Lent #10: how to be good

Jesus: 8 Stand up, carry your mat, and walk.

9 At the moment Jesus uttered these words, a healing energy coursed through the man and returned life to his limbs—he stood and walked for the first time in 38 years. But this was the Sabbath Day; and any work, including carrying a mat, was prohibited on this day.

Jewish Leaders (to the man who had been healed): 10 Must you be reminded that it is the Sabbath? You are not allowed to carry your mat today!


I have to read this passage over several times in disbelief.  How could people of God respond in this way to someone who had been healed after 38 years? Really, how can they respond to the man with the mat with a religious prohibition and church policy?   But it's deeper than this, this is the law that the man was flaunting by being healed on the Sabbath. The law that defined how to be good is split open, to give birth to love and wholeness.

"How to be good" is a deep theme in my life.  Being good is not a requirement for healing.  Being broken and paralyzed is a requirement for healing.  It's the church leaders who are evaluating the "good", while Jesus has eyes open for the broken.

I serve as an "official" spiritual leader--while it's those who know me who will discern if that is true of me or not.  But as in all "official" capacities, the temptation is to look for those who are good, instead of for those who are broken.  Goodness and wholeness is not the same thing. Whole people (or people in the process of wholeness) sometimes walk around with their mats at times and in places that are embarrassing.  They draw attention to their broken stories on the wrong days and at the wrong times.  We want to say to them "be good--fit into the church culture, follow the rules."  Put down that mat and leave your broken story behind. You've been healed already!

But when we release being good and embrace the journey to being whole, we find that carrying our mat around calls attention to Jesus instead of to ourselves.

We can be holy without being whole, but we cannot be whole without being holy.

I want to be willing to carry my mat around and to give up being good.  To press into being whole--the long process of it...and to live in holiness in the love of Christ. Not because I am good, but because Christ is Whole.