Saturday after Ash Wednesday
The Church is a like a field hospital. Great image! If this is true, and I think it is, then her members are like field medics. You and I are like EMT's working to save lives – bodies and souls – in a world filled with both physical and spiritual hazards. Imagine you're working one day in this field hospital and a guy drags himself in – broken, bleeding, barely conscious – and you move to work on him when suddenly your fellow medics start yelling at you to kick him out! He's getting blood everywhere! Look at him – he's dirty and his clothes are all torn up and he screaming and just making a mess. He's got to go! The poor guy drags himself out. He may die or maybe he'll find another more welcoming hospital nearby. You confront your fellow medics about their refusal to help the guy and discover that they think of their hospital as a pristine almost museum-like facility for perfectly healthy people. People who do not need a physician, people who are already whole in themselves. You say to them, “Healthy people don't need a hospital; the sick and dying do. I'm not here to save the healthy but to help save those you need saving.”
Now, imagine the same scene. Badly wounded guy drags himself into your hospital, and you start to work, prepping him for surgery. But you notice that your fellow medics are following you, undoing all your work. Removing the IV, throwing out his meds, unwrapping his bandages, reopening his wounds. You confront them. And they respond angrily that we must accept everyone who comes into the hospital just as they are. They are furious at you for trying to change the guy's condition. “Who are you to decide that he's injured? You are being judgmental for saying he has to be helped or fixed or cured! All are welcome here – just as they are!” They refuse the guy treatment; applaud him for his injuries, call him brave, and watch him die. Totally dumbfounded, you ask your fellow medics why we have a field hospital if we aren't going to help save lives. They respond, “We're here to celebrate everyone's life regardless of their injuries or diseases. It's not our job to help people get well. It's our job to make them feel loved.” You say, “I'm not working here to applaud disease and death. I'm here to cure the sick, repair the injured, and care for those in need.” If the Church is a field hospital, and I think it is, then it cannot be a museum for the healthy only, nor can it be a place where the sick and injured are encouraged to stay sick and injured. Jesus says, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”
No comments:
Post a Comment