Tuesday, June 30, 2020         (today’s lectionary)
Rebuking the winds, raising the dead
Being a newbie pastor has its good days. My friend’s pastor intern buddy went to visit a family at the hospital. Their young daughter had fallen into the pool, and they found her thirty minutes later. She was drowned, she was dead.
He comforted them awhile and prayed for them. After a couple of hours he was about to leave when he was stopped in his tracks. A voice in his head rebuked him. “I thought you were coming to pray for HER.” He had prayed for everyone except their daughter, who was lying on the gurney in the emergency room next door to the lobby.
The young man asked if he could see the girl.
“Are you family?” the nurse said.
“No. I’m her pastor.”
“Are you Catholic?” Catholic priests are allowed to perform what used to be called the Last Rites over people in the emergency room.
“If I’m Catholic, can I see her?”
“Yes.”
“OK. I’m catholic.”
The nurse took him back into the room with the young girl, told him not to touch her and left him alone.
“I can’t touch her?” he asked God. “What do I do now?”
“Pray a blessing over her. Put your hands above her body and bless her.” So that’s what he did. He felt a sudden rush of heat between his hands and her body, and he heard the nurse shriek from outside the door. The monitor showed a massive increase in her body temperature.
The nurse rushed in with two doctors. Not just the machines, but also the girl herself was coming back to life. The young untrained pastor listened to their amazed conversation.
“Brain damage?”
“Apparently not. The monitors say everything is going back to normal.”
The nurse shooed the young pastor out. The girl’s family thanked him for coming, he thanked them for letting him come. Before he left he said to them, “You might want to hang around just a little longer. I think the doctor might have something to tell you.”
I know how I’d feel, driving back to the church in a car full of light. This was one low-key guy, but can you imagine what was going on inside him?
He parked and walked into the church. His senior pastor saw him and said, “So, what have you been doing?”
His intern told him he’d been to the hospital. “Good. Well, at least you’re doing something.”
“Yep, just visiting them. Doing the work. Praying for them, praying for their daughter … raising the dead.”
As my friend told me, “That is my favorite raising-the-dead story.” And it happened in California, not a third world nation where people still believe in get-down miracles like this.
Education and disappointment do their damage, and it isn’t long before most of us stop believing that God will just show up, be on time, and do his work. It was probably true of the senior pastor, true of the disciples, and certainly mostly true of me. Young people (like I was once) rescue many from our unexpectant expectations of God. I’m not accustomed to raising-the-dead-type miracles, even if I say I believe in them.
The story of Jesus in the storm, rebuking the winds, is about as low-key as this one. The disciples, panicked and certain they were about to be drowned, had no emotional space to pray and believe. Instead they panicked and woke up Jesus.
The boat was being swamped by waves, and he was asleep.
“Why aren’t you afraid like we are?”
“Why are you terrified, o ye of little faith?”
Jesus got up and rebuked the winds and sea.
And there was great calm.
I didn’t know I had little faith, not until I encountered someone with greater faith than me … maybe a Roman centurion, or a young pastor boy in California, unencumbered with disappointment, judgment, or resignation.
Life sucks, and then you die?
No. Not true. John Wimber said to pray a hundred times for sick people before you dare say that healing is not part of God’s life in us and with us.
Pray a thousand times for people who have died before you dare say God no longer raises people form the dead.
John Ortberg’s best book title? If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat.
But if you’re ever going to get out of the boat, you’ve got to get in first!
Who ever said there was no risk in being a Christ-follower? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.
C. S. Lewis said it well. “God is never safe. But he’s always good.”
(Amos 3, Psalm 5, Psalm 130, Matthew 8)
#
