6 February 2017 - order up

 

 [ Today's Readings ]

Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered,
they laid the sick in the marketplaces
and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak;
and as many as touched it were healed.
Sickness and disease are not part of God's plan. Creation is designed to be well-ordered. There is meant to be ease between the creature and his environment not disease. Yet we live in a world tainted by sin and the effects of sin. We begin to accept that the world as it is now is what it always was and every shall be. Our strategies for thriving turn from a future of hope to making the best of what we have. We lose trust in God when creation itself seems so arbitrarily set against us.

God is the creator of the world. It is not something that exists independently from his will and pleasure. Sin damages this link. It introduces chaos and disorder. But even now, without God's will, creation would simply disappear. What does this mean for us who live here? It means that we should hope for the day when all of creation is restored by God.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God (see Romans 8:20:21).

It takes a deeper faith to encounter sickness and not simply run from creation entirely. We might prefer a more purely intellectual or spiritual reality. But this reality is from God and he has plans to make it new again. It means that we can't simply ignore the sick and tell them of a hope for a distant future. We can't ignore the abuse of the planet. We recognize that these are just goods for which we should work and labor.

Then God said,
"Let there be light," and there was light.
God brings light to creation.

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss,
while a mighty wind swept over the waters.

Jesus brings a still greater light to his people. God's breath, the Holy Spirit is present in the beginning over the waters as a mighty wind. Jesus gives the Spirit to live in us. He is not separating us from creation by doing so. Instead he is making us the first members of a new creation which will one day restore all things. Let us rejoice to imagine so great a hope as this.
You send forth springs into the watercourses
that wind among the mountains.
Beside them the birds of heaven dwell;
from among the branches they send forth their song.