Healing

I find the timing of this week’s post, and an assignment I’m working on, serendipitous. This Sunday is my rotation in the teaching cycle of the Joyful Sunday School Class (EHUMC via the medium of ZOOM). The topic is, in a manner of speaking, “healing.” Dear Reader, whether you are religious or not, there is eternal truth here.

Gabriel, in the Gospel of Matthew, tells Joseph that the baby to be born of Mary will be named “Jesus.” A loose rapport with words for Messiah. It is also an approximation of, or nickname for, the Hebrew name for God. The Hebrews would not say the name of God, so they called God “Yahweh.” Yahweh may be translated “to deliver,” or “to save,” or “God saves,” Messiah also has the sense of one who saves, or heals. Hence a segway into the next Gospel account.

In the Gospel of Luke (2:10-11), the Angel tells a group of shepherds that a  “Savior, who is the Messiah,^“is born in Bethlehem. Both Greek and Hebrew languages use words for “savior” that speak to our current COVID-19 Pandemic; words like deliverer, rescuer, helper, healer. Of course there is also the Angel’s theological meaning of Savior, or healer, which the world also needed. And shining all about us, are saviors.

Salve comes from an old English sealfian “anoint (a wound) with salve.” Making another connection with salvation. One definition, given by Merriam Webster; Salvation, preservation from destruction or failure; also, deliverance from the power and effects of sin. There is more, but here we have enough grist for this milling. The focus is, the Angel of the Lord announcing the arrival of help, hope, and healing: a Savior.

Saviors tend to pop out of the woodwork in times of great need: WWI & WWII Victory Gardens, hundreds of thousands of volunteers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and lessor hurricanes; and now, healthcare workers, not to mention the food bank volunteers in communities all over. Healing happens. When you see on TV News, the faces of survivors of a disaster you readily see (and often hear) their sheer gratitude, joy, and relief for their salvation;

Mary and Joseph could never have fully seen the healing the Messiah would bring to this world. This one person rescued/delivered/helped/healed more that anyone could have dreamed. It is illustrated in One Solitary Life, (attributed to James Allen Francia), He concluded by saying; I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned–put together–have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one, solitary life.