HEALED BY UNMENTIONABLES

They say there are two kinds of motorcycle riders:  those who have taken a spill on a motorcycle and those who will.  It does seem to bear out.  One only hopes that one is alone and going slow when it happens.  Mine happened about 20 years ago.  It was most certainly a case of “pilot error” – I downshifted too far as I was slowing and when I let the clutch out the rear wheel immediately lost traction.  It went into what is rather accurately called a “tank slapper,.  The bike inevitably went down and I went “high-side” over the handlebars.  On the plus side of things, I was not seriously injured.  On the negative, I “skipped” off the road leaving a fair amount of the skin of my arms from armpit to wrist on the road.  The bike was still drivable, so I made it home unassisted.

But where does one find bandages of sufficient size to bind two arms full of road rash?  At the risk of sounding indelicate, the “unmentionable female supplies” of my wife and three teenage daughters seemed perfectly suited for the task.  So after carefully cleaning my rash, and applying a treatment of first-aid ointment, I found those “female supplies” just the thing to protect my dress shirts from the wounds as they healed.   I literally found healing for my wounds from something that is just not mentioned in polite company.

I was thinking about that incident as I read Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1:  27 “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. “  Virtually everything about God’s plan of salvation involved things the world of Paul’s day and our own would find unworthy of mention:  a lowly son of a Jewish carpenter who was betrayed by one of his closest followers and who died half-naked on a cross based on trumped up charges.  Who would want to bind one’s wounds with that?  Would anyone really expect the world to be turned to God by the proclamation of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection?  In our day of special effects and professionally produced “worship experiences” staged in fully-equipped worship centers, the simple message of the gospel doesn’t appear to our world to have enough “pop” to grab people for his kingdom.

And yet, Jesus and his cross and the announcement that through them God has healed our terminal sinfulness is precisely what God chose to save sinners.  Because – and only because – the Holy Spirit has brought us to faith in Jesus and his finished work, we see the cross of Christ and the gospel’s proclamation about it to be wisdom and power and something to brag on God about.  We are whole and righteous and healed in God’s sight by the very thing our world would prefer not to talk about.  When the whole world went down, God decided to send his own Son into the world, cloaked in humility and suffering and service to – how did he put it in Isaiah? – “ preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, (61:1-3)