The 6 E's.

In Matthew 11, some of the disciples of John the Baptizer come to Jesus to verify that he is indeed the promised Messiah.  Apparently his message and ministry are different enough from what John was expecting that they felt this question had to be asked.

In response Jesus simply has them look around at what he is actually doing.  They should then answer their question for themselves.  What Jesus says they will find is that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor receive good news.  These are the activities that Jesus and his group are doing and they validate his ministry as the Messiah.

Jesus is giving us here 6 marks of his ministry.  And his work is more than a health clinic.  Yes, people certainly are healed physically.  At the same time, these categories may be taken metaphorically for the kind of spiritual growth and wholeness that he brings into people’s lives.  

By extension, these 6 marks also summarize the healing work of the gatherings of his disciples, the church.  We need to be doing all 6 of these.  When they happen literally and physically, that is wonderful!  And it is at least as important that we focus on bringing these kinds of healing into people’s lives in still deeper and more comprehensive ways.

To help understand this, I propose 6 words that express how each mode of healing may be expanded to embrace the inner life and therefore an even more profound wholeness.  These are the 6 E’s:  

the blind see enlightening 

the lame walk empowering 

the lepers are cleansed embracing 

the deaf hear  educating

the dead are raised enlivening  

the poor receive good news enriching  

A church needs to be enlightening in the sense of opening people’s eyes so they can see the Truth.  Sometimes it involves facing harsh and difficult facts about ourselves, and therefore coming to see ourselves more clearly.  At the same time, it is revealing the Truth of God’s love for the world in Jesus Christ, and coming to see the world as a place of goodness, blessing, hope, and joy. 

A church needs to be empowering by enabling weak, disenfranchised, paralyzed, and “stuck” people to move.  This may be interpreted socially in terms of advocating for human rights for all, and also psychologically as getting people to change, move, develop, and grow in their own lives.  Here we could add a 7th E: emancipating: bringing the liberation and freedom from bondage, whether it be those in actual incarceration, or people suffering from psychological and other forms of slavery, like addiction.

A church needs to be embracing in making a point of including and welcoming people who are often otherwise excluded, rejected, barred, or isolated.  A church is a place of contact, intimacy, and embracing, where we care for each other and hold each other in love.  Indeed, a church reaches out to the outcast.

A church needs to be educating by telling the story of God’s love.  When heard, this story has the power to reshape what we hear.  Part of this is also about shutting out voices of hatred, bigotry, violence, exclusion, and falsehood.    

A church needs to be enlivening by drawing people up out of different kinds of lifelessness, despair, and fear.  In the name and by the power of our risen Lord the church is a source and agent of life.  Resurrection means uprising!  We witness to the wildness of God’s Spirit in the face of forces that would keep us docile and compliant as corpses.     

Finally, a church needs to be enriching by first of all allocating necessary resources to people who are in any kind of need.  The good news to the poor has specific content; it is not just words but also whatever they need for their physical needs, like food, shelter, health care, clean water, and other necessities, including money.

Here we have the Lord’s six marks of a faithful community living in the power of his Name.  I think all of these are expressed first of all in our worship; then the Light needs to shine forth from there into all the world, as we act by the power of God’s Spirit to bring change into people’s lives.

Paul+