 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit and news of him spread throughout the region. He taught in their synagogues and he was praised by all. Remember that, he was praised by all. He came to Nazareth where he would grown up and he went in according to his custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He stood up to read what was handed in a scroll. The prophet Isaiah, he had rolled the scroll, found what he was looking for, where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty, freedom to captives, recovery of sight to blind, let the oppressed go free and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, blah, blah, blah. Today the scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing and everyone spoke highly of him and were amazed at him, okay. He taught in the synagogue and was praised by all. They were highly amazed with him in his gracious words. That's gonna come into play in just a couple of minutes. Okay, so what we wanna do is we wanna take a look at this text a little bit more. We've got about, I don't know, about 50, 55 minutes. So I'm gonna talk for a few minutes, more than a few minutes, let's be honest. But I'm not gonna talk the whole time because we're gonna pray because I wanna deal specifically with some of the things that we're gonna talk about. Mary Brewer is gonna help lead us in worship. Mary works for us here at the Catechetic Lens Institute and one of the great graces and blessings of being able to be at the university is Mary. So scripture says the spirit, we talked about this, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. But I think it's important that we understand that the spirit of the Lord is upon us for a purpose. It's not just because the spirit's got nothing else to do. It's not just because we got nothing else to do, but there's a purpose that the Holy Spirit comes to us, right? Now we don't want to fall in the trap of only making God functional. That we like God because he does something for us. But the reality is, is the spirit always wants to do something in us. First and foremost, what does the spirit of God wanna do? He wants to make us holy. That's not the purpose of the talk today, but it's important that we bear that in mind. The spirit of the Lord is upon me. And sometimes we get so focused on what does he want me to do that we forget the reality is he wants to do something in me first and foremost and from that then calls us to mission. Amen? The Lord has mission for us. He has something for us that he wants to do. So the spirit of God comes upon us. The spirit of the Lord is upon me. The Holy Spirit, it's not just a coincidence. It's not his first name, Holy. It is nature, right? And the spirit is holy. I love what Pope Francis says. He said, the greatest gift and the first gift that the Spirit gives us is the Spirit himself. All right, we often think of this. There's this big shelf of gifts and we go up and we pick up what gift we want. But the gift himself, the greatest gift is God himself. He gives himself to us. Amen? And that self is a sanctifying spirit. It was interesting about two or three days ago in the office of readings, it's the first reading that clergy usually do. The last line is it says, and it's startling to hear it, but he says, we become God. All right, now that's startling for us to hear that because of that nuance, but we become God. But we forget the reality that one of the purposes of Christ becoming flesh and taking flesh and death and resurrection and ascended the Holy Spirit is the divinization of us, right? That we are supposed to become like God. It's the purpose, right? It's not just take away our sins, but it's literally our divinization. If you went to the last workshop I did, John and I and Heather, it wasn't John, it was Bob. I just try to repress most things with Bob, so, all right? So as Bob and I and Heather, we talked about that when we forgive others, that we participate in the divine nature of God because it's in God's nature to forgive so that when I forgive somebody, I share in the divine nature of God in that part of that divinization that takes place with the Holy Spirit. Amen? But he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news. And Heather talked about last night very, very beautifully what the good news, right? That there is still good news out there. Let's bear in mind really, really quickly the good news, the church would say the karygma, right? That Jesus comes to pronounce the karygma, which is the good news. Four things really, really quick. The karygma is, first off, that God loves us, all right? So when Jesus says he's proclaiming the good news when it's the karygma, the gospel, it is that God loves us. And that's a fundamental reality. There's nothing I can do to cause God to love me more. There's nothing I can do to cause God to love me less. What he does is love. Mother Contola Mesa, now Cardinal Contola Mesa, the preacher to the papal household says, if we're narrowed down all of the scriptures into three words, it would be, God is love, all right? So the first of the karygma, of the basic gospel message is God is love. Number two is that each one of us is sin. That apart from God's grace and mercy, I'm a mess, right? Each one of us is sinned. It's that third part of the karygma that Jesus comes and he gave his life to free me from my sin. To free me literally from myself, right? And the last is that each one of us needs to be able to make a choice to believe this, to live this. So the karygma, when Jesus says, I have come to proclaim the karygma, the gospel, the good news, the church news, those four pillars are the good news. But then he goes on to say, and we particularly see this in the gospel of Luke, and this is so beautiful. He says, he's called me to give sight to the blind, to proclaim freedom or liberty, libertari, to those who are captive and to heal those who are crippled, right? So Jesus comes in, he says, the spirit of God is upon me. And I mentioned this morning that that was a proclamation of what was to come but also an explanation of what has come, what brought him to that place. But we pay attention to Luke's gospel because Luke has a special attentiveness to those who are on the periphery, right? If you read Luke's gospel, Luke spends a lot more time talking about those on a wean, the broken, the wounded, the crippled, the leper. And Luke's gospel, women have a much more prominent role. He has a much more universal understanding of the role that men and women both have in the gospel and the kingdom of God. So Jesus says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me to do these things. And if we go back to the 61st chapter of Isaiah, that was the messianic promise, right? How are we gonna know? And later on in the gospel it's gonna go, John's disciples are gonna come back and they're gonna say, how do we know you're the messiah? We think you are, we're not positive, but how do we know? And Jesus says, go tell them what you've seen and what have you seen? We've seen people give, those who are blind have been restored sight, those who are crippled are experiencing freedom and those who are crippled are experiencing healing. That's the signs of the messiah. Isaiah 61, the signs of the messiah are these things. So when Jesus says this, he comes up and he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. And they're kind of wondering, this is Nazareth, right? This is his hometown. This is the boy they grew up with. They saw him, that's kind of a bold statement. The spirit of the Lord is upon me. And he's called me to proclaim year of freedom, a year of jubilee, to give sight to those who are blind, to heal the cripple and to free those who are in captivity. And we have a tendency to say, that's great. Do all those things for those people, right? Do all the, that's great that God wants to heal those people who are blind. Fantastic. Those people are crippled, that's great and those people are captive. God, you're a great God. But the reality is that is me, right? That is me. That we look at this scripture profoundly different that when we look at it, that the one he's speaking to of that's blind, that's crippled and that's captive is me. We have a danger of a tendency that we look and we say that it's good that he's doing those things for those people. I'm glad I'm not blind. I'm glad that I'm not captive. I'm glad that I'm not the cripple. And what I wanna do is invite us to reflect that in fact, maybe we are. That when Jesus proclaims these three things, maybe he was talking to me and you. And I wanna suggest that if we experience these things and if we experience the Lord working and operating these, we experience the mercy of God and the power of God in a really profound personal way. Amen. Sorry that I'm drinking so much water, but there will be nothing coming out of my voice this evening or tomorrow morning at Mass if I don't. Amen. So the Holy Spirit gives us sight, right? Because we're blind. So just repeat after me, I am blind. I'm not able to see. But what are we blind to? Let me point out a couple of things that I think is helpful for us to see. First off, we fail to see God. The world is either graced or it isn't, right? It is either graced or it isn't. The scripture tells us all creation proclaims the greatness of God, right? So it's either graced or it isn't. The question we have for ourselves is do we see God? Are we able to see God in this world that we live in? I believe that the world is graced. Contrary to what CNN says, contrary to what Fox News says, right? You watch either one of those news and you just wanna jump in front of a train. I mean, everything is just so dark and I don't deny that. But God is present in the middle of that as well. The question is, is are we able to see Him? In John 15, 26, it says, one of the first things that the Holy Spirit does is the Holy Spirit gives witness to Jesus and allows us to be able to see Jesus. Not for who we want him to be, not who we would like him to be, but in fact, who he is. And this is really important because in the Gospels, I shared this morning, they had all of these encounters with Jesus, but they didn't really fully understand who he was, right? We've got the famous text of Peter saying, you are the Christ, you are the Son of the Living God. Way to go, Peter. 30 seconds later, he goes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that, that whole cross thing, don't do that. Peter, you're blind, right? You had this image of who you want me to be, but in fact, that is not who I am. And oftentimes, brothers and sisters, we're blind to that. We like this image of God, and it's not necessarily who he is. I've said a million times before that we make God a lot like Santa Claus, if we're honest. He's watching us, God watches us, Santa watches us. This is weird, kinda spooky, right? He's paying attention, if we're good or bad, God does that, my gosh, so does Santa. If we're good, we're gonna get presents. If we're good, we get to go to heaven, and if we're bad, we get coal, for bad, we become coal, right? Be honest with yourself. Is there a significant difference between our image of God and Santa Claus? What the Spirit does is allows us to be able to see. He heals us of our blindness and allows us to be able to see God for who he is. And the reality is the people in Jesus' time weren't able to see that. I asked you to pay attention at the beginning of Luke that I shared with. They were all amazed with him. They found this passage, they were amazed at his words, that he had grown up, it goes on and says, they thought highly of him, amazed at his gracious word, how wonderful it just rolls from his lips. This guy's amazing. And then the next thing Jesus does, and he says, oh, and by the way, all of these things that I'm talking about, sight to the blind, freedom to those who are captive, healing the cripple, that's not just for the chosen ones, just for the Jewish people, but that's for everybody, right, and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We had this image of who the Messiah was, but this isn't in fact who we thought the Messiah was. So literally eight verses later, they're talking about how wonderful Jesus is, they're amazed by him. Eight verses later, the people in the synagogue heard this and they were filled with fury and indignation. They rose and drove him out of the town and led him to the brow of the hill on which of the town was built to hurl him down headlong. But he passed away in the midst and got away from them. In literally six verses, they went from, this guy's amazing too, we gotta kill this guy, right? Because they had an image of who the Messiah was and they were blinded that the Messiah was literally in their midst and they couldn't see it because they were blinded by their image of God and who they wanted God to be and who they expected God to be. And brothers and sisters, I suggest one of the first things the Lord wants to heal us from is our blindness to who he is and allow him to be for us, who he is, not who we want him to be, amen. Do me a favor, take a breath, close your eyes. Oh, that's always dangerous to do that in the middle of the afternoon. Don't necessarily close your eyes. Come Holy Spirit. What's the image of God that you have that you're blinded to? How does God need to or want to or desire to heal your sight so that you can see him as he is? Jesus, heal our blindness. I was talking to a woman recently and she was wondering, she goes, I know that people talk about how good God is, but I'm not positive he's good for me, right? Lord, help us to see you for who you are, amen. I think oftentimes we're blinded by our ability to see him in the midst of our struggle, in the midst of our difficulty. A number of years ago, I was actually at the 10th anniversary of my ordination, the opportunity to walk the Camino de Santiago, so I walked 500 miles to be able to thank the Lord for letting me be a priest because I love being a priest. The very beginning, the first maybe 10 days of the Camino, your body's just not accustomed to walking day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day. Body's not used to that. And it just hurts, right? It just hurts. And I remember day four or five, six, something like that, you've got blisters and tendonitis and your back is cramping and I remember we went into this one place, the little hostel albergue and we were talking to the woman who works there and she goes, wasn't this such a beautiful day? I'm like, no, actually, it wasn't. And she goes, well, you had to admit when you were walking by that lake, what a beautiful view that is. I said, I literally did not see a lake, right? And then she goes, what about that church? It's Romanesque, it's one of the most beautiful Romanesque architectural church in the Spain. Didn't you find that to be beautiful? I said, I didn't see any church, right? And then what I realized was during most of the day, the only thing that I was paying attention to was me. Because my body hurt. It just ached and pains and all I could focus on was me and I was blinded to the beauty, literally. I mean, not just figuratively, the beauty that was all around me, walking through the Pyrenees on the border of France. It's gorgeous. So I hear, I've seen some pictures that really are lovely, right? But all I could pay, and honestly, just that experience really, it changed me, actually. It changed the way, sometimes I'll meet somebody and they're so self-consumed and it's just all about them. And then I realized that maybe it's that they hurt so bad that that's all they can pay attention to, right? And it's actually hard at times to speak into that. The goal as a priest or as a spiritual director, as a confessor is often to help them to try to see because they're blind, but to try to see that God is present in that, that he's in the midst of it. I suggest that there's a profound change in our spiritual life when we begin to be able to see God in the midst of the cross. In the midst of the suffering, in the midst of the pain. It's easy to see him in baptisms and weddings and on a good day, the Grand Canyon, you just look out, it's just stunningly beautiful. But to see him in infertility and in dementia and divorce and cancer and the cross, again, I think one of the greatest ways that we're blind is inability to see him there. Because all we focus on is, and I get it, we focus on our difficulty and our suffering and our pain and we're just blinded to the reality that God is present in that. And when he heals us there, when he heals us there, it's something profoundly different that when we begin to discover in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of our difficulty and pain that God is in that, it profoundly changes our understanding of God. Do me a favor again, just take a breath. Lord, heal my blindness in the midst of my struggle, in the midst of my difficulty, in the midst of my cross that you are there, Lord. Lord, I pray that we were able to see you and experience you and that there is beauty all around us. Heal our blindness. Amen? In Romans 8, 14, Paul is making this comparison between the spirit of the age and the spirit of God and he said, the spirit comes upon us and there's this really beautiful image. He says, the spirit come upon us and we proclaim, we shout out, right? Abba, Father. When Jesus comes and he heals our blindness, he allows us to see a God as Father, but not just any Father, God who's Daddy, a God who's Abba. And many of us need to be healed of that. We need to be healed of the image of a God who is a Father, who is an Abba Father, who's a Daddy, who's loving, who's kind, who's patient. The new series that I'm working on right now, we did Wild Goose, we did Metanoia, and we're starting one now that we're doing on the Father. Because I think one of the greatest struggles we have is that recognition and that understanding and the reality that God is Father. One of the great Christian revelations is we have a God who's Father. But the first line I'm gonna save the first episode is that our relationship with God the Father begins with our earthly Father. And we place oftentimes those images of God on the Father, and that God doesn't have time for me, or God is harsh, or God has abandoned me, or God wasn't present. And the Lord wants to be able to heal our image of the Father and allow us to see the Father for who he is. That's why I love the text, that the Spirit comes upon us and we cry out Abba. We see a Father who's patient, and a Father who's kind, and a Father who's loving, and a Father who's for us, right? So the Lord desires to heal our blindness to who God is. Being able to see Jesus for who he is and the Father for who he is. Amen? The Spirit wants to be able to heal our blindness on how we see ourself. Catholic teaching is that we are fundamentally good. We are the image and likeness of God. We are the Amago Dei. More Protestant understanding would say that we are not good. We are fundamentally flawed, but we're covered, right? Snow, we're covered, and we look okay. But if we move the snow away, Luther would say we're literally done, we're crap, right? You just move that away, but that's what we are at the heart of it, Luther would say. Catholic theology would say no, we are fundamentally good. The God has created us good. We pay attention to Genesis, not only good, but very good. The Lord needs to heal you so that you are able to see yourself as you are. That you are fundamentally good. And for many people, they have a struggle with that because they know all of the crap that they've done, and we're gonna talk about that in a second. But that's not what defines me. I am not defined by my weakest moment. I'm not defined by my brokenness. I'm not defined by my sin. I'm defined that I am a baptized Son of God. Loved, redeemed, sanctified. That's what defines me. The evil one wants us, wants you, wants me to be able to define ourselves by our brokenness and by our sin. And we need to pray that the Lord would heal our sight, that we can see ourselves as we are. God's sons and daughters, amen? So the Lord heal that, heal us that allows us to be able to see ourselves the way that we are. But oftentimes we're blinded by jealousy, and by envy, and by comparison, and by brokenness, and by sinfulness, and by our past, whatever. You feel a long, long list, right? But what defines me, what makes me who I am, is the Lord, and we're blinded to that, amen? So just real quick, take a breath, and I pray that the Lord will allow you to see you as you are. I love St. Gregory the Great. That's just a great line. He said, if we could see ourselves the way God sees us, we would be tempted to bow down and worship. That's a crazy line, right? If we could see ourselves the way God sees us, but we don't see ourselves, we stand in front of a mirror and just crazy stuff goes through our mind. Lord, heal us from the blindness of even how we see ourself, amen? And it seems like a contradiction, but it's not. We are blinded to our sinfulness, right? We're blinded to our sinfulness. That we can't oftentimes see that. There've been experiences in my life that I'll get home at the end of the day and I'll be doing the examination of prayer, conscience before I go to bed, and I have this experience that I think, oh my gosh, how did I do that? How did I not see that? Why did I act that way? Oftentimes, as we draw closer to the Lord, as we draw a deeper relationship with the Lord, we actually become more aware of our sin and it seems like a contradiction. It would seem that the more holy I become, the less sin I would commit. But there's a really cool, interesting, strange, mysterious thing that the holier we become, the more aware we are of our sin, but the less guilt we feel because of it, because we know that God is good, right? And we know that the Lord is revealing my sin to me in his mercy and in his love for me and his care for me, he's showing my sin so that I can be freed from it. I mean, if the Lord would literally show each one of us our sin like everything at the moment, we would just be toast. That's a theological term, I don't expect you to understand it, you don't, you haven't had theology like I have, but we would be toast. But the Lord in his mercy, it makes sense, right? Closer we get to the light, the more is revealed, right? It makes sense. The closer we get to the light, the more is revealed. But again, the way that we know that the Lord is leading this and not the evil one is that we're not overwhelmed. Is that we don't despair, right? Conviction, the Lord convicts us of our sin in order to convert us, not to condemn us, right? And the Spirit convicts us of our sin. So we understand it, we see it more clearly. I love the story in Mark 8, 24, Jesus heals the blind guy and he says, what do you see? Well, yeah, I see two people, but they look like trees, all right, and the Lord prays with them some more and then they're able to see clearly. That's our story as well, right? Is that the story of being healed, the story of being healed of our blindness is one that takes over, takes time for us. Sometimes we see people, they look like trees, but in fact, we're eventually gonna be made more healed and able to see more clearly. Another area that the Lord wants to heal our blindness of is how we see one another, right? How we see one another or oftentimes how we don't see one another. I think one of the greatest sins is that we don't see one another. I did a youth conference a while ago in this teenager and this one of the things I love about kids, she had a shirt on and it just said, notice me, right? Notice me. The deepest desire of every human heart is to be seen. It is not only to be seen and to be accepted, there's a part of just being seen without being accepted scares a crap out of us. To be seen, to be known, to be loved, I mean, it's the woman at the well that Jesus sees and knows everything about her and she doesn't freak out because she's finally met somebody who loves her, right? It was a story of Francis that the Lord sees him and sees every part of him and reveals that to him that allows him to go out and embrace the leper, right? The person that revolted him, the person that he tried to stay away from allowed him to go out and be able to see the leper and recognize and see Christ in that person. But we're blind to that. We're often blind to groups of people. It's those people, right? And that's exactly the Lord is healing those people, but who are those people for us? I love what Pope Francis says. He says that we tear down the wall that's between us and them, whoever them is. And what we see is we see faces and we hear stories that aren't that different than ours. I've shared this story before when I started praying for the head of Planned Parenthood. And as I was praying for her, I found out her family and her chest kids and I wrote her Christmas cards and birthday cards and all this kind of things, right? I mean, what she stands for, for me, before I started doing that, she was the head of Planned Parenthood, which was just disgusting. And as I prayed for her over time, she became a person to me. She became a mother and a wife. With the same fears and struggles that my sister might have. But I was blind to that. I think the Lord wants us to be able to kill our blindness so that we can see, so that we can see people, so that you can see your kids better, you can see your spouse better, you can see people around you that people just long to be seen. And we have so quick to categorize them or put them in this box and the Lord just wants us to be able to see. So take a minute, take a breath. Lord, help me to see. So oftentimes we see a problem or we see a burden or we see an agenda or we see an activist or we see a sin and Lord, you looked past all that. You had a way of looking past all that. The woman that was caught in the act of the adultery, you didn't just see a sinful woman, but you saw a person in front of you. You weren't blinded to her brokenness or blinded to her sin, but you saw a person. Help us to see, heal our blindness. Amen. Jesus says that I have come to heal, to free those who are captive, to proclaim liberty to those who are captive. One of the first books I did was on the spirituality of freedom. My opinion, you take a look at the scriptures from Genesis throughout all of the scriptures is a story about freedom. It's a story about God who wants his people to be free. In Genesis two, I think 16, the first verse is, first words out of the mouth of God to the human person is, you are free. You are free, all right? And then we know the story, Adam and Eve eat of the fruit. They no longer feel comfortable in the presence of the Lord. So they hide, they cover themselves. They put on clothing over their nakedness because they don't feel comfortable being seen anymore, right? So they clothe themselves in the nakedness and the next word out of the mouth of God, which is really remarkable. God says, where are you? First words is, you are free. The next words out of the mouth of God to the human person is, where are you? And he comes looking for us, which is amazing. I would never go looking for you, right? You hide from me, fine. I'm not gonna play this game. No, seriously, I'm not. I'm not. My mother, I've told this before, but my mother used to do that. We would, middle of the afternoon, she'd say, okay, let's play hide and go seek. You guys go hide. We said, okay, we're gonna go hide, okay. She said, all right, I'm gonna come looking for you. So like we're waiting, it's two minutes, 10 minutes. Like, mom's horrible at this game, right? So we go back and she's having a cup of coffee in peace and quiet. It's like, this is great. She never came looking. The story of our God is to come looking, right? He comes like, seriously, she was mean. My mother was a mean, mean person, mean person. The story, the mystery of our faith is we have a God that comes looking for us and he has a purpose. He comes looking for us because he wants to tell us you're free. You don't have to be slave Zachariah, the clinical of Zachariah, before Jesus even enters to see, blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, he has come to his people to set them free. Galatians 5-1, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free, so don't be yoked to slavery again. Jesus, again, these are the first words out of the mouth of Luke 4. It's important, first things are important. First things and last things are really important. Jesus says, I've come to proclaim liberty. Your time of captivity is over. You've been waiting for this. It's a messianic promise, right? A messianic promise that he's gonna bring freedom to his people. Now, the people we find out later in the gospel had a hard time that this freedom was for everybody, right? Not just them, but those people too, but his freedom was from everyone. Question we have to ask ourselves is, what is it that the Lord wants to free us from? There was a, the movie a number of years ago, Sixth Sense, and one of the lines is, they're dead and they don't even know it. My experience tells me is that people are in bondage and they don't even know it. They've just gotten accustomed to it. It's just the way it is. Just the way it is. And the Lord wants to be able to speak freedom into that and bring freedom to that. What is it that we need freedom? What's the area that we need freedom from? What is that bondage? What is that cell? I mean, I reflect on the image of the apostles in the upper room in there, in the room and the doors are locked. And as far as they're concerned, that's where they're going to stay. But that wasn't what it was meant to be. The Lord sends a spirit upon them and they literally break out of that. They're not captive anymore. I love 2 Corinthians 3, 17. If I was going to get a tattoo, which I'm not, but if I was, right? Where the spirit of God is there is freedom. Where the spirit of God is there is freedom. I mean, people long to be free, especially in our culture. I mean, the DNA of the American is to be free. I've been all around in the world. I've been in prisons in Bosnia and met people that were more free than most Americans. Because as we know, freedom doesn't come from government. It doesn't come from political parties. It doesn't come from courts. It comes from the spirit of God. What is that area? Do me a favor, just quiet yourself, take a breath. What is that area that you're captive to? What binds you? Is it fear? Is it past? The woman who comes up to me in Detroit, she says, Father Dave, every day, she's my age. I was gonna say she's old, and then I was gonna say my age, and that didn't work at all, right? So she's unbelievably mature. And she says, I did something when I was 18 years old and I think about it every day, every day. That woman's not free. She's not free. I guaranteed her that Jesus wasn't thinking about it every day. But she was. She was a slave to her past. Is it the future? Is it a reputation? Is it control? Is it success? Is it lies? I don't know. I don't know what it is that the Lord needs to free you from, but I do know that the Lord wants to free you. The spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he's called me to proclaim liberty. I imagine there are people in that audience that just couldn't believe it's too good to be true because they've been slaves for so long. What is it the Lord wants to free you from? And then finally Jesus says, and to heal the cripple. One of my favorite stories is again, it's in Luke. I think it's in the next chapter and the fifth chapter of Luke. And just a really beautiful story and a beautiful image that we get to see a side of Jesus. It's just really touching. Now there was a man full of leprosy in one of the towns where Jesus was. Again, he's called to heal the cripple. There was a man full of leprosy in one of the towns where it was. And when he saw Jesus, he fell prostrated and he pleaded with him and he said, Lord, if you wish, you could make me clean. Bear in mind that when Jesus says those are a captive, those are crippled, those are blind. The people largely at the time believed the reason they were crippled, the reason they were in captivity and the reason they were blind was because of their sin. There was this connection between that. And it was the kind of God we had that did things like that if you weren't good, right? So particularly the leper was unclean. It wasn't just that they had leprosy, but they were unclean. They couldn't go to worship. They couldn't come in contact with somebody. In fact, interestingly, in Jesus's time, the leper would have some kind of a bell or something like that so that nobody would get near them because you wouldn't possibly want to come in contact with them. Because if you were coming in contact with them, you were no longer clean. You no longer purified. So you'd have to go through this whole purification process just to go to the synagogue or temple. So there was not only the leprosy and the sickness that all goes with that, but it was the uncleanliness. If you wish, you can make me clean. And it's just such a beautiful image of the Lord. Jesus stretches out his hand and he touches him. He says, I do, will it be made clean? Don't lose the part of that where Jesus reaches out and he touches him. If you want to just get a little bit of a deeper sense of who Jesus is, reflect on that reality that nobody touches lepers, right? Nobody touches lepers because you're unclean. You can get lepersy. I wonder what that person felt like when Jesus reached it, probably startled him is gonna be my guess. And everybody around probably, oh, because he touched him, right? He touched him. Jesus could have done it. There could have been some divine dust he could have done and he could have just sprinkled it over him and with the same effect of healing him, but he didn't have to actually touch him. He could have done it another way. He didn't necessarily have to take on flesh and there didn't have to be an incarnation, but he entered my leprosy and he entered my brokenness and he entered my sinfulness and he entered that and he transforms it and he touches that leopard and he says, I do wish it be made clean. I just think that's a beautiful image of the Lord reaching out and touching him, risking being unclean so that he could be made clean. What's that area in our life that the Lord wants to be able to touch, wants to be able to heal, wants to be able to restore? For some people literally, and tonight we'll pray for it, it is literally physical that it's arthritis or it's whatever it is and we're gonna pray for that tonight, but there's other things that are as deadly, things like shame and regret, brokenness. Lord, touch that. Touch that part of me that feels constantly abandoned. Touch that and heal that. You can ask everyone to just take a breath. And I'm gonna read a text and it's from the Mark's Gospel and I just want you to be able to pray a little bit. I'm gonna take my time working through it and just see yourself in this image and see yourself in this story and then we'll spend a minute or two just praying, healing and some of these things. Okay, by this time we're in the 10th chapter of Mark and Jesus is quite well known so anywhere he goes there's a crowd with him. So just imagine we're in Jericho. It's a little village, very dusty. You see a crowd coming off to the left. You see these major cliffs behind you is the Dead Sea. Jordan River's a little bit off to your right. There's kind of this excitement in the air because you've heard a lot about Jesus and he's pretty popular and kind of wondering what he's gonna do. You've heard stories, not sure they're true. They come to Jericho and as he was leaving with Jericho with his disciples there was a sizable crowd. Again, just seeing this crowd of people working their way through the village. Some people are almost like a parade, right? Coming by, they just want to see. Jericho is also the place it's a chaos who ran and jumped on the tree so he could see. But this time, Jesus encounters Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is a blind man. He's the son of Tymias and he's sat by the roadside begging. So just for a second, imagine that crowd going by and there's a beggar on the side of the road. Now if you're from Jericho, he's probably familiar. Bartimaeus isn't traveling village to village so you know him, you've seen him. You're not surprised he's there. Some of the visitors probably don't know him. But he hears, the scripture says on hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out. And he said, Jesus, son of David, have pity on me. Again, just trying to imagine that scene. It's already kind of loud but louder, clearly distinguishable. You hear him say, Jesus, son of David, have pity on me. Many around him rebuked him, telling him to be silent. Where are you in that scene? Are you one of the ones who's saying be quiet? Are you Bartimaeus? But he kept calling all the more. Son of David, have pity on me. Jesus stopped and he said, call him. So they called the blind man, saying Tym, take courage, get up. He's calling you. Just this image of all of the attention. Everything has stopped, the caravan has stopped, everybody's stopped, the attention now is between Jesus and this Bartimaeus. I'm sure the crowd is like, oh my gosh. Is he gonna do it? What's he gonna do? Bartimaeus throws off his cloak, they say take courage, he springs up. He comes to Jesus. Jesus says to him, says to you, what do you want me to do for you? My question is reverberated in human history for 2,000 years. What do you want me to do for you? I prayed over this numerous times and the smart alec part of me says, well, what do you think I want? But there's something about us stepping out in faith and putting words to it and there's something vulnerable about that. And Jesus invites him to make that step. What do you want me to do for you? And I'm sure the crowd was quiet and still. And again, all of the focus and the attention is now on Bartimaeus. Master, I want to see. Jesus told him, go your way. Your faith has saved you. Immediately he received his sight and followed him on his way. The spirit of the Lord is upon me to give sight to the blind, to proclaim liberty to the captive, to bring healing to the cripple.