Physical Therapy
Ephesians 1:15-23
15 Since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, this is the reason that 16 I don’t stop giving thanks to God for you when I remember you in my prayers. 17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, will give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation that makes God known to you. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart will have enough light to see what is the hope of God’s call, what is the richness of God’s glorious inheritance among believers, 19 and what is the overwhelming greatness of God’s power that is working among us believers. This power is conferred by the energy of God’s powerful strength. 20 God’s power was at work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and sat him at God’s right side in the heavens, 21 far above every ruler and authority and power and angelic power, any power that might be named not only now but in the future. 22 God put everything under Christ’s feet and made him head of everything in the church, 23 which is his body. His body, the church, is the fullness of Christ, who fills everything in every way.
Luke 24:44-53
44 Jesus said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the Law from Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. 46 He said to them, “This is what is written: the Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and a change of heart and life for the forgiveness of sins must be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 Look, I’m sending to you what my Father promised, but you are to stay in the city until you have been furnished with heavenly power.”
50 He led them out as far as Bethany, where he lifted his hands and blessed them. 51 As he blessed them, he left them and was taken up to heaven. 52 They worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem overwhelmed with joy. 53 And they were continuously in the temple praising God.
May 16, 2021
On the day after Christmas I fell down our stairs. They were new stairs, recently stained and finished, and I was wearing socks and rushing around. So, my sock feet slipped out from under me, I lost my balance, and I thudded down the stairs on my left side.
It was deeply painful, and it was sad. I love the holidays, but the 2020 Holiday season was weird and not how I like it. We’d either cancelled family plans, or made all kinds of compromises in order to see our families safely - outside in the stupid cold, without coffee or bloody mary’s, without Christmas carols on the stereo. It was the right choice and I’d choose it again, but dang Christmas was sad last year. And so the day after Christmas, when I fell down the stairs and landed in a heap on the floor, I just stayed there. Not because I could not get up, but because I was sad.
I’d reached my limit. After 9 months of feeling utterly powerless to change the world around me, my own feet had revolted. I had lost my balance and lost control. All the powerlessness that I had felt during the pandemic fell with me, and landed on top of me, keeping me on that floor. But, I have two great kids, a compassionate spouse, and a very licky dog who sat with me until I was ready to stand up.
I carried the marks from that fall for weeks. I’ve never seen bruises like the ones I had. They were hard to look at in the beginning, but they were, in retrospect an accurate reflection of my deep soreness and fatigue, both physical and emotional. After a couple of weeks the deep purple began to fade. I became less sore in my hip, leg, and foot. But I never got to be completely pain free, even though the bruising went away entirely. When March arrived and my shoulder was still hurting, I saw my doctor, and she referred me to physical therapy.
At my first appointment my Physical Therapist, Trey, asked me at least one hundred questions, and then moved my arm, neck, back and shoulder all over including making it hurt on purpose, and then asking follow up questions about the pain. After an hour of this he explained what I’d done - a labral tear in my shoulder. And I said, “Oh, so if I tore a muscle I just need a sling right? I should stop using it so it can heal?” He literally laughed at me. Then through his n95 mask he said “It’s not a muscle. It’s connective tissue, and the last thing you should do is stop using it.”
So now I go twice a week so that Trey can show me exactly how to work my shoulder so it can heal. Isn’t that crazy? I am seeking out uncomfortable exercises, difficult stretches, weird ways of leaning on walls, and lifting heavy things, all because it is making my shoulder better.
Sometimes when I go I lie down on a table and Trey pokes around on my back, neck, and shoulder until he finds a muscle that’s all knotted up. He presses down on it and says, “That hurts?” And I’m like “yeah.” And then he stands up so he can get more leverage and he pushes harder and then he says, “Ok, let me know when it hurts less.” And he just keeps pushing on it until the muscle lets go of the knot.
So, getting better is not as simple as just avoiding pain. In fact, avoiding pain is part of my problem. I’ve been holding my body very carefully to avoid pain from the injury. That means that I have not been using my full range of motion and some of my muscles are weak and out of shape. But I’ve been over-using some other muscles - holding them really tightly for too long. I did not realize until I started physical therapy that I’d been holding them so tightly, that I’d forgotten how to relax them.
I’m retraining both my muscles and my brain, and I’m learning to discern the difference between a muscle that needs to stretch or get stronger, a muscle that needs to relax, and a muscle that needs someone to push on it, so that it can let go.
Discernment. It is a part of a healthy life, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Knowing when to stretch and work on something. Knowing when to relax and let something go. Knowing when to push on something because it’s stuck. I knew as soon as I saw this morning’s reading from Ephesians that, since it has the word POWER in it six times, I’d have to deal with it. Like Trey pushing on a tight muscle, I knew that facing my own powerlessness during the pandemic and kind of pressing on it until it didn’t hurt so bad, was my work to do with this text.
So, Ephesians. Maybe it’s just my issue with powerlessness, but my first thought was, “ENOUGH already. God is powerful. We get it.” It turns out though that it sounds awkward and redundant because English just cannot keep up with the original greek, which has more than one word for Power, and the nuance of the author’s word choice gets lost in our translation.
I’m not going to go through all of these interesting greek words for power, but I want to point out two of them. First is the word Dynamis which can be translated as power, but it could also be translated as ability. It is inherent power, or even potential power that is not necessarily in use. Isn’t that a clever distinction? My car has power, even when it’s sitting in the driveway turned off. My hand has power, even when it’s folded in my lap. I have the ability to activate the power, but I don’t activate it all the time.
The other word in this passage that intrigues me is the greek word Energeia which helps to describe power at work, it is the exercise of power. When I crank my car, Energeia is the shift from potential to action. It’s the power shift that happens when I take my hand at rest, and activate it to type on my laptop, stir my coffee, or make a fist.
The author’s choice to use both of these words changes something in my understanding of power and powerlessness. Using DYNAMIS to describe God’s power is saying that God CAN do anything. God has infinite might, strength, power, and ability, God created the world and could end it. God gave us life and could take it away. God could have made Jesus a royal demagogue with an army that rules the world even today. But while God has infinite power, and COULD do anything, God doesn’t do everything. God’s power is actualized in intentional ways.
And that’s where Energeia comes in. In verse 18 the author is sharing his prayers for the readers - that they would know the power (dynamis) that is working through them, and then verse 19 is struggling under the weight of English to explain that God’s dynamis is working in them, through Energeia - through God activating God’s power. And then the author tells us that this same power that is working through us, God’s active power, was accomplished, or actualized in Christ’s resurrection.
So, to bring this Greek lesson to a close, God’s potential power is unlimited. God can do anything. The author of Ephesians is reminding us that God exercised that power in Christ’s resurrection. God’s power is actualized to bring life where there is no life, and God's exercise of that power also powers us.
With that distinction in mind, I am reframing my powerless feelings of the last year. There were only a few times when I was actually powerless.
My husband, Andy, was hit by a car while riding his bike last April, I met the ambulance outside the hospital, but that was all I could do. I watched from the curb while paramedics rolled him into the emergency room on a gurney, because I could not cross the threshold of the hospital. I went home, powerless, and my lack of control, and lack of access in that moment turned to deep anxiety and fear. And I’m not over it still. I’m not God, my power is not infinite, and that hurts sometimes.
So, yes, I experienced powerlessness. But I also made plenty of choices about how to use my power over the last 15 months, and the choice NOT to use my power is itself a powerful choice. It’s a choice that God makes all the time.
When I got tired of wearing a mask I could have stopped wearing one. When I felt sad about having a socially distant Christmas I could have pressured my family to have a normal one. When I got tired of recording and RE-recording my prayers and sermons for streaming worship I could have made a stink with the staff and the Public Health Advisory Team to push forward with opening the church before they felt it was safe to do that. I’ve had four brain swabs to make sure I didn’t have Covid so that I could see my family over the last year. All of them negative. That was a choice, and I didn’t have to make it.
Even in those times when I was actually rendered powerless, those moments were not the end. Andy rolled into that hospital and I had to let him go without me. But he rolled back out in a wheelchair and a back brace 36 hours later and I got to take him home. In the days and weeks that followed I almost used up all of my power to keep him comfortable and help him find his strength. And you all helped me do that, with meals, and coffee deliveries, and prayers and notes and texts of encouragement. That was you, activating God’s power, with me. The power that nurtures life, when life is struggling.
So now, as things are returning to normal, I am asking questions about how to use my power, and when.
If your calendar and your email inbox looks anything like mine, you’re watching it fill up. People are vaccinated and looking to reconnect. Restaurants, stores, and summer camps are making adjustments to re-open or open more fully. So are churches.
Honestly, it’s stressing me out. I know a lot of folks are ready to get back to normal, but the juggling act of parenting unvaccinated kids, working full-time, and surviving isn’t over for a lot of us. And even if everything was suddenly fine and I could go back to my pre-pandemic levels of activity and business, there’s something in me that tightens up at the thought of that.
When I feel that twinge of stress, I want to remember my power. Just because I can do something, doesn’t mean I should. And choosing NOT to do something is not a powerless choice. God makes it all the time.
In the reading from Luke’s Gospel that Ginny shared this morning, Jesus ascends. And the last thing he says to his disciples is to stay put, and wait for what God is sending them. And what God is sending them is heavenly power, and the greek word there in that sentence is DYNAMIS. It is not necessarily power at work, it might be power at rest. But if it is power at work, we know how God used it - resurrection. New life.
Getting better is more complicated than just ignoring pain, or avoiding it. In fact, that is part of our problem. We’ve been ordering our lives very carefully to avoid getting sick and getting other people sick. That means that we have not been using our full range of motion and some of our social and emotional muscles are weak and out of shape. But we’ve been over-using some other muscles - holding them really tightly for too long. We may realize that we’ve been holding them so tightly for so long, that we’ve forgotten how to relax them.
We will have to retrain ourselves, physically and emotionally. And we will have to practice discernment if we want to use our power as God does - resurrection and new life.
Sometimes new life requires us to stretch and get stronger. Sometimes new life needs us to relax and let go. Sometimes new life makes us realize that we are stuck, and we have to push something out to make room for something new. Amen.
