Be Well: Body (11/24/19)

Scripture Reading: Luke 5: 17-26

One of the great mistakes Christians have made over the centuries is to have assumed that Jesus of Nazareth was principally concerned with matters of right belief or doctrine.  For two thousand years, the Church has been preoccupied with the metaphysical and supernatural, to the neglect of the physical and natural.  While Jesus was a rabbi who cared deeply about the mind and soul of a person, he was also a healer who cared at least as much about the body of a person.  For Jesus, body, mind, and spirit could not be separated.  He came to restore the whole person to oneself, to community, and to God.  

In this sermon series,  we’ll meet the Jesus whom tradition has come to call “The Great Physician.”  The “abundant life” Jesus calls us to is a wholeness of life in which our mind, heart, spirit, and body are most fully integrated and alive.  To experience abundant life is not to believe the right things, or to have certainty, or to prepare ourselves for the next life; instead, it’s to be well in this life, by the grace we find in Christ and in community.