FOURTEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Posted on Jul 2, 2020

5 July 2020

Ephesus is one of the best preserved of the classical Roman cities

and was perhaps one of the highlights of my trip to Greece and Turkey.

It grew to be the second largest city in the Roman Empire

and had the second largest hospital in the then known world.

The most amazing thing about that hospital though,

is that in its known history, no one ever died there.

The physicians had a 100% cure rate.

How did they do it? Was this miraculous?

Did they have cures known to them that we with all of our scientific knowledge

don’t have?

Did they have access to ancient herbal medicines that we have lost?

None of those are true.

What is true is that the physicians there were highly selective about who they took on as patients.

It’s true that if you were accepted into that hospital you would live.

It’s also probably true that you weren’t very sick,

you would probably have lived anyway.

What is so astonishing about Jesus is that he apparently has no screening process.

Everyone can come to him.

You don’t have to be ritually clean–like all the lepers and even the woman who touch him.

You don’t have to have the right sort of job–tax collectors and prostitutes spent time with him.

You don’t have to be wealthy–it was the poor and hungry who found him.

You don’t even have to be religious–apparently it was the ones who found no place in religion

who came to him, not the super religious and righteous Pharisees.

“Come to me,” he says, “All you who are…..weary and find life burdensome.”

The thing that we always forget, those of us who want a neat and tidy church,

is that Jesus doesn’t just call people who are perfect, already holy and just,

but he calls people on the way there.

On that journey, we who are not perfect, who are not holy, who are not just or merciful,

on that journey, mysteriously and graciously, we become so.

The burden of the way, is that we are transformed, not because we are so talented

 or insightful, but because we have been yoked with Jesus-

who is the way, who helps us see the truth, Who becomes our life.

“Come to me,” he says today, and we find ourselves drawn to him,

not because we are perfect, But because in him we are perfected.