St. Luke Lutheran Church

What is Your Spiritual Diagnosis and Prognosis?

--based on Luke 4:31-44

[Given on the 4^th Sunday after the Epiphany (1-31-2010)]

            A man went to a psychiatrist.  “Doc,” he said, “I’m deeply troubled.  Every time I get into bed, I think there’s somebody under it.  I get under the bed, and I think there’s somebody on top of it.  Top, under; top, under. . .You got to help me, doc.  I’m going crazy.”

            “O.K.,” said the doctor.  Just put yourself in my hands for a year.  Come three times a week.  I’ll cure your fears.”

            “How much do you charge?” asked the man.

            “$100.00 per visit.”

            “I’ll sleep on it,” responded the man.

            Six months later, the doctor met the man on the street.  “Why didn’t you come to see me again?  I believe that your diagnosis is serious, but your prognosis is most hopeful!  We could have licked your fears inside a year!”

            “For $100.00 bucks a visit?” said the man.  “A bartender cured me for $10.00!”

            “Is that so,” said the doctor.  “How?”

            “He told me to cut the legs off my bed.”

            Would to God that doctors could diagnose and cure diseases that easily.  It would make the present health care debate a moot one.  Truth be told, diagnoses and their prognoses are often difficult to nail down.  Diseases can be tricky.  Cancer, for instance, seems to have a mind of its own.  I have noticed something during my years under God’s sun: what is hard to accomplish in the physical realm is easy to accomplish in the spiritual realm, and vice-versa. 

            Your spiritual diagnosis and prognosis are easy to get.  So easy, in fact, that you can get them yourself.  Your thoughts reveal your spiritual diagnosis.  What are you thinking about when your mind is not engaged?  What’s the nagging thought that irritates you like a food particle stuck in your teeth?  What is the quality of your thoughts?  Jesus shines an epiphany light on your thoughts to determine your spiritual diagnosis.  In Christ, your spiritual prognosis is always great, because a smoldering wick he will never snuff out.  Jesus will never snuff out the guilty person.  He will ever snuff out the depressed person.  He will never snuff out the desperate person, for, as the Great Physician, he came to heal the spiritually sick.  What kind of spiritual diagnosis do your thoughts give you?

            In the Gospel reading, right in the place of worship there is a man possessed by an unclean demon.  You would not expect such a person in God’s house.  But, people come to worship with the smell of life on them.  People come from the world and they carry the world into the place of worship.  Not all people who worship here are at the same place emotionally and spiritually.  So, it should not surprise you to find among the holy the profane.  A demon prompts the man to speak out against Jesus: “What have you to do with Jesus?  Have you come to destroy us?  You are the holy one of God!”  In the presence of the sinless Lamb of God, this man unholiness is revealed, his impurity.  How did he come to be possessed by such a demon?  That is a difficult question to answer.  The world is a mysterious one, and we cannot fully understand it.  We certainly cannot understand the spiritual world.  Might we hazard a guess: the man may have opened himself to this demon.  Just maybe he allowed his mind to descend to the gutter and remain there.  The adage, “An idle mind is a workshop of the devil,” is most instructive.  Demons fill the mind left vacant due to laziness.  They tempt through suggestions, thoughts.  When they are given an inch, they take a foot.  Over time, you find yourself locked in a compulsion that takes on a life of its own.  The beautiful things of life get perverted.  In C.S Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, an inexperienced demon is trained in the fine art of temptation.  His mentor tells him, “There are things humans do all day long without thinking about in the least—sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. . .Everything has to be twisted before it’s of any use.”  The person beset by an unclean demon twists and perverts God’s gifts.  They are gutter dwellers.  They live in dirt and they toss it onto others, especially in the holy places where God dwells.  In the epiphany light of Jesus holiness, their perversion is revealed all the more.  Though painful that light may be, it is their only hope, for it is their healing.  Indeed it is the holiness of Jesus that cleanses the unclean heart.  Sin makes uncleanness a possibility for us all.  Yet, where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.  Daily cleansing from sin is the way to remain free from the unholy demonic.  Daily cleansing occurs when you wash yourself through the daily drowning of the old person in you, who loves to play with deceptive demons.  Where there are unclean thoughts in your thought life, drive them away immediately.  You can cross yourself and tell them, “Be gone!”  Pay attention to what thoughts cross your mind.  At the core of an unclean thought is unforgiven sin.  Give it over to Jesus.  Don’t continue to live in it, because it can invite something more pernicious.

            There are not only unclean thoughts, but there are also disruptive thoughts.  These are thoughts that bulge their way into your awareness, seemingly from nowhere.  In the Gospel reading, people brought their sick loved ones to Jesus to heal them.  While doing this most loving work for them, the demons interjected themselves.  They interjected themselves to take the focus off God’s good work.  More than that, they tried to frustrate God’s planning, God’s timing.  God’s timing was for the Son of God to assume a body in Mary, to live in that body under the law, to go through all that we go through, yet with out sin.  Then after having lived a perfect life under the law for us, he was to go to Calvary and there die for our sins as the perfect payment for our sins that would divert God the Father’s wrath from us.  It was not in Jesus’ interest to have people see him as a mere divine miracle worker.  He was more than that.  He was a sacrificial victim, the lamb of God, who would prove that death itself could not separate God from those whom God loves and has chosen.  Jesus, therefore, rebuked the demons, not allowing them to reveal who he was, not to interfere with God’s plan and timing.  I should have revealed my hand at the beginning.  I should have said that there are many factors that produce thoughts in us, be they physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual.  There is a spiritual force that is contrary to God that brings chaos and destruction.  They produce thoughts in us.  We must turn them out.  They sometimes barge in on something that is good.  They disrupt to take your mind off what God is doing that is good.  They know that if you were ever to focus on something you would achieve beyond your wildest imagination.  “Blessed are the pure in heart,” Jesus said.  Blessed are those who focus.  Paul said that when I find that I focus on the good, evil is close at hand to disrupt, cause chaos.  At the core of disruptive thoughts is lack of focus.  Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom, and everything else will be given,” especially a steadfastness in the Lord.  Disruptive thoughts are a call to get focused on God and trust God’s timing and plan for your life.

            In the Gospel reading, we see restless thoughts.  Jesus had many salutary customs that we should emulate.  He worshipped regularly.  And, at daybreak, he prayed.  Abraham did the same.  So, did Moses.  The people clamor after Jesus.  They are a restless lot.  They even interrupt his prayer.  The restless heart has no patience.  It cannot wait.  It cannot rest in God.

Restless thoughts reveal a heart that is not satisfied.  One miracle is not enough.  They need more; yet, they are never satisfied.  Do you have restless thoughts?  That reveals that you are not satisfied in Christ.  In the presence of Jesus, he gives you all that you need in grace and love.  Jesus gave us the Sacrament of the Altar and the promise that he would be present in the bread and wine to give us his very body and blood.  This gift from the altar is for our complete spiritual satisfaction.  He is all that we need.  When he fills us with his good things, we have greater control over our emotions.  Compulsive thoughts cannot push us off course.  We can journey trusting God will indeed give us our daily bread.  We can trust that if God was good yesterday, God will be good tomorrow.  The restless heart needs more sustenance in the bread and wine of the altar, the body and blood of our Lord.

            Selfish thoughts reveal a soul that is beset by fear.  The people retrieve Jesus from his prayer.  They, then, try to keep him from leaving them.  They want to keep Jesus to themselves, that he would available to them alone as a hedge against fear.  At the core of selfish thoughts is fear: fear of being alone, fear of being in want, fear before the big, bad world.  Jesus tells the crowd that wants to retain him that he has to preach the Gospel everywhere.  He is not for them alone.  Jesus is not for us alone.  He belongs to the whole world plagued by sin, death and the devil.  It is by giving that we receive.  It is by giving Jesus to others that we grow as a congregation.  It is by giving the joy that we know in Christ to others that we experience the richest fulfillment.  When we give out, God fills us up with more.  That is counterintuitive, because that is a spiritual truth taught by Jesus.

            Your thoughts reveal the condition of your soul.  Your thoughts reveal your spiritual diagnosis.  That diagnosis may look horrid: unclean thoughts, disruptive thoughts, restless thoughts and selfish thoughts.  Yet, the prognosis is always good in Christ Jesus.  Amen