Going to work

And a great multitude of people... from the seacoast...
came... to be healed...

The image from the last part of today’s Gospel (Lk. 6:12-19), of a great multitude of people coming from long distances, brings to mind the incredible images we have seen in recent days, in Houston and elsewhere, as tens of thousands of people descend upon a place in search of hope, peace, and healing.

Indeed, just as many of those who came to Christ suffered diseases, so too many of these refugees are in the throes of disease or on its very edge, having been exposed to so many hidden threats in the dark waters that cover the city of New Orleans.

Likewise, in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina, we know that there are also many “that were vexed with unclean spirits,” for we have seen and heard of the terrors and monstrous crimes that have been perpetrated even inside places of refuge.

On our television screens, we see what the caregivers see: spread out all across the great expanse of the Astrodome floor and other places - a sea of troubled, hurting humanity who have come in desperate need of help.

That is also what our Lord saw before him, spread out all across that plain below the mountain - a sea of troubled, hurting humanity in desperate need of help.

And then, when he walks into the crowd, “the whole multitude sought to touch him.”

Talk about overwhelming!

Christ does not flinch. He goes to work, “for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all.”

We, of course, often flinch. We are not Christ.

But we are Christians and so we must act as he did.

We cannot let ourselves be intimidated by the desperate needs we see – not by the hundreds of thousands we see without homes and not even by the billions of people without a real knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The work before us is truly daunting - in some ways perhaps even more daunting than healing a few thousand people in a field - yet as Christians we can and should go forward in confidence.

Verily, verily, I say unto you,
He that believeth on me,
the works that I do shall he do also;
and greater works than these shall he do;
because I go unto my Father.
John 14:12

You and I need to go to work.