hard to recognize the gifts God gives? For John’s community, John could say, “Whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony within himself.” Have we lost touch with God’s testimony: that sense within us that God is with us, that God makes the world a good place? Maybe that’s why we don’t see Jesus. Belief in God is a different world view. It’s not a magical world view. It does say we are not alone. There is more to life than what is on the surface and the evidence is in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ life tells us what God’s life is about. He is willing to heal us, but first we have to see him, to recognize that reality.

I believe we have the possibility of overcoming the challenges in our world because of our belief in Jesus and the life he lived. That belief forms the basis, a foundation if you will, for a solid happy life. It sets up a course of action we can follow. If we use the translation from the New Jerusalem Bible instead of the New American, we may have the best way to say it: “Who can overcome the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”