August 14, 2005

ORLANDO, Fla. – The Rev. E. Roy Riley Jr., told voting members and guests of the 2005 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) that "we pretty much mastered the miracle of distance healing."

The churchwide assembly, the chief legislative authority of the ELCA, met here Aug. 8-14 at the World Center Marriott and Convention Center. About 2,300 people participated, including 1,018 voting members. The theme of the biennial assembly was "Marked with the Cross of Christ Forever."

"What we struggle with is looking into each other's eyes and connecting heart-to-heart to learn what is there, to learn who is there," said Riley, bishop of the ELCA New Jersey Synod and chair of the ELCA Conference of Bishops. Riley preached during worship Aug. 14.

From the Gospel of Matthew, Riley focused on the story about a Palestinian woman, a Canaanite, who asks Jesus to heal her "demon-filled" daughter. Jesus, a Jew, turns her away saying he was sent only for the "lost sheep of the house of Israel."

"Did Jesus actually say that? Can this whole encounter be any more out of character for the Jesus we thought we knew?" Riley asked.

"If we are confident about Jesus' true humanity as we about Jesus' true divinity, then we can believe that Jesus grew up in a community that taught him boundaries between Gentiles, Canaanites, Palestinians and Jewish people," Riley said. "As far as we know this unanticipated visit with the Canaanite woman is the only time Jesus ventures across this boundary."

Riley said the Canaanite woman's heart is "filled with some kind of God-given faith that Jesus can save her daughter. And, upon her persistence and insistence, Jesus looked at her again, saw a woman of great faith and healed her daughter.

"The experience of it is so dramatic that the healing flows long distance to wherever her little daughter was lying helpless," said Riley. "Matthew's Gospel says the sickness left her instantly. ‘Great is your faith' Jesus says to the woman. ‘Let it be done for you as you wish.'"

Riley pointed out the "ironic reflection" of Matthew's story in the Lutheran Church. "We pretty much mastered the miracle of distance healing" through "Lutheran World Relief, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the Lutheran World Federation, ELCA World Hunger Appeal, International Disaster Relief" as example, he said.

"We can make jokes about our various pieties" but "there was a point where Jewish disciples had to get over Jewish piety and the tradition of the elders, so that they could at least try to see into the hearts of others the way Jesus would look at them – with eyes focused by God's amazing grace," Riley told worshippers.

"In this tiny story, this border incident between Jesus and a Palestinian woman, is written the promise of healing and life restored, not just for one mother's child but for the children of Israel and all God's children to the end of the earth," said Riley. "We are healed and life is restored, and the gift of faith that makes it so overflows into acts of love and mercy and justice and peace and distance healing for the children of Niger and every child of God."

ELCA News Service