physical therapy

3 Advent A 2010
(Isaiah 35: 1-10; Canticle 15; James 5: 7-10; Matthew 11: 2-11)


“Welcome to my torture chamber!”

My second violent rear-ending totaling yet another car left me with lower back pain and a feeling of vulnerability. I had received my black belt just a month before and felt better about my health and strength than I had since I was a kid. Now I felt weakened and frail, and I wanted that feeling of strength and independence back.

Bill the physical therapist was a man about my age, but spare and fit and energetic and utterly honest. He smiled as I scanned the large room, filled with equipment. Some of the gear looked like fitness-center type stuff, weight machines and all. Some looked more complex and just scary, like post-modern Spanish Inquisition machinery designed to tear a confession out of people’s lips.

Still smiling, Bill said, “Whatta ya think? People come to physical therapy thinking that they are going to get deep-tissue massage and lots of hugs. Most of the time they are with me they complain and swear at me. But they leave with their lives back. If you want to be healed, you will work and push yourself. Because to heal damaged tissue, you have to strengthen the muscles and tissue around the damaged place. In order to get better, you have to get stronger.”

Today, I did not hang a sign on the church that says, “Welcome to Fr. Kurt’s torture chamber”, although some Sundays people may think that to themselves. But I take a lesson from my old therapist and say that today, Rose Sunday, “Be joyful!” Sunday, is a day when we come for healing and learn that, if we wish to be healed, we must take on strength. We must enter the physical therapy-chamber of God.

Isaiah’s glad song is all about taking on strength. He is very specific: “Strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees!” The promise of God is near, so now is not the time to collapse and sit by the side of the road! Even if we are beaten down, by life or by pain or by discouragement or by doubt, now is the time to take on strength. Our God is strong, so ask for his strength. Our God is strong, so ask and ask to be the person of strength that God made us to be. There is good news today—if we feel at the end of our strength, we can call on God for divine strength. In fact, we can be demanding about it! Did you notice that we told God to get stirred up when we began the Mass today? Get moving, God, get up and get busy! We are empowered by God to ask that boldly. But if we do, know that we ask God to get stirred up so we can get stirred up. In the world of the Gospel, No beggar is left by the side of the road.

And that is what Jesus tells John. John asks that heartbreaking question right before his execution that is on the lips of every honest seeker: Are you the one we are waiting for, or do we wait for someone else? Jesus’ answer is not a theological statement, but an invitation for John to look at how God’s power has been stirred up. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” God is on the move, things are changing, and you John? Even from your prison cell, are you on the move too?

We talk of the two comings of Jesus—once long ago, humble and born in a stable; once again, in power and glory. The monk Bernard in the Middle Ages said that there is a third coming—Jesus comes every day. And he comes to give us strength for the journey. “Keep God’s word…let it enter into your very being… Feed on goodness, and your soul will delight in its richness. Remember to eat your bread, or your heart will wither away. Fill your soul with richness and strength…The Son with the Father will come to you.”

So, welcome to the Advent physical therapy gym. It’s not a bedroom and it is not a couch. If we wish to be healed, if we still believe in the promises of God and the divine goodness, then be ready to work out. Be ready to seek strength. I always felt wide awake after those therapy sessions, as if every fibre of my body were tingling and alert. That’s what a good workout will do for you. That is also a good description of an Advent state of soul.