forest hill 
July 06, 2025
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
“The Price of Healing”
Out of the mists of time comes this Sunday’s dramatic miracle story about the healing of an enemy general.
This story has all the elements of a wonderful legend: the proud General whom everyone fears; the life-threatening illness that reminds us that even the powerful are subject to the laws of nature; the intervention by a humble slave girl and a miracle worker who won’t even deign to meet his patient in person. Healing happens when humility is served, and we’re left marvelling that a couple of “nobody’s” can make a difference when the wise fail.
It’s a common element to some of our favourite stories. In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron is defeated by Frodo the hobbit, not Aragorn the warrior. Harry Potter the child defeats Voldemort; Matilda bests her neglectful parents and a tyrannical headmistress; the convict Jean Valjean rises above poverty to become a force for good in Les Misérables. We love underdog stories. What a wonderful way to pass the time on a steamy summer Sunday! That fact that this one comes to us from 900 years before Jesus walked the Earth doesn’t make the story any less engaging or delightful. Underdogs have an impact to astonish the rest of the world, and the proud should take note.
In real life can the underdogs win? Or do we tell these sorts of stories just to cheer ourselves up because so often they (we?) are crushed by the tyrants and monsters?
Ours has never been a religion to trumpet conventional power. Abraham was a nomad, not a landowner. Jacob was the tricky second son who ended up with the inheritance. Moses was a murderer with a stammer. David was a child, and the 7th son of a shepherd, when he slew Goliath. John the Baptist ate bugs, and Jesus was the son of an unwed mother. None of the Biblical heroes were powerful by the world’s standards. Even Israel itself was anything but a world leading nation; it was sandwiched between two superpowers and almost always paying tribute to one or the other. God has a strange way of changing the world, to work through heroes like that, instead of through the rich and famous.
What kind of power do slave girls have over generals? What kind of power do shepherds have over giants? What kind of power do Canadians have over the American Empire? What kind of power truly makes a difference to all the ills and evils that drag us all down?
Join us on Sunday for a delightful underdog story, and ponder with us why these stories still have something to say about how God is redeeming the world.
In July and August, we worship in person and online, Sundays at 10:30