Love and Prayer for the Sick

How can we really assist those whose families have been seriously disrupted by a chronic disease? I must admit that I am saddened by my fellow Christians for failing to reach out with truth, love and prayer to the sick and distressed. I am puzzled by it. Are you?

Joni Ericson Tada has been preaching and teaching about this idea for decades. Yet, few churches respond. They must have a reason.

The key story about outreach, evangelism and witnessing is found in Luke 10:34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

Despite this, very few Christians who call themselves Evangelicals actually follow the commands of Jesus in Luke 10 and especially this verse.  

I think this story by Jesus is another way of telling us to love the unlovable. The man who was served was a Jew. In the terms of modern Evangelicals, "A godly man that loved God with his whole heart". (Don't write to correct me. I know that kind of exaggeration among us is wrong but it is the way many of us talk.)   

The others who came by saw the godly man and hurried on away from him. But the guy who stopped, gave him CPR, mouth to mouth and the Heimlich Maneuver, was a loathsome member of a hated, despised and rejected half-breed group from Samaria. The stigma of the Samaritans was well known to Jesus and he purposely used him as an example of a man that loved God by his actions. In today's terms Jesus might have used a person with AIDS. 

The Samaritan anointed the wounded Jew with oil as an ointment and disinfectant. It might be called "The 'Balm of Gilead' or 'The Oil of Gladness. Obviously oil was important to the meaning of the parable. 

Can anyone explain why anointing oil is no longer important to Christians when it was to Jesus and his brother James?

Shalom,

Gary Sweeten

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