A little country schoolhouse was heated by an old-fashioned, pot-bellied coal stove. Two brothers had the job of coming to school early each day to start the fire and warm the room before the teacher and their classmates arrived. One morning gasoline had been mistakenly delivered instead of kerosene for starting stove. There was a horrible explosion and the schoolhouse was engulfed in flames. One brother died and the other had major burns over the lower half of his body.
From his bed the dreadfully burned, semi-conscious little boy faintly heard the doctor talking to his mother. The doctor told his mother that her son would surely die - which was for the best, really - for the terrible fire had devastated the lower half of his body. But the courageous boy didn't want to die. He made up his mind that he would survive and somehow, to the amazement of the physician, he did. He accepted the pain it took to live. (Told in a sermon by Nancy Pfaltzgraf, “Fill My Cup, Lord, with Courage”, Preached on March 21, 2009 and posted at (www.plainfielducc.org).
HAVING COURAGE IN OUR PAIN
Life involves accepting pain into our lives. While pain is a part of hurt, it is also a part of healing. In order to heal through life’s hurts we have to develop the courage accept, face and live with different kinds of pain. Without courage, it’s too painful to be honest about your weaknesses. Without courage, you’ll have difficulty having hope against all the hopelessness in the world. Without courage, you’ll take very few steps of faith into new opportunities and challenges. Without courage, your life will go the way of least resistance, like a meandering river slowly going down-hill one turn at a time so that you stagnate or get stuck in the familiar and the comfortable---the very comfort seeking that could be making you sick.
Do you remember that antiseptic called mercurochrome mothers once widely used to heal a scrape or cut? When it was applied, it burned like fire, but your mother assured you it would help the wound to begin to heal. It was very for hard my mother to convince me to stay calm and to accept the fact that a more pain would start to make things better. Interestingly that stuff did have mercury in it maybe I was right, it was killing me. But the truth is still valid, isn’t it? Sometimes the very medicine we need most increases the hurt before healing begins.
Another one of those valuable childhood lessons came in the doctor’s office, when I learned how to take shots. Some people still have trouble with needles, but thanks to my mother, I overcame all my fear. One day when my distant cousin Rosa, who was also a nurse, was administering the shot to me, I rebelled and kicked her real good. My mother came over and faced me. She let me know right then and there that if I ever did that again I would have a lot worse pain to worry about. It was a very different fear which gave me the courage to get over my fear of shots.
Strangely enough, that is how most courage is developed in the human spirit. We don’t usually get over our fears by getting rid of them, but we overcome the destructive fears by replacing them with more constructive ones. We promote health and healing in our lives by taking more controlled forms of pain upon ourselves now in hope of preventing future, uncontrollable pain later. Part of growing up and gaining the courage for living means we too have to learn to “take our medicine”---choosing to accept the positive kinds of pain which promote growth, self-discipline, healing and character. In our Bible passage today, we have two biblical examples of people who were facing various kinds of hurts and pains in their lives. In order to receive the help and healing they needed from Jesus, they had to go through even more pain, at least at first they did.
Consider first, this man Jarius, who had a sick daughter. In a kind of risky, daring way, this leader of the synagogue, came to Jesus, asking him to come and heal his daughter. Jarius risked everything; his pride, his job, his reputation, and maybe even his life by coming to this unapproved intenerate “healer”. To come to Jesus and beg was inappropriate and unacceptable. Jarius was only inviting more problems and more pain by dong this. But if you or I had a child who was sick, wouldn’t we also have done most anything to help our child? You fear of your child dying enables you to overcome all your other fears. You too would invite the pain of rejection out of the fear of an even greater pain—watching your child die. In fact, to become a parent in and of itself is to invite more “pain” into our lives than we currently have, isn’t it? Why do parents invite the pain of child rearing into their lives? We don’t just risk the pain to have the blessing---that’s part of it, but we also risk the pain of parenthood, like we risk the pain of marriage and all kinds of other pains and struggles, because of our even greater fear of the pain of loneliness, emptiness, or having to live or lives without purpose or meaning. Without inviting some pain into our lives, or at least the risk of it, there is no real hope of the deeper blessing, or the healing or the hope.
But if Jarius displayed audacious courage to help his daughter, his daring pales in comparison to this unnamed woman. Do you see who she was? She was a woman whose disease of bleeding had made her ritually unclean, contaminating anything and anyone she touched. This made her an outcast from society and temple. If she had been married when the bleeding began, she was no doubt divorced by now -what husband would continue in a marriage where he could not see or talk to his wife for twelve years?
But when she heard that Jesus -the healer- was passing through her town, she dared to step beyond her fear, beyond the possibility of condemnation by the religious authorities, and even beyond the ridiculous sounding notion that simply touching his garment would heal her. This woman mustered the courage to risk and to take more pain upon herself and to approach Jesus---and with one simple touch her hemorrhaging stopped.
She thought she was home free until Jesus and everybody around him suddenly stopped, and he asked: "Who touched my robe?" What happened next required even more courage. If she admitted what she had done, would he condemn her? curse her? reverse the healing? What does she do? In spite of her very real fears she stepped forward. With great courage, we read in verse 33, that she comes to him in “fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him the whole truth.” (Mark 5: 33). And notice this most of all. It is only when she had the courage to telling Jesus the whole story—the whole truth, that she is cured of her physical ailment.
THE GREAT COURAGE WE ALL NEED.
You can’t fully heal life’s hurts by running away from them, nor only by waiting to see what happens next, or by placing blame. To release the powers of healing, sometimes you have to have to walk straight into the challenge and the hurt. While it is very important to realize that all pain does not promote healing---as some pain is destructive---it is vital for that no full healing ever comes without facing and dealing with pain. In the movie, Shawshank Redemption, a work of fiction, but a movie with all kinds of spiritual truth, there is a great line which says, “courage is not the absence of fear, but the presence of fear and the will to go on.” In other words, “courage” is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation and not to run from it. Wholeness and healing comes by walking straight into and through the pain that is before us, not around it.
There is a famous prayer, most of us know, which speaks specifically of our need for courage as a healing virtue. It was written in 1934 by the American Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr which goes something like this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.” How do we gain the courage to “change the things we can change?”
Courage comes by inviting the pain of “truth” into our lives. This simple, obvious action of seeing and accepting truth can be astoundingly difficult for any of us at certain times. Just think about all the destructive habits on Wall Street and what they have done to our country. You would hope that Wall Street would now wake up and change their ways----but we keep reading how the large bonuses are still being paid out---no matter what has happened. Tragically, this week we’ve all learned about this most gifted, talented Plastic Surgeon in Chapel Hill, who, while intoxicated, recklessly drove his car 85 miles and hour and killed a young, beautiful promising ballerina. Even with all the resources of the world at his disposal----this “healer” could not heal himself, and lacked courage to face his own demons, to confront his addictions, and to realize his destructive behavior. He was unable to face his pain, until, of course, he had to, and for this lady and maybe for his own sanity, it is too late.
We humans are known to be creatures of habit and seekers of comfort, rather than risk takers who are willing and ready to confront the pain and hurts of our lives so healing can take place. A bit of wisdom, which most all counselors use as a guiding point and reality check says, “A person will remain the same until the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of change.” The courage to change and to heal means accepting the pain of change. And when I think of the healing virtue of courage, I don’t think as much about facing our fears of dying, facing a cancer, or facing some terrible event or problem, but my mind comes back to the kind of “courage” this prayer expresses, which is the same kind of courage this woman had in our Bible text. Namely, I think of how much courage it took for her to “fall down” before Jesus and to tell him “the whole truth” (5:33) when he turned and confronted her. This is where the healing power began.
Here is where all true courage begins---not by mastering all the many fears out there in the world, but by having the courage to master ourselves, our own feelings, our own hurts, and our own behavior. Remember Cain’s problem in Genesis 4. It was easy for him to see what was wrong with Abel his brother or what was wrong with God’s choice of Abel’s sacrifice, but Cain ended up killing his brother, not because of what his brother did or didn’t do, but because Cain did not have the courage to face the truth about himself---to face the “sin” or “evil” that was “lurking” in his own heart. He had blame for Abel and he had blame for with God, but he didn’t have the courage to look into his own heart. What was he afraid of? What can turn even the best, brightest and strongest among us into mere wimps and fools?
There is a great story of how Arkansas State troopers were once asked to submit the greatest excuse they’d ever heard for someone trying to get out of a speeding ticket. The winning entry was submitted by a trooper who clocked a semi-tractor truck speeding down the interstate. The trooper pulled up behind the truck and turned his lights on, but the truck kept going. The trooper got right up on his bumper, but the truck kept going. The trooper turned on his siren, but the truck went even faster. Finally, the truck ran out of gas and rolled to the side of the highway.
The trooper got out and walked up to the trucker’s window. The driver rolled down his window, and the trooper asked, “Did you see my lights?”
“Yes sir, I did,” the trucker responded.
“Did you see me following you right on your bumper?”
The trucker responded, “Yes sir, I did.”
“Did you hear my siren all those miles?”
“Yes sir, I did,” the trucker answered.
Finally, the trooper said, “Then why didn’t you pull over?”
“Well, to be honest, about two years ago my wife ran off with an Arkansas state trooper. I was afraid you were trying to bring her back.” (From John Baker’s “Life Healing Choices”, Howard Books, 2007, p. 101-102).
When we run from things which are painful and when we don’t courageously stop to face and deal with them, healing often escapes and eludes us. How many of us have not been shocked by hearing of a person who once committed a crime, maybe even many years ago, finally coming to turn themselves in to authorities. Why did they do this, when they did get away with it? Because the pain of remaining the same (not turning themselves in) became greater than the pain of change (turning themselves in and facing jail time). Avoiding the truth, especially avoiding the truth within us and about ourselves, can make us even sicker than accepting the truth about ourselves---even the truth is bad and hard to face.
In college I heard about young Sigmund Freud, the sometimes controversial Father of Psychoanalysis, who once interviewed a woman who was physically sick, even paralyzed and unable to walk, but he could find nothing really physically wrong with her. After many sessions of talking to the woman, Freud finally uncovered in their conversations, that when this woman was a child, she became angry at her mother and wished her dead. Coincidently, it wasn’t long after this outburst of unrestrained anger that her mother died unexpectedly.
Since this trauma of her childhood, the woman felt very responsible for what happened. but instead of facing the pain of her feelings and talking about them with others, she repressed them, hid them, attempted to forget about them, and she constantly covered them up, pretending they were not there. But as Freud came to discover, the feelings were not pushed out of her mind, but the pain was hiding there, deep in her unconscious mind---tucked away as a deadly, destructive force, not just in her mind, but to her whole person. As Freud continued to talk with the woman, he helped her confront all the painful, inner feelings she had and the very the words she spoke in anger. As she confronted all the hurt and pain, along with the unresolved pain of losing her mother, he watched as the woman’s paralysis started to disappear. This is when Freud is said to have discovered the reality of the unconscious mind and he reaffirmed the importance of healing from the inside out.
Sigmund Freud’s discovery of both the scientific and psychological need of a soul to come clean reminds me of Jesus words when he said: ”Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops. "I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority1 to cast into hell.2 Yes, I tell you, fear him! Luke 12:2-5. Jesus encourages us not to keep “secrets” or dark words in our hearts because one day they will become known but most of all because they are already known to God. And besides this, did you see what else Jesus is saying? The way to face the fear of telling the truth is to accept, know and even come to have a healthy fear and reverence of the one who knows all the secrets of our hearts.
In his widely read book, “There’s a lot more to health than not being sick,” Pastor Bruce Larson told an interesting story about a halfway house in Western Ontario, Canada. This halfway house was marvelous “healing” place to send emotionally disturbed individuals who did not need institutional care, but who simply had lost the power to cope in their own familiar situation. The people who went to this ‘halfway’ house, simply needed to step outside of their own surroundings, gain new perspective, and then find new spiritual and emotional resources to gain help and healing.
What caught Dr. Larson attention most about the facility was when he visited the living room of the old farmhouse. It was here, in this room where people often talked in small groups before a roaring fireplace on cold Canadian winter nights. Right up over the fire placed was a framed quote, which he remembered best, and it said, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be well?” This summed up the philosophy of the whole place. If a person wanted to get well in this place, there was a choice to make. To become well, they had to give up the privilege of being right. They had to be willing to accept their pain of failures, of their flaws and even their mistakes and sins. If they kept on having to justify themselves before others, soon they could develop a mental illness ( “There is More to Health than not being Sick, by Bruce Larson, Word Press, 1981, pp 29-37).
Do you realize the most healing thing we can ever do for ourselves is to say to someone and to ourselves, “I was wrong.” These are such simple words, but how hard they can be to say? And how much we can resist or avoid saying them, because we become defensive or afraid to admit our problem? I know about this first hand. Ask my wife. I’ve still have to deal with my own defensiveness when I make a mistake. More and more I’ve tried to get a handle on what goes on when I do this and I’ve come to realize that the “hook” for me is not so much what I did wrong, but I’m even more afraid of not doing something right. Healing and understanding never comes when you are defending or rationalizing. It only comes when you have the courage to face the truth---even when it’s hard.
The classic case in the Bible for defensive, self-justification was Moses’ brother Aaron. Do you remember him? When he and Moses were in the wilderness, Moses left for a time to climb the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments from God, leaving Aaron in charge. When Moses finally came down from this incredible encounter with God, he found the people of Israel, his people, worshipping around a golden calf and an idol to Baal. In a rage, Moses confronted Aaron, “What have you done!” “How dare you lead God’s people to worship Baal when God has brought them out of bondage for a new land? Now listen to Aaron’s reply from Exodus 32: 22-24. I paraphrasing a bit: Aaron said to Moses, “Moses, you know these people … they are prone to do stuff like this…. They put all kinds of pressure on me…. And you were gone such a long, long time…. Where were you anyway?.... We were just having a party…. everybody started taking off their jewelry and throwing it around….some of it fell into the fire and out popped this calf! Folks. I’m know I’m paraphazing but I’m not exaggerating. This is exactly the stupid explanation Aaron gave. But it is no more stupid that some of the explanations some of us give when we are afraid to face the truth. Sometimes any of us can be called Aaron.
THE COURAGE TO RECEIVE GOD’S GRACE
One of the greatest moves toward healing is to face ourselves, even the dark side the self, and to have the courage to face the “pain of truth” in some very healthy, constructive ways. Inner healing, flows most freely in us when we stop blaming our problems on others and start assuming both responsibility and seizing new opportunities to grow within. But how can we do this, when facing our true self can be the sharpest pain of all---even more painful than letting things stay the same? Where does the “courage to change the things we can” come from?
Several years ago, a Hospital in Oakland, California was working with patients suffering from different kinds of fear and anxiety. Once, when the hospital was over-flooded with patients, a large number of people had to be put on waiting lists, while only a small number were able to get treatment quickly. Taking advantage of the situation, psychologist and psychiatrists decided to compare what happened to people who were able to get into counseling and medication quickly, with those who had to wait. Interestingly, waiting proved to be as healing as quickly getting into care. What they discovered is that when people had to wait, they had no other choice but to face their fears head-on. Having to wait, to face and even to accept their problems, realizing they could not run or get a quick fix-solutions, was as great a force for healing any other kind of medicine or treatment (See “To Thine Own Self Be True” by Lewis M. Andrews, Anchor Books, 1987, p 133ff.). Doesn’t this echo what the Bible means, when it says, “Those that wait upon the Lord, will renew their strength?”
I wouldn’t advise simply waiting when you need to go to the doctor, but I do believe that there is a unique healing power in having to face even hardest truths, while we are working toward the cure. Facing and accepting the truth about ourselves could be one of the best medicines in everybody’s medicine cabinet. As psychiatrist Karl Jung once said to a group of ministers in 1932, “Acceptance of one’s inner self is the essence of the moral problem….and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life.” (Ibid, p. 136). As a side note, if you wonder why there is so much incivility growing around us, with sports people, musicians, politicians---the only rational reason is too much time is spent doing the easy work of considering what’s wrong with others, and too little time is spent doing the hard work of looking into ourselves. This inability or unwillingness to face inward, to accept and confront our own demons, breeds the need to demonize others.
But again, if facing the truth has healing power, how do we face it when it is still so very painful? How do we muster the courage to take inventory of ourselves and be willing to admit our wrongs, and also to grow through them---how do we get such courage? Going back to this image of this unknown woman risking herself and having to tell him everything, what gave her the courage to approach him? Was it just her utter desperation, or was there something else about Jesus that made him so approachable?
One of my favorite healing stories of all time came to me from the late Randy Kilby, a classmate of mine at Gardner-Webb and once president of Fruitland Bible Institute, before he died too early. While preaching a revival service at Gardner-Webb, Randy told the story about a brother and sister who were spending the summer at grandma’s farm.
On one seemingly carefree day, Tommy was enjoying skipping rocks on the farm pond. Like many mischievous little boys, he let his rocks get closer and closer to some of grandma’s prize winning ducks. Without directly intending to, but knowing he was too close, he hit one of grandma’s ducks in the head and it tipped over dead as a ….well a dead duck. You get the picture. Tommy did not mean to do it, but he knew grandma would be upset, so he did not want to face the pain of having to tell her. He thought he would get by with it all, until his sister called him over to the sink and asked him to wash dishes all by himself.
“I will not…” Tommy said. “We are supposed to share the chores around here.”
But sister Susie was adamant and she told him. “Tommy, I saw what happened to Grandma’s duck, and if you don’t do these dishes, I’ll tell her, for sure.”
That night it was the dishes. Next it was the laundry and other chores that he had to do alone. For most of the summer, Susie had Tommy in her power to do get out of whatever she didn’t want to do.
As the summer came to the last week, Tommy was tried of working under the slavery of his sister, and he decided that before the week was up, and the summer was finished, he’d tell grandma. He went to his grandma, confessing and explaining everything.
To his surprise, Grandma did not get mad. Instead, she said, “Tommy, I’ve glad you’ve finally come to tell me. I was out hanging laundry and I saw you kill my duck. I’ve also watched you live under the slavery to your sister all summer long. All you would have needed to do was to come to me and tell me, and you could have enjoyed your whole summer. Instead, you’ve lived under your sister’s power all because you did not come to me with what you did.
This story is very simple, but it illustrates so well our great human need and our propensity to avoid the truth up until the last moment---even at outrageous personal costs----until we realize what the costs really are and get tired of paying them. What Tommy did not have until the very last, was the courage he needed from the beginning. But he was not able to get the courage to face his grandma until the pain of missing his whole summer became greater than the pain of having to tell his grandma.
The only thing that gives us the courage to bear the pain, especially the pain of truth is, grace---healing grace. Don’t you think this is what both the woman with the issue of blood and the synagogue leader Jarius saw was different about Jesus? They risked coming to Jesus because, somehow, either in the back of their mind or foremost, they knew Jesus was a person, who was “full of grace and truth.” As John’s gospel says: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth….. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses, (but) grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” John 1:14-17.
Here it is! Here is the reason we can gain the courage to face ourselves---even our sinful selves. Here is the reason we can admit weaknesses, even come to boast in them and can take risks of faith. If we fail to face our fears, we will miss receiving what John calls, “grace upon grace.” When the pain of missing God’s grace becomes greater than the pain of staying like we are, then we will not only have the courage to change, we will be changed.
Yes, it takes courage for one who’s struggling and hurting to stop and think about why the pain continues. It takes courage for one who is addicted to alcohol, to food, to sex, or gambling or any other addictions to accept what they can’t change and change what they can. It takes all kinds of courage to change health destroying habits into life-giving actions; to face the wounds of our past and trust in the healing power of God’s love in the here and now. Think about all the tons of courage it takes be fully who you are created to be in the face of all the voices that say you must look or act or be something other than who you are. Think about the courage it takes to move beyond failure, defeat or grief. Think about the courage it takes to face the future with confidence that God is with you no matter what. It takes great courage to face the many pains and hurts of life and to receive God’s healing promise. But the journey always begins with one important step----drawing near the God who has come near to us by grace. Only when you know grace, this “grace upon grace,” will you or I gain any courage and confidence to face ourselves---warts, weaknesses and all---open to the change that heals.
Speaking of grace, let me close with the conclusion of the story about the badly burned boy. When the mortal danger was past, the little boy heard the doctor tell his mother that since the fire had destroyed so much flesh in the lower part of his body, it would almost be better if he had died, since he was doomed to be a lifetime with no use at all of his lower limbs. Once more the courageous boy made up his mind. He would walk. But unfortunately from the waist down, he had no motor ability. His thin legs just dangled there, all but lifeless.
Ultimately he was released from the hospital. Every day his mother would massage his little legs, but there was no feeling, no control, nothing. Yet his determination that he would walk was as strong as ever. When he wasn't in bed, he was confined to a wheelchair. One sunny day his mother wheeled him out into the yard to get some fresh air. This day, instead of sitting there, he courageously threw himself from the chair. He pulled himself across the grass, dragging his legs behind him. He worked his way to the white picket fence bordering their lot. With great effort, he raised himself up on the fence. Then, stake by stake, he began dragging himself along the fence, resolved that he would walk. He started to do this every day until he wore a smooth path all around the yard beside the fence. There was nothing he wanted more than to develop life in those legs.
Ultimately through his daily massages, his courage and his resolute determination, he did develop the ability to stand up, then to walk haltingly, then to walk by himself - and then - to run. Later in college he made the track team. Still later in Madison Square Garden this courageous young man who was not expected to survive, who would surely never walk, who could never hope to run - this courageous, determined young man, Glenn V. Cunningham, ran the world's fastest mile!
It is perhaps not surprising to hear that his favorite passage in the Bible, the one that carried him through was Isaiah 40:31: "But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." Courage that leads to miracles, to healing, and to life rests upon the healing grace that God gives. Because God gives healing grace, you not only can find the serenity to “accept the things you can’t change and the courage to change the things you can”, you will also have wisdom to know the difference and best of all---you will gain the grace to be different. This is what grace does. It does not always change the way the world is, but grace will always change us. Amen.
© 2009 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.
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