Increasingly, I am for old over new.
If it’s new, I am suspicious.
What does this new thing have to offer we haven’t already seen?
Does this new thing really hold fresh insight we didn’t already know?
Is this new thing really new?
I am no Boomer (sorry actual Boomers, I mean no offense and am instead using it in the cultural sense the word now carries that used to be conveyed by the word, Luddite.)
I am not against technology or progress in the sciences or improved shocks for my car. Put out a new Apple product and I will fan-boy my way to the nearest Apple store as soon as possible to gawk at it.
I mean old when it comes to soul.
Disagree if you like, but I am of the persuasion “new” and “soul” should only be used in the same sentence when we reference the new birth into a living hope Peter says is our inheritance in Christ. I am something new because of something old and ancient in Christ.
I’ve circled the sun enough times to see we mostly recycle.
That human problems aren’t actually new.
That the human story has only been able to devise new technologies to placate our ills, not new solutions that heal our age-old issues.
No, current humanity still wrestles its ancient problems.
The teacher in Ecclesiastes named it: “There is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9
Indeed.
When I preference old I mean I am for recovering lost understandings. I am for a radical interpretation of our condition, not a novel one.
“Radical” comes from the Latin, radix—"of the root.” A radical interpretation is one that points to its roots.
Let’s apply this.
I am noticing a reality that feels like it's only increasing in intensity; people are hurting and in need of healing.
I mean people are crushed, broken, and wounded by life. In my pastoral conversations, it feels like the volume is being turned up on this feedback.
A key relationship breaks down.
Abuse is finally recognized.
Life’s traumas pile up.
Anxieties mass around the heart.
The weight of living and moving forward becomes too much.
People need healing.
I hope you won’t dismiss this as something new and unique to our moment, with a Grinch-inspired “People today. They just can’t keep it together like we used to.”
The problem is old. This is what life does. It wounds us. How do we find healing?
An old understanding of sin sees it as a sickness--the festering source of our wounds.
In our day, we have elevated a moral performance view of sin—seeing it mostly as falling short morally (which it is). We think our base problem is the guilt we have before the judge.
That's caused us to be simplistic in our help. Clear up the guilt. Remove the problem. Move on. But if that’s the totality of the issue, why do people continue to struggle?
An older view, a deeply Scriptural one, sees sin as a wound—so often self-inflicted—from which we need healing. Richard Beck: “Sin is a state of weakness and incapacity that I need rescuing from.”
This resonates. People feel incapacitated by life. Too weak to get up from the couch, out of bed, forward into life. Stuck in their moment. They need a radical solution—something old.
Listen to teachers of the Church explain our ancient problem.
St. Macarius (1788-1860).
The soul is greater than the body: the body becomes sick, and with that it is finished. But a spiritual sickness extends into eternity. Deliver us, O Lord, from such illness, and grant us healing.
John Newton (writer of Amazing Grace), in a letter to William Wilberforce’s wife.
Sin is a sickness of the soul, in itself mortal and incurable, as to any power in heaven or earth but that of the Lord Jesus only. But He is the great, the infallible Physician.
John Wesley.
Salvation is not barely, according to the vulgar notion, deliverance from hell, or going to heaven; but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recovery of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy, and truth.
They offer their radical solution because it is the radical solution of Scripture.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 1 Peter 2:4
They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. Jeremiah 6:14
You anoint my head with oil. Psalm 23:5 (a healing act)
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Psalm 147:3
In the ministry of Jesus, when he heals someone (for example, Mark 5:23 & 34) did you know it’s the same Greek word translated elsewhere as salvation?
Healing—the healing the Holy Spirit brings in bringing us into the life of Jesus—is the ancient cure for what ails our current moment.
Can I go deeper?
And because the Church is the body of Christ, this means the Church is a hospital for the hurting.
What does that mean?
You can bring your mess.
Perfect people need not apply.
All progress is cause for celebration.
Grace is the freight we deliver.
Honesty is our currency.
Hope is our language.
Healing is our primary ministry.
We are here to help with the healing, as we also find for ourselves--in the words of Mahalia Jackson singing the old song--there is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole and save a sin-sick soul.
This is old and weighty, ancient and substantial.
It is radical.
- Pastor Scott Marshall, Wichita First Church of the Nazarene