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First Mennonite Church
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“All that I am or hope to be I owe to my mother. I remember my mother’s prayers, and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.”
Abraham Lincoln
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Sunday Worship: 9:00 AM (Sunday School following) You are welcome to join us on Sunday, or stop in for a chat! We want to meet you! |
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On the Journey...
Monthly Insight From Pastor Philip Yoder September 2023 From Brokenness To Healing
In our church, we focus a lot on Jesus, our wonderful Savior and Lord, hoping to better understand Jesus, looking at the many different roles Jesus fills, and learning to follow Him as modern-day disciples. Hopefully, we are gaining a clearer vision of the greatness of Jesus and His role in redeeming the world. A major part of Jesus’ ministry while He was on the earth was healing. We have been focusing on healing in our summer worship series, noticing that God has begun to move the world from brokenness to healing. We, along with all creation, wish the move would go a little faster, but we trust God’s wisdom and timing. Jesus’ healing ministry, while He was on the earth, was really only the surface of God’s work to heal the nations and fix what is wrong in creation. Physical healing was a sign of Jesus’ desire and power to heal, and a picture of Jesus role as healer, as he brought hope and joy to multitudes who came to Him and were healed. There is a little nursery rhyme that we all learned as children about brokenness. It describes brokenness in a way that few things do, but leaves us with little hope of ever finding healing. It is the little rhyme of “Humpty Dumpty” that we find in Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; All the king's horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again.” This little rhyme is generally depicted as an egg that gets broken, the shell is shattered, and the yoke is broken, and the egg is now scrambled. Whether that was the author’s intention in the little rhyme has been debated, but that is how it is generally understood by modern readers. It is a depiction not only of Humpty Dumpty but of our world, which seems hopelessly broken. There are many healing agencies in our world that do offer some forms of healing (medical, psychiatry, etc.), and we are very grateful for these, even if the healing is partial and temporary. But they do not heal the root cause of the brokenness that plagues our world. None can heal the source of our brokenness. Penicillin may treat an infection, but not why our bodies get infections. Chemotherapy is used to treat cancer, but not why we are so susceptible to cancers. Our world is like a yoke that is broken, and no one can unscramble it. Is there any hope for the profound brokenness of our world? Jesus believes there is, and He claims to be the healer. But sadly, many will reject the healing Jesus offers. But Jesus offers the only true remedy for the deep brokenness of the world. The fascinating thing about the healing Jesus is bringing, is that the images we have of the healed earth is not just of a restored earth to its original state, but of a recreated world into some new form of creation, new resurrected bodies that are indestructible, with powers we can’t yet imagine, no death, no pain, no chaos, living in close proximity with God, new dimensions of life. And the thing is that God is forming this new creation out of the scraps, the rubble, the ashes of the original creation. It turns out that there really is hope for the Humpty Dumptys of this world! But it comes not from all the king’s horses (the powers of this world) and all the king’s men (human work and wisdom), but from the healing powers of the King Himself! Written by Philip Yoder |