Beggars (Luke 5)

We look down on beggars. We figure that they are people who couldn’t get control of themselves, who couldn’t find socially acceptable ways to live. We ignore them if we can. We turn our eyes away. We drop a quarter in the bucket at Christmas, hoping that the beggar with the bell will stop ringing in our hearts.

The beggar in the middle of Luke 5, however, wasn’t an ordinary beggar. He had leprosy. He was shut off from normal human contact. He had to tell people to stay away. He had lost relationship, was losing his body, and was on his way to losing his life.

When this man was begging, he wasn’t asking for a few coins to get a beer, he was asking for his life. Literally. He had no hope for ever being normal again. And so he was begging for Jesus to heal him.

And his begging wasn’t linked to Jesus’ capacity to heal him. “If you are willing,” he said, “you can make me clean.” He knew Jesus could. He asked if Jesus would.

1. Are we begging for healing because we know our lives are ending?

2. Are we confident that Jesus has the capacity and we just are asking if he has the willingness?

3. Are we willing to be known as beggars, for our lives, if that is a way for healing to happen?

Empty (Luke 1)

Elizabeth and Zacharias were righteous, blameless… and barren.

They were comparatively older. They wanted a baby. If she had visited a fertility specialist, the response would have been, “it would take a miracle.”

It wasn’t right, somehow. E and Z knew in their hearts, “We do everything right, we do everything we think that God is wanting us to do and….nothing.” He was even part of the staff of the temple, going up to Jerusalem on a regular basis to take his turn serving God.

Did they ever wonder, “Why bother?”

Lots of people think that about church, about being moral, about being good. What good does it do me? I’ve been good for a week and nothing happened. I’ve been good all year and I still got coal in my stocking. I tried being good and look what it got me.

Elizabeth and Zacharias did, finally, have a son. And, after about thirty years, his head was cut off. But in the meantime, God was amazing. John, their son, the child that couldn’t have been born, upset the whole social structure. He paved the way for the one to follow.

How long do you wait?

Until whatever you are waiting for absolutely couldn’t happen. Without a miracle.

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