DIFFICULT  SURGERY

VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE  REALITIES

 

The title of my thoughts for this 22 Tuesday in Ordinary Time  is: "Difficult Surgery - Visible and Invisible Realities."

 

Today’s readings are excellent because they both talk about the Spirit – the Spiritual – the deep inner invisible stuff inside all of us.

 

A surgeon, a MRI, a X-ray technician, or a sonar person in a hospital can see what’s inside a person. So too we can see what’s in a person’s wallet.

 

But, it’s the inner stuff – the invisible stuff – that’s tricky. We don’t see inner realities  till we spend some good time with each other.

 

St. Paul in today’s wonderful text from 1^st Corinthians – chapter 2 – talks about the Spirit of God. Listen to this sentence: “And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.”

 

The Holy Spirit is the great teacher in the classroom called Life.

 

St. Paul says the natural man does not accept what pertains to the Spirit of God. Paul says that he sees that as foolishness, He cannot understand it.

 

In today’s gospel a man walks into the synagogue in Capernaum.

 

At first he’s part of the crowd. People can see him by his height, shape, clothes. They see the outer man.

 

Then the inner man starts screaming.  Luke tells us he has unclean demons inside of him.

 

Listen to this statement in today’s gospel from Luke: this man cries out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us. I know who you are – the Holy One of God.”

 

The Holy One of God – Jesus of Nazareth – sees what’s inside of us,  It’s the invisible stuff – our invisible realities. He can come to the inside of us and surgeon out the demons we have and enhance our gifts.

 

He has come to restore us – not destroy us.

 

What we need to do is to come into this synagogue – this upper room -  and let Jesus see and hear our spirits and our demons: a spirit of gratitude or the demon of ingratitude, a spirit of healthy anger or the demon of nasty anger about our everyday things we can’t control, the spirit of forgiveness and kindness or the demon of revenge and holding onto.

 

We need to let Jesus of Nazareth help us with envy, jealousy, pride, pain in the buttness, horses rear view mirrorness, etc., etc., etc.

 

In the last few years, I’ve heard politicians and others talk about giving our better angels the dance floor.

 

Last night I looked up who used and liked and proclaimed that image of better angels.  Lincoln gets big credit. But I read that he borrowed it from Dickens who used it in Barnaby Rudge.

 

So whoever, we need the grace to let our better angels dance inside us – and come out of us to fill the rooms we enter each day with the Peace and kindness of Jesus. Amen.