Matthew 9:12, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”
As Americans living in a first-world nation, we have the best of medical care readily accessible for all of us. Forget about the complexities of healthcare’s availability for the poor and the greed of insurance companies, or whether or not we should have socialised healthcare; that is not the issue here. We live in a place that offers some of the world’s best medical care. When you are sick and you walk into a hospital or clinic, everything you need is already there for you: medicine, doctors, nurses, a bed, operating rooms, and surgical instruments. As a patient, you do not need to worry about any of these things.
So, too, everything is readily available to us at the Great Physician’s hospital (church). We are all sick with the cancer called sin; therefore, we are all in need of Jesus. We need only to trust Jesus as our Great Physician to care for our souls and to put us to bed once the cancer finally takes its toll; and Jesus the Great Physician will raise us from death, totally cured from our cancer. In the now, the Great Physician offers the remedies of the Word and Sacraments to cure our souls. Just as doctors work through means called medicine and procedures, so Christ the Great Physician works through means called Word and Sacrament.
Your pastor, too, is a physician of souls. He is not the Great Physician, but one could say your pastor is one of the nurses who works under the Great Physician. A nurse cares for you before the doctor arrives to help cure you. In the same way, your pastor cares for your soul, pointing you to Christ the Great Physician who gives you the ultimate cure of the Gospel. If your heart aches, know how much the Great Physician’s heart aches so much more for you, whose heart was broken for you in His death and began beating again for you in His resurrection.
The Lutheran Column 