Years ago I pieced these words for our worshiping community to serve as an anchor. “This is why we gather,” I reiterate every Sunday:
to be healed and made whole by Jesus and to bring that healing and wholeness into the world.
I had spent months praying and discerning and fussing with the language. I wanted it to be right and true and descriptive of any faith journey. It’s in my nature to fidget and improve just about every aspect of my life, including service orders and language and where we keep our salt and pepper. But this phrase, this mission, has remain completely unchanged. The words have gone beyond a “mission statement.” For me it encompasses all I believe and informs everything I do.
To be healed and made whole by Jesus and to bring that healing and wholeness into the world is the synthesis of my faith and life with God.
Here’s how and why –
Our healing and wholeness is our salvation, a moment in time. We are healed and made whole by Jesus when we recognize our broken relationship with God. In confessing our sin* and believing in Jesus Christ incarnate*, our souls are healed. Salvation is all about our connection to God being restored, made whole.
Our healing and wholeness is our sanctification, an ongoing formation toward becoming perfect love. It is this part of our salvation journey, our being healed and made whole by Jesus, that is the unfinished work of being saved *.
Our human experience involves continual brokenness does it not? Our bodies have broken relationships with food, eating too much or too little, breaking down from injury and illness. Our minds are fraught with anxiety and depression, over-thinking or over-achieving, self-absorption or self-loathing. Our relationships are continually tested (or shattered) because of broken trust, harsh words, or misplaced fear.
Our whole existence (mind, body, spirit) and our communion with God and others continually benefits from the healing and wholeness of Jesus, the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit.
Thus, in being healed and made whole, our lives naturally and deliberately become vessels of this same healing and wholeness to the people around us. As we encounter the spiritual transformation of a life opened to God, we find the peace and joy and love of the Spirit; we experience deep authentic community; we find boldness to partner with Jesus in his healing work in the margins of society. Believe me, friends and neighbors will notice and want to know what in the world is up with us.
So may we go into our everyday lives with God remember that most crucial word being. May our ears be continually listening for the Holy Spirit’s invitation to being healing from whatever new (or old) thing is broken or distorted in us and may we be courageous enough to share that healing and wholeness with others.
