Is There a Doctor in the House (of God)?

Mat 9:12  Jesus heard them and answered, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do.
Mat 9:13  Go and learn what the Scriptures mean when they say, ‘Instead of offering sacrifices to me, I want you to be merciful to others.’ I didn’t come to invite good people to be my followers. I came to invite sinners.”

This is a scripture that I have seen referred to a great deal during on-line commentary, and almost without fail it refers to the same situation: A person (family/group/whatever) has visited a church and found that, for whatever reason, they were not welcomed as they would have liked. Some times the complaint is that the church wasn’t friendly. Sometimes they are in disagreement with the message content or emphasis. The word that I hear most often, however, is “judgment.” The visitors feel that the congregation members were being judgmental, either of them personally or of other people groups.

I can’t deny that it happens. Maybe it happens a lot. I don’t notice it very often at the church I attend, but I travel in a pretty small circle. There was recently a limited release movie called “To Save A Life” that touched on the subject and I thought they did a good job of it. For a church to accomplish its work, it has to be welcoming. Not condoning, not where sinful behavior is concerned, but accepting and loving of people, of their humanity and the frailty that comes with it.

At the same time, I feel more than a little pity for the congregations as well. What the people who quote the verse above often fail to acknowledge is that they have not walked into the doctor’s office. They’ve merely stepped into the waiting room. They aren’t surrounded by healthy surgeons and specialists and diagnosticians. They’re walking around an open ward, one man with a spiritual cold, another with a broken spirit. Some are so downcast they might think that they are terminal.

In matters of spiritual healing, the patients are quite literally running the hospital. Some are closer to health than others, but no one is really “well.” The treatments they learn are courtesy of a medical journal thousands of years old and a wise but sometimes hard to comprehend Teacher who, though endlessly patient, is also demanding and precise. And the course of study is just so hard that without constant help from this teacher, none of us would make any progress at all. As it is, we are so inadequate at times…

And in comes a visitor, sometimes giving us an hour, sometimes less, to make an impression that not only reflects upon us but on our Teacher for the rest of their life. And we try and try, and sometimes we do well. And sometimes they show up when we’re having a relapse of the worst kind, and it seems to spread to everyone we come across. Before we realize it, the visitor is gone, and they are worse than they were before. So are we.

Churches come in many forms. Some are intensive care units. Some are hospices. Some are barely more than a tent with a cross (“red” is optional). Given time, patience, and the right kind of leadership, the right kind of following really, some might be considered on the level of a med school. But one thing will remain constant: They will all be filled with patients, each one needing the same grace day to day that is required of anyone.

I pray that the churches will be attentive to the needs of their visitors. Without them, the most important part of our mission fails. And I pray that the visitors are patient of their hosts. You never know but that the person caring for you this Sunday morning was on life support Saturday night.

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~ by gbaker13 on February 18, 2010.