Some churches and leaders have made a lucrative living off of Christ and His gifts, with their target audiences and consumers being those who are craving, jonesing for Christ and His gifts, those needing affirmation of who they are, and looking for peace of mind. The weak. Yet Jesus never put a price on free. Yet believers and nonbelievers are urged to invest, money and their lives in an institution and into a person hoping to receive peace in return. Yet, outside the confines of those walls of that institution they invest in, they find themselves bankrupt, in the red mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, of the peace that comes from a personal encounter with Jesus. Hence, these poor souls spend all their lives giving inside the framework of an institution yet having no peace outside those walls. They struggle with peace and happiness, never being able to take that peace and happiness within outside the confines of the walls of the Church; the Church becomes like a all you can eat restaurant that doesn't allow doggy bags (takeout containers). The woman with a bleeding issue had indirect contact with Jesus. Her faith told her that she didn't need to hear him speak, she didn't have to look him in his eyes, she didn't have to have him touch her, he didn't have to even know she existed, but if she could just touch the hem of his garment, she knew that she would receive the greatest healthcare. And she did and as she did, she was not only set free from her physical sickness but also from the emotional, mental, and spiritual traumas and stresses associated with and cause of her physical illness. She felt guilty for taking something without asking, so she confessed to Jesus that she was the one who touched him, but Jesus replied to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace (go with peace of mind, live in peace, take peace with you ) and be freed from your suffering.” Not only did she receive great healthcare, but she also received free healthcare. In other words, Jesus was saying to the women, 'Go on your way and take that peace with you wherever you go.'Jesus basically said the same thing to the demon-possessed man earlier in Matthew 5, who wanted to go with Jesus after Jesus cast the tormenting demons out of him, giving that man peace of body, soul, and spirit. But Jesus told him to go home to his own people and tell them the peace that God has given to you.
I think the most significant lesson believers should have learned from the pandemic is that their peace should not depend on or be found in the walls of a corporeal institution or in having access to a particular person. And that fellowship should be an amity, a sharing, not an addiction where one chases to find peace through contingency, in people, places, and things. It is not what one gives that makes them whole; it's what one receives. If you can't go in peace, if you can't take peace with you, if your peace is stationary and not mobile, if your peace is not transferable from one position to another, if your peace starts when you enter the doors of the Church and ends when you exit them and returns only when you reenter those doors days later, if your peace comes with any corporeal prerequisites, then you don't have peace. You have an addiction.
Mark 5:21-34, John 14:27
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