I once wanted to name a church “Christ the Transformer.” I knew it would never fly, but loved the multiple resonances to change and power it evoked. I’m reminded of this by Jesus’ statement in this week’s story that he felt power go out from him when a woman who suffered from incessant bleeding touched his clothes in hopes of being healed:
Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’
It is astonishing that Jesus could feel something had happened to him in that moment, and knew someone had touched his clothes. His disciples are incredulous, saying,
"You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, 'Who touched me?'"
Even more amazing is the fact that he felt an energy transfer from him to another person. This is yet another bible passage suggesting to me that God is pure energy, of a frequency we could not withstand were it not mediated for us. That is what an electric transformer does: it takes energy running on one current and transforms it so it can be used by appliances wired for a different current. Living overseas as a child, I was very familiar with transformers in the house.
Jesus was the Transformer extraordinaire, taking the energy current that birthed the universe and translating, mediating, making it usable for God’s creatures in the earthly realm. Even so, we can find that divine current too strong; that’s why sometimes people rest in the Spirit during Pentecostal services, or we may feel heat or tingling when we pray. Part of what it means to grow in faith, I believe, is to become able to withstand and channel a higher and higher frequency, or voltage, of spiritual power.
For we too are transformers as we grow into the likeness and ministry of Christ. We too receive the power of the heavens and transform it into a current that “runs appliances” – lifting up the lowly, healing the infirm, feeding the forgotten, forgiving the unforgivable. Every single time we exercise faith in the name of Christ we are mediating the power of the heavens to bring transformation and life to the things and creatures and people of this world.
Where have you been a transformer lately? Where are you called to mediate the power of heaven into someone’s life?
This coming weekend, many will participate in prayer vigils for the families torn apart and traumatized on our southern border. We will gather, people of faith of different traditions, to bring the heavenly into the earthly, to allow God to redeem, renew, revive, restore all things to wholeness. Even this broken country. Even our broken hearts. God’s transforming work is not complete until this whole world can run on God’s voltage.
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