During this Season of Lent, we have been spending these weeks with Jesus in the wilderness. We are told that Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness and while he was there, he experienced challenges to who he was and what he was sent by God to do.
If you remember, the Israelites, centuries earlier spent forty years in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. They needed that wilderness experience to help them become the people that God had called them to be. They only knew themselves as slaves under Egyptian rule, but now they had been freed and were in need of direction and purpose.
And so, it is not a coincidence that the Season of Lent is also forty days. The season of Lent is our wilderness journey where we are invited to overcome challenges that come our way.
So far, we have faced the wilderness challenge of accepting our identity. God loves us and we are his beloved children. As our weekly benediction reminds us every single week. “We are each a blessed, beloved, and beautiful child of God.”
The second wilderness challenge we faced was our trust. We focused on the Old Testament story of when God made a covenant with Abraham and Sarah promising that they would become parents of a great nation even though they were well beyond child bearing years. God also makes a covenant with us where we are invited to trust and remember that with God, all things are possible.
Last week, we focused on the wilderness challenge of our passion. There are so many things that call for our passion in our day to day living, but the greatest passion of all is when we give our full hearts and devotion to God. This is what leads us to be passionate about the things that God cares about the most, like justice, righteousness, goodness, and bringing transformation to our community and world.
Today’s wilderness challenge focuses on our healing. When we hear that word, “healing,” we usually first think about some type of physical healing we may need. But when I use that word, I am really referring to all types of healing that includes all of who we are; mind, body, and spirit. All of these dimensions of our lives are important.
In any given moment, we are in need of some type of healing. Maybe it is related to our bodies. But is can also be related to our mental health. This global pandemic has especially revealed how vulnerable we are to maintaining our mental and emotional health.
These past several months have been extremely challenging in trying to figure out new ways to work remotely, to study remotely, to worship remotely, to connect with our friends remotely, to celebrate birthdays and graduations remotely. Sometimes life takes a toll on our mental and emotional health.
When a church member calls me because of a crisis that just happened in their lives, often times they are calling because they want to know where God is in the midst of what they are facing. Whether it be a job loss, a death, a family problem, those needs tend to be spiritually related where they are looking for spiritual guidance.
Sometimes our spiritual healing challenges are related to our sins and not knowing what to do with the guilt that we are carrying in our lives. We feel broken and past regrets can weigh us down.
We face so many different types of healing challenges throughout our lives because we are a people of body, mind and spirit.
The medical profession bases their logo on today’s Old Testament reading when God healed the people in the wilderness by having Moses put a poisonous snake up on a pole. God told Moses to have the people look up at that snake on the pole so that they could be healed from their snake bites. What a strange story that we find here in the Bible.
A little context might be helpful in understanding this story. The Israelites had been murmuring against God as they were traveling through the wilderness. Murmuring is the biblical word for complaining. Murmuring doesn’t sound as bad as complaining but that’s what they were doing. They were complaining.
They don’t like the food they’ve been eating in the wilderness. They’re becoming less and less grateful as every day passes. They don’t seem to remember that they are no longer slaves in Egypt thanks to God freeing them from bondage, but they do remember that they didn’t like the last meal they had.
This story from Numbers is one of six murmuring stories. And now they have been bitten by poisonous snakes which leads them to ask God for forgiveness.“God, we didn’t’ really mean to murmer when we said that we’re getting tired of you manna bread meals everyday. But first, could you do something about these snake bites? Is there maybe an Urgent Care around here?”
And our Old Testament reading tells us that God heard their prayer of confession and told Moses to put up a pole with a serpent wrapped around it and to have the people look up at that pole for them to be healed.
Our Gospel reading from John chapter three references this story of the poisonous snakes when Jesus tells Nicodemus, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” And then we get that wonderful verse, John 3:16 that says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Nicodemus had approached Jesus at night to ask him questions and find out if he had been truly sent by God to bring salvation. And this is how Jesus responds, by referring to when he would be lifted on a cross for the sins of the world.
The cross is the Christian symbol of just how much God loves the world. God loves the world so much that God became one with us. And when Jesus was hanging on the cross on Good Friday, he was carrying all of the weight of our brokenness and sins. Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross looked like a defeat but it was actually God’s victory over sin and death. By looking to the cross, we find our healing and we can be made whole again.
I have a dear friend who passed away a few years ago. He was a spiritual mentor to me and I still think of him often. Several years ago, he had a nervous breakdown. He was struggling with a lot of unresolved emotions in his life.
He wife would later tell me, that one morning when he was getting ready for work, she found him sitting on the bathroom floor. He was so overwhelmed emotionally that he had forgotten how to shave.
One day while driving down the highway, he swerved into oncoming traffic in an attempt to take his life. Nobody was seriously injured, thank goodness but his family doctor knew that this wasn’t just a car accident.
My friend was admitted to a mental health facility and ended up being there for six months. He was away from his wife, from his family, from his friends, and from his job. He didn’t want to be there. All he wanted to do was to go back home. My friend definitely felt like he was in the wilderness.
A friend of his stopped by to see him. And he gave him something that was priceless to him. His friend gave him his personal cross neckless that he had received while attending a spiritual retreat. That retreat was where he had experienced God’s love in a very real way and it totally changed his life. He now had meaning and purpose in his life.
He placed that cross in my friend’s hand and said, “You know how much this cross means to me and how I keep it in my pocket everyday, but I’m giving it to you to until you are well enough to come home to remind you that with God’s help you are going to get through this.”
My friend was so moved by this gesture. It was that visit that became a turning point for him where he became more open to receiving the healing he needed through the help and support of the medical team who were caring for him. He kept that cross in his pocket each day to remind him that he wasn’t alone.
That wilderness experience was where he rediscovered the cross as a source of healing in his life. When he arrived home, he felt like he was a new person. He was able to begin his life again. And because of the healing he had received, he was able to share the story of that cross with others who were struggling with their emotional and mental health.
If you ever find yourself in a wilderness where you feel lost and are in need of healing, whatever kind of healing that might be, remember to look to the cross. It’s the source of where we can be made whole again.
Wilderness Challenges - Our Healing
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