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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Trusting the Healing Touch</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Author Max Lucado tells about his boyhood days of playing football out in the West Texas fields. The fields where Max and his friends played were full of grass burrs that stuck in their skin. Sometimes, after a big tackle, a player would have a leg or arm full of grass burrs. They stung horribly. The game came to a stop while the player pulled out each of the burrs. Some players wanted to keep on playing in spite of the burrs, but it was usually too painful. Lucado trusted no one but his father to pull out the burrs. So he would leave the game, go home, and get his father to pull out every last burr, then he would return to play. <br>
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Friends, there are burrs that only our Father can remove. Fortunately God will remove them if we trust ourselves to Him. <br>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">King Duncan, Collected Sermons, <A target=_blank __removedLink__769363600__href="http://www.Sermons.com">www.Sermons.com</A></div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">__________________________</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">A Revolution in Seven Verses</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Walter Wink, in his book Engaging the Powers, suggests that Jesus' action represented a revolution happening in seven short verses. In this short story, Jesus tries to wake people up to the kind of life God wants for them. He often talks about the Kingdom of God where people have equal worth and all of life has dignity. But in the latter part of his ministry, he begins to act this out. In the midst of a highly patriarchal culture Jesus breaks at least six strict cultural rules:</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">1. Jesus speaks to the woman. In civilized society, Jewish men did not speak to women. Remember the story in John 4 where Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. She was shocked because a Jew would speak to a Samaritan. But when the disciples returned, the Scripture records, "They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman?" In speaking to her, Jesus jettisons the male restraints on women's freedom.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">2. He calls her to the center of the synagogue. By placing her in the geographic middle, he challenges the notion of a male monopoly on access to knowledge and to God.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">3. He touches her, which revokes the holiness code. That is the code which protected men from a woman's uncleanness and from her sinful seductiveness.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">4. He calls her "daughter of Abraham," a term not found in any of the prior Jewish literature. This is revolutionary because it was believed that women were saved through their men. To call her a daughter of Abraham is to make her a full-fledged member of the nation of Israel with equal standing before God.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">5. He heals on the Sabbath, the holy day. In doing this he demonstrates God's compassion for people over ceremony, and reclaims the Sabbath for the celebration of God's liberal goodness.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">6. Last, and not least, he challenges the ancient belief that her illness is a direct punishment from God for sin. He asserts that she is ill, not because God willed it, but because there is evil in the world. (In other words, bad things happen to good people.)</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">And Jesus did all this in a few seconds.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Mickey Anders, Bent, adapted from Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">___________________________</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Shame on You!</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">I was waiting my turn to see the emergency room doctor when a young mother came through the doors with her child, maybe three or four years old. The little girl was crying and the woman who, I took to be the child's mother, was holding a bloody handkerchief over the little girl's mouth. She looked around frantically for someone to help and rushed to the desk and said, "My daughter's been hurt and I need to see..." She was cut off in mid-sentence, "You need to take a seat and wait for one of the clerks to sign you in."<br>
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"But my little girl was hit in the mouth by a..." She was interrupted again. "Please take a seat ma'am, someone will be with you shortly."<br>
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Just then, the ER doctor walked in and said to the woman at the desk, "Shame on you... this little girl needs help right now!" He motioned to the woman and the little girl and led them to an examining room.<br>
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Briefly, (and guiltily) I wondered when my turn to see the doctor might come, but -- if I live to be a hundred years old, I wonder if I will ever see another time when a person's pain so clearly wins out over the system's protocol. "Shame on you!" I love it! The physician was looking at a child's pain. The clerk was looking at the hospital's procedure.<br>
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John Jewell, Shame on You!<br>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Living in a Plastic Bubble</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">I feel as though I live in a plastic bubble. It surrounds me, but it cannot be seen. I see everyone around me, I hear them speak. Behind their words, they hide from me. They look at me and think they know me. But they don't see my bubble, they don't look long enough to see it. I try to talk with them, to share myself, but my words return, unlistened to. And nobody hears.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">I move through the days insulated in my protective bubble. I reach out to ones that I love, but they don't notice. They don't feel my need. When I extend my hand, no one takes it. Heavy hearted, I withdraw it, vowing never to offer it again. I call to those around, I beg, "Please, help me. Please touch me. Please love me." And nobody hears.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Though not made of plastic my bubble is real. It is comprised of many things. The sting of harsh words, spoken thoughtlessly. The heartache of love unrequited. The disappointment of a trust broken. The guilt of mistakes past. The terror of, again, being rejected. These things envelop me, isolate me; in my torment I scream, but it is silent. And nobody hears.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">I sought escape from my invisible prison. I looked for someone, some person who would see my bubble and free me of it. I searched for years, to naught. And then, when all seemed hopeless, I turned my eyes in a new direction. There he stood, arms outstretched, beckoning me. He spoke to me. He touched me.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Then I understood what I should have always known. Through all the empty years and broken dreams, I never had been alone. He was always there, just waiting for me to call. I closed my eyes and whispered, "God, please help me. Please touch me. Please love me."</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">And he heard.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Mark Trotter, Collected Sermons, <A target=_blank __removedLink__769363600__href="http://www.sermons.com/">www.Sermons.com</A></div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">______________________</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Safe, but Trapped!</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">There once was a loving couple who had the wife's elderly mother living with them. Their concern was for her security while both of them went away to work each day. They finally seemed satisfied after they had devised a system of twelve different locks and bolts for the front and back doors of the house! The only problem was that they overlooked the old woman's technical ability to operate all these devices. When a friend would want to call on her during the day, or when she would want to go out and enjoy the backyard, she had to turn down such opportunities because she didn't know how to get all the locks and bolts open! She ended up being a daytime prisoner, all in the name of feeling "secure." One doesn't even want to think of what might have happened if there had ever been a fire in the house. Her children had good intentions but carried them too far. The Sabbath, too, needs to be guarded, but the religious leaders of Jesus' day carried things too far.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Richard W. Patt, All Stirred Up, CSS Publishing</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Born to Greatness</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">There was a certain man who went through the forest seeking any bird of interest he might find. He caught a young eagle, brought it home and put it among the fowls and ducks and turkeys, and gave it chicken food to eat even though it was the king of birds.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Five years later, a naturalist came to see him and, after passing through the garden, said ‘That bird is an Eagle, not a chicken.’</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">‘Yes’ said the owner, ‘but I have trained it to be a chicken. It is no longer an eagle.’</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">‘No,’ said the naturalist, ‘it is an eagle still; it has the heart of an eagle, it has the wing span of an eagle, and I will help it soar high up in to the heavens.’</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">‘No,’ said the owner. ‘it is a chicken and will never fly.’</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">They agreed to test it. The naturalist picked up the eagle, held it up and said with great intensity. ‘Eagle thou art an eagle; thou dost belong to the sky and not to this earth; stretch froth thy wings and fly.’</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The eagle turned this way and that, and then looking down, saw the chickens eating their food, and down he jumped.</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The owner said; ‘I told you it was a chicken.’</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">‘No,’ said the naturalist, ‘it is an eagle. Give it another chance tomorrow…</div>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The conclusion to this illustration and for many additional illustrations and sermons for the Proper 16 can be accessed at <A target=_blank __removedLink__769363600__href="http://www.sermons.com/">www.Sermons.com</A>.</div>
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