Love and Health Nuts

Sermon for North Hill, July 23, 2011


When Karin was being treated for cancer, women from this church brought food and cleaned our house. That was love.

When the women of this church put on a church dinner to feed a huge number of guests – with only a few days notice – that is love.

When the men of this church spent nearly every Sunday for a year or two, working in mud and cold and rain to construct our landscape. That was love.

When you help one another move – that is back-breaking love.

Loving well takes muscle. Cleaning a house, mowing a lawn, polishing shoes – all require some level of physical strength.

One of the most famous stories Jesus ever told featured a strong man.

A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Somewhere on the road he was ambushed by bandits who robbed him, beat him and left him for dead. A priest came along, noticed the victim lying in the road, and kept going, hugging the opposite side of the road. A Levite came along. He, too, kept going. Then a Samaritan came along.

He stopped, bound up the victim's wounds, then lifted the man onto his donkey and transported him to an inn. The Samaritan nursed the robbery victim through the night. In the morning, he paid the inn keeper for the night and paid extra to have the inn-keeper look after the man until he was back on his feet (Luke 10).

Jesus told this story in response to a question about just what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves.

When we ask, “What is God's will for our lives?” the answer is: Love. Love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. Because loving others takes strength we have an inescapable moral duty to cultivate strength, to safeguard our physical health.

Adventists have long taught that taking care of our health is a moral obligation. God wants us to be lovers. And loving requires strength. It takes muscles to put somebody on a donkey. It takes muscles to clean toilets, hold babies, shovel snow, drive a car, give a massage. Our bodies are the essential tools in acts of love and so taking care of our bodies is clearly a moral obligation.

Another story. This not a story told BY Jesus, but a story told ABOUT Jesus. Jesus was teaching in a synagogue one Sabbath. He noticed a woman there who was crippled and bent over. She had suffered from this condition for 18 years. Jesus called the woman forward. “Woman,” he said, “you are set free from your infirmity.” He placed his hands on her and immediately she straightened up and praised God (Luke 13).

It is the quintessential picture of the ministry of Jesus. When he comes into contact with human suffering he immediately takes action. He heals. He restores.

Christians are followers of Jesus, disciples, students of Jesus. We order our lives in harmony with the example and teaching of Jesus.

As God send Jesus, so Jesus sent his disciples (John 17:18). In Matthew, Jesus sent his disciples on mission saying, “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:8))

Jesus was a healer. We are to be healers. This is the foundation of the Adventist hospital system and the the reason the Adventist church established a medical school in Loma Linda a hundred years ago (and more recently (1975) another in Montemorelos, Mexico and in 1994 another at Universidad Adventista del Plata in Argentina).

Loving people means participating in their healing, giving them aid. Acting as healers takes strength and health on the part of the healers. Helping people enjoy optimal health means far more than offering aid to the sick, it means teaching people how to avoid disease.

Medical and miraculous healings are wonderful ways to touch other people with love. Even more effective in the long run is helping people embrace healthy practices. Healthy habits are far more effective than miracles. Miracles, by definition are rare. The laws of health, by definition, are common. They work most of the time. (Not all the time.)

Teaching people to exercise, eat less and eat better is a far more productive way to deal with obesity than praying about it.

Lung cancer is far more reliably prevented by not smoking than it is cured by miracles or operations.

So both in obedience to the command to love and as an act homage as disciples of Jesus, we practice and teach healthy living.

You can find all sorts of lists of rules for healthy living. And once you go beyond the basics, sometimes the lists disagree with one another. But there are some basics that are incontrovertible.

First. Number one. Numero uno: Move. Walk. Bike. Jiggle. Dance. Do pushups. Lift weights. Swim. Do crunches. Stretch. Bend. Run. Healthy bodies move. And moving promotes health. So move. Park farther from the door of the store.

Number two. Eat better. Eat smarter. Eat less stuff that comes in fancy packaging. Beware of crinkly bags. Pretty much anything that comes in a crinkly bag is suspect – chips, Cheetos. Eat more veggies. Eat less sugar, less cheese, less meat.

Number three. Drink water. Beware of beverages other than water. Orange juice is not a health food. It is a desert. (The same is true of any fruit juice.) Soda is dangerous. Never use it to quench thirst.

Number four. Sleep.

The goal of all this healthy living is not to live forever. No degree of rigor in the pursuit of health will give us perpetual youth, much less eternal life. We all get sick. We will all die. We do not practice healthy living under the illusion that somehow it will keep us from experiencing pain and sickness and death.

Instead, we practice healthy living because we want to be strong enough to love well. We want to minimize down time when we are unavailable to serve others. We practice healthy living because we are lovers. Like God is.

(And we keep much humor and grace on hand. Part of being healthy is not fretting—about our own habits or the behavior of others. Do what you can right now, in the moment, to foster health, and laugh at your own failures and the failures of others. You'll get another chance tomorrow to get it right. Or not.)