August 28, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 13:11-12

And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”

Prayer

More than once, Jesus, I have wanted to say these words, more than a thousand times. So many that I lost track decades ago. I remember children in bereft countries and circumstances wasting, wasting away, in slow grinding want and dusty deprivation. I remember bedsides at which I have kept vigil, especially the stained white tissues twisted taut in the hands of the beloved who also waited alongside.

We needed to hear those words. We needed to speak them to each other. We needed to know that there was someone who could say them to us when we could not. Because we could not.

I lack whatever gift of faith and holiness, whatever empowerment from on high is required to fill the words with the power that never returns empty. So I refused to risk arrogance and mockery and remained as silent as the mute witnesses of suffering whom I have accompanied.

Or did I? For, I said your words of promised presence and freedom again and again. So often, in fact, that together we came to believe what we could not yet see.

Older now, I grow more bold or foolish. Words of forgiveness and absolution come quick to the tongue. Words born of the Spirit of freedom race to release captives, to assure and to bless, to love and reveal your divine nearness to souls who struggle to see and know you here. I know my words are more powerful than I’d imagined. I know words are so powerful that their only proper use is to bless and set free.

So it seems, Jesus, that you have set me free from my ailment. May I do the same.

Pr. David L. Miller