If This Doesn’t Bother You, That’s a Problem (w/ Fr. Mike Schmitz)

I can see myself being one of the people in the crowd going, oh, for Pete's sake, he's got edema. Can you cure my athlete's foot, Lord? This guy with edema, like he can last another day. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and this is Ascension Presents. You know, there are some stories in the Gospels that strike me as like, why? What's your deal, man? Come on, bro. Like, what is your big hangup? And one of those recurring stories in the Bible is when Jesus heals someone on the Sabbath, and all of these other people are angry about it. Like, not just kind of like annoyed, but angry. I wonder like, what is going on in your life, man, that you can't rejoice because someone got healed, even if it's on a Sabbath? I was reading through Luke's gospel. There's a story of a man who comes before Jesus and he has dropsy. And so Jesus heals him of dropsy. And he even says, if your ox fell into a well, you wouldn't get him out on a Sabbath. So this person, right? That's the context of the story. And I was thinking about this and thinking, okay, here are people who, again, they're genuinely angry at Jesus. That's what Luke describes. They're angry with him for healing this person on a Sabbath. So I've been really, really wondering, pondering this, turning it over my head again. Why? What in me, and this is what I have to ask, what in me has potential for this? Because we all have the potential for this. I think when it comes to anything in the spiritual life, whenever we see the bad thing, we have to know. That's also in my heart, right? I've been turning this over in my brain and in my heart saying, Okay God where could that be mean And then I just kind of focused on one of the details in the gospel And it said this man again had dropsy I was like well what dropsy So I went to the internet and said what dropsy And dropsy is edema. So it's a gathering of fluid in the limbs, typically. On one hand, this guy has maybe swollen feet or swollen hands, swollen legs. He has edema, right? Just swelling. Now, obviously, this can get really serious. But I was just picturing, okay, what if this was not life threatening, but really inconvenient for this guy, right? And Jesus says, today's the day. Today's the day I see you. Today's the day you're in front of me. Today's the day you're asking for help. So today's the day I'm going to heal you. I can see myself being one of the people in the crowd going, oh, for Pete's sake, he's got edema. What the heck? You know, he's like, can you cure my athlete's foot, Lord? And have that sense of me of saying like, no, the rule here is the Sabbath. Keep holy the Sabbath. No working on the Sabbath. This guy with edema, like he can last another day. Now, again, I'm just trying to find out what part of it is, what part of this whole thing is in my heart. Which is why I love that Jesus says, like who among you, if your animal falls into a pit, you wouldn't get them out on a Sabbath? I think what Jesus is saying is, he's like, listen, the law actually says you can do stuff like this. The law says that if your animal or your child falls into a well into a pit like you can save them on a Sabbath The issue is you don think this person with edema is that important Yeah, if it was your son, if it was your daughter, if it was your animal even, you would say, well, that's important. That's important to me. And so yeah, get them out on the Sabbath. But you don't think this guy with edema is that important. He's not important to you. That's the issue. The issue is not that he's not hurting. The issue is not that he's not here. The issue is not that I can't do this. The issue is not even that the law prohibits this. The issue is his suffering doesn't matter enough to you because he doesn't matter enough to you. This is one of those things I keep coming back to. Again, this is my heart to be able to say, wow, Lord, where is that in my heart? Where I could say, come back tomorrow. It's just edema. And Jesus is like, yeah, but if it was yours, you wouldn't say, I'll come back tomorrow. if it was you, he'd say, God, please now. If it was your child, he wouldn't say, I'll come back tomorrow. If it was your child, he'd say, God, please do it now. Again, the issue wasn't even the law. The law allowed, the law permitted things like this. The issue was the heart. And the issue was the fact that those, certain of those people in that crowd, they didn't care enough about the man standing in front of them. because if he mattered to them, they wouldn't be angry that Jesus healed them. They would celebrate they rejoice And that the thing for us What is it in our hearts that refuses to celebrate when someone is set free It refuses to celebrate when someone is helped. It refuses to celebrate when God does something great in their lives. My guess is it's that same thing. Not that what just happened was not good, but the person to whom it happened didn't matter to me. And so what I say is this, my heart has to change. It's called magnanimity. It's just a fun word to say, to become magnanimous, which means large hearted, of large spirit, of large soul. And to recognize that God's graces, God's gifts, God's blessings, there are more than enough to go around and everyone matters. anyways I just think it's important for for me to say God when I see something going wrong I have to ask myself where could that go wrong in my heart and I found it out when the individual when the person in front of me when they don't matter to me but I want to be a Christian I want to be someone who's like Jesus which means everyone has to matter everyone gets to matter and everyone hopefully gets madder to you too. So magnanimity, be magnanimous. Have that large heart, that large spirit that recognizes everyone matters. Anyways, from all of this, if this is what presents, my name is Father Mike. God bless.