Med Center Northway

This week I'm beginning a new sermon series called, "Med-Center Northway." The focus of this series is that our church, and churches in general, are supposed to be places of spiritual healing. And yet, far too often, those who are not part of the church perceive that church is a place for those who are already well. The perception that I've heard so many times from those outside the church is, "I need to get my life right before I go to church. I'm so far from God right now, my life is so full of junk right now, I'm so spiritually sick right now, that I just don't think I would be welcome at church."

I take my share of the blame for this false perception that we've given. Jesus said in Matthew 9:12 (and Luke 5 and Mark 2), "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." Jesus understood that His purpose was to go to the very people who were hurting, or outcast, or felt far from God. Those were the people who desperately needed the healing touch of the Great Physician. But somehow we have sanitized the message of Jesus enough that now the church isn't a hospital, but a place for those who are already well.

I've thought at times about placing on our church, just under the cross or in some other conspicuous location, the Caduceus (the medical symbol of two snakes coiled around a rod that is surmounted by wings. By the way, I realize that there is controversy over the use of this as a medical symbol, and that many have argued that the appropriate symbol should be the rod of Asclepius, but that is for someone else to figure out.) I would place this symbol on the outside of the church in order to announce to the world, "If you are hurting, if you have issues, if you are spiritually sick, then THIS is the perfect place for you. Jesus came and died on the cross in order to spiritually heal you!"

Will the church in America ever get to the place of being seen as a hospital? Who knows... maybe I'm just a dreamer...