I would advise, gently of course, not reading the story of Abraham’s journey with his son and his response to his hearing God to sacrifice him, as a projection of the death of Jesus. That is easy to do and to take it as a prophetic anticipation of Calvary. Let it be, what in the Hebrew Scriptures, it is, the wonderful story of a holy person living the call to faith. Abraham, The Father of Faith, was and is, for the writers of Genesis, an encouraging story to sacrifice only to the One and Holy God of Israel, no matter what the the invitation is and will be. Enjoy the story and be encouraged to faith.

Our Gospel Reading for this Eucharistic Liturgy is also a story of faith for the living of it. The Scribes, early, late and often are almost always, critically, present at Jesus’ being Jesus. In this event, the crowds of His home town desire Jesus to perform an external event of healing. For them, sickness of body is a reflection of some interior illness, (sin). Jesus, the One Who has come to intensify God’s Creational Love heals the fellow from both soul and bodily infirmities, but for the deeper desire that Jesus be revealed and accepted as dedicated to bringing forth life.

In our days, it is more than amazing how the physical injuries, sicknesses can be healed. We have grown to expect totally, health and well-being. I was told recently about how surgeons no longer have to reach inside wit their hands, they more accurately manipulate, through their watching on a screen, little tools and lights which patch hearts and other delicate parts of the human body as well as animals. They move inside to create life for the outside. I have two particular friends who are having wholes in their hearts repaired from outside into the inside so their can be more life flowing from the inside outward!

So our question might be, about what is Jesus more interested in, inner or outer healing. I suggest that Jesus is more involved in the future than the past and more dedicated to the picking up of the past and even more intently, what are we doing with our interior and external healing. The healed-man got up and went home. The story ends here? I reflect that the man lives more a revelation of his interior-healing in how he brings life to others at home. Healing, then, is never a private, once-and-for all, but exactly once and then for all and not just at home.

The man could have become quite comfortable with his stretcher-life and paralyzed by his illness, physical or spiritual, but his real healing was rising and living beyond what the Scribes or the crowds expected.

Jesus has authority not only to forgive sin, which drives the Scribes crazy, because they want, only, the authority to allow people to be back into the pure-culture, but His authority urges those forgiven to reveal God’s Love to be lived as healingers themselves. So that athority of Jesus is shared with those of us who have experienced a past which has been confining, debilitating and stretcherful. The real miracle, for us, is that we can accept the healing from our deeds, attitudes and memories which can lay us low and we can rise and live beyond. The rising is not so much the healing as the going home and bringing new life.