Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Songs have a way of touching us when mere words don’t suffice. Sometimes they increase our joy; sometimes they commiserate with us in sorrow. One such song for when a person feels down and out is “Fix You” by the band Coldplay. Towards the beginning of the song the listener hears, “And the tears come streaming down your face / When you lose something you can’t replace / When you love someone, but it goes to waste / Could it be worse? // Lights will guide you home / And ignite your bones / And I will try to fix you.” Nothing like a mopey song to get your Sunday going, eh?
But in all seriousness, our God did come to fix us. We hear it in all our readings. Jesus’ very name means “God saves.” The word for savior in Greek is 𝜎𝜔𝜏𝜂𝜌, which, in ancient times, could also mean healer, in addition to savior. Isaiah outlined ways that God would heal His people, and Mark shows the profound healing of a deaf and mute man. Even St. James in his epistle demonstrates how that healing goes beyond just our physical realities, and includes the healing of our prejudices that can affect how we live the Gospel.
But all of this presumes that we know we need healing and saving. And to admit that we need healing and saving includes the admission that we are ill and lost. And that can be hard to admit. It seems much easier to live with the veneer that everything is going great, that we have everything under control. We learn to live with our illness and brokenness, and think that our infirmity and disfunction are normal. We put up walls and barriers to the grace of God, because in order to let that grace and healing in, we have to admit that we are not as we should be, and that might make us hurt as we acknowledge things that our mind prefers to ignore but our heart knows all too well.
Acknowledging the salvation of God also means that we don’t treat Jesus as our preferential guru. If we treat Jesus as simply the teacher who works best for us, while others have other teachers who help them be the best they can be, we miss the point of what Jesus taught and did. Teachers or gurus teach a way of life, but they don’t save. Only saviors teach a way of life, and heal, and save. Moses cannot save; Buddha cannot save; Mohammed cannot save; Confucius cannot save. Any teacher or guru that you name might help us in some ways, but they cannot bridge the chasm that sin created. They cannot heal at the root the sickness that infects our hearts and souls. Only Christ can do that.
Admitting that we need a savior goes against what our culture wants to affirm. In these days, we affirm however you feel you are, whether or not that is good for you, whether or not it leads you to excellence. Society says I feel I love this person, so you have to accept my understanding of romantic love, even if it flies in the face of what God has revealed romantic love truly is. Society says I may be morbidly obese due to bad died and lack of exercise, but you can’t tell me to lose weight because that would be shaming my body. Society says I don’t feel comfortable in the body God gave me, so you have to refer to me in whatever way I choose, regardless of my biological sex, and you even have to provide me with procedures that either involve mutilation or hormone blocking drugs so that the way I feel can be affirmed. All of these examples, and many more less significant ones, base themselves in a reality that I pretend I can mold to my own emotions, so that I don’t have to acknowledge the deep pain of brokenness in my life. Because acknowledging that brokenness will make me feel sad or make me feel pain, and that’s the last thing I want to feel. So I ignore it and try to live in a fantasy world where I live my own truth which fits standards which don’t call me higher and to a fuller form of life.
Jesus did not come to make us feel better about our fallen selves. Jesus came to heal what was broken in us; to save what was fallen in us. Jesus did not come to help us usher in a world according to our own design, but to live in the world that He made, to start restoring us to a place even better than the Garden of Eden, where all creation lived in harmony with God and each other. Let the Light of Christ guide you home. Let the Holy Spirit ignite you with His love. God has come to fix you.
