Living in the Spirit
August 20, 2016

Scripture Reading: Luke 13:10-17

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. –Luke 13:10-13

Cause and effect impact our lives far more than we might image and sometimes our assumptions are wrong. In the first century, illness was associated with spirit or demon possession. Today illnesses are named related to scientific discoveries of cause and effect removing the idea of external forces overtaking us. We still may not know what causes gene mutations or whether our patterns of behavior program our minds to dysfunction. Our treatments remain focused primarily on fixing effects.

Jesus practiced preventive intervention. Yes, he did remove barriers to wholeness, but he taught how to live once freed from such constraints. He saw the effects, but he focused on the causes. He understood the connection between justice and wholeness.

Is poverty the result of being fundamentally unable to support oneself or is the cause of poverty more related to failures in our education and economic systems? Is poverty the result of a vicious circle of both making cause and effect, effect and cause?

The USA practices cyclical poverty. Our over indulgences of the 1920’s combined with natural disasters to bring about the Great Depression. The economic recovery following World War II left too many people behind, and we found ourselves picking up the pieces from riots in the mid-1960’s. We find ourselves once again in a lopsided society of a few haves, and many have-nots. I am constantly struck by how this pattern emulates so well the history of the people of Israel in their relationship with God. They too had prophets sounding warnings about the causes to no avail as Jesus did in the first century.

Jesus’ way still works today, and we can still impact effects of lost wholeness by practicing God’s justice.

Prayer: Lord, make us whole and make us just. Make us just and make us whole. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized 
Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council 
of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights 
reserved.