Lent 2014
3 March 2014
Tradition has it, as does biblical scholarship, that the author of Luke's Gospel was a doctor; a physician. He probably is the one mentioned accompanying St Paul on his missionary journeys and is probably the same person who compiled the Acts of the Apostles.
It's important to know Luke's medical background. Why? Because of two things.
First - we often, in the modern world, fall into what CS Lewis called Chronological Snobbery. We think that we, with all our knowledge and understanding and scientific, cultural, sociological developments are inherently wiser... and, yes, cleverer than our ancestors. Which we aren't. The human mind was just as complex and sharp and intellectually able as it is today.
Second - Luke's understanding of the healing practices known in his day gave him to have what we would call today a holistic approach to the human person. He didn't just care about making a sick person well. He wasn't just interested in the science, the physics, the chemistry, the academic fascination of how the human body works. He cared about the person too. The whole person: body, mind, spirit, soul.
Well-being in its complete sense.
One might wish for certain aspects of our current health services and the politicians who run them to have a similar approach nowadays. But I digress.
So, when Luke talks about healing, and Jesus' ministry of healing, he would have expected his audience, his readers and hearers, to understand that he wasn't just talking about the mechanics of the human body and how it can be brought back to a fully-functioning state. Indeed, the people of the day, as we know only too well from our study of the Bible, absolutely understand that body, mind, spirit, soul (however we describe the whole of human existence and experience) were all completely dependent one upon the other.
Again, it is a bit of a pity that we don't quite see things that way nowadays. Science, wonderful as it is, because it cannot comment on every aspect of the human experience, necessarily has had to compartmentalise and specialise and reduce everything down into observable and analysable segments. Into bits that it can cope with and comprehend.
But the whole thing - body, mind, spirit, soul - is the stuff of which we are made. This is certainly what the people of the Ancient Near East believed. This is what Luke believed. This is what Jesus believed - or, I would go so far as to say, it is what Jesus knew.
Which is why healing is not so much about cure and more about the reuniting of the human person with every aspect of that person. Body and mind and spirit and soul. We may not be able to cure certain aspects of our fragile, organic humanity but we can perhaps reach a place where every part of us is reunited with every other part of us. More: that, in a world where we have been created, all of us - every part of us - is reunited with the Creator.
We are simply not 'wholly whole' until we have been reunited with The Creator who formed us out of the cosmic dust, and breathed the spark of life into us, and kindled us into existence.
Which is what Lent is about. It is about spending time; setting ourselves apart once in a while to get back in touch with the whole picture. The whole story of what it means to be human. It is about setting aside some of the things we have become dependent on to learn, understand that actually the only thing we are truly dependent on is the need for the whole of us to be wholly united with our Creator.
May your and my Lent, and the Easter which lies waiting for us beyond it like a longed-for and beloved friend, be a journey of discovery into this union with the One who made us, loves us and always cares for our absolute well-being.
With every blessing
Amen.