"Healing"

                                                      2 Kings 5:1-14; Mark 1: 40-45

                                                                 Catherine Taylor

Blacksburg Presbyterian Church

                                                                February 12, 2012

 

When I looked at the lectionary to see what the text would be for today

       I was pleased that the gospel was a story about healing.

The Malawi Committee had already decided

      that today we would emphasize  

            the church’s ongoing projects in Malawi in worship.

We chose to do it in worship, rather than over lunch,

      so that today would be less about talk and more of a celebration

            and a time for some wonder over the relationship God has wrought

                  between people in Africa and a Virginia church.

It is true that physical healing has been part of BCP’s work in Malawi

      because of the long relationship the church had

            with Dr. Sue Macon and her medical mission there.

And also because of the on-going nursing scholarships we provide

      that are training Malawian women and men   to give basic care

            in a very under-served country.

The agriculture and food programs we support also promote health,

      as do the school classrooms this church helped build.

            There are many kinds of healing, after all.

 

There is emotional healing.

      A woman once came to the church I served in Ithaca for help to buy a tank of gas.

On the way to the gas station she told me she’d been raised

      in a series of foster care homes because her mother was an addict.

            She had run away from every foster family except one,

                  an older couple she lived with for the four years of high school.

                        “Until them,” she said “I didn’t know that there was another way.”

            There is such a thing as emotional healing.

                  She had a stable marriage and she and her husband were on their way

                        to Chicago to find work.

 

Healing can also refer to the reconciliation of broken relationships.

      I performed a wedding once for a bitter man

            who refused to see or speak to his adult son.

                  The new wife, who was my parishioner, quietly opened up communication

                        after the son and his wife had their first child.

      Slowly the riff healed as the grandchild grew.

            Today you would not know there had ever been a cut-off in that family.

 

Finally there is the health of whole communities and nations.

      What will happen in Syria is anyone’s guess, now that

            what began as nonviolent protests against the Assad regime

                  has the look of civil war.

Neighboring countries are crying out for international intervention,

      afraid that tensions in Lebanon will ignite.

            Fighting has already spilled over into Lebanon along tribal lines.

Of all the outcomes of Arab Spring,

       what’s happening in Syria has the most potential to affect

              the political health of an entire region and maybe the world.

The healing Jesus brings certainly has as much to do

      with kingdoms of the earth as it does with individual health.

 

Other things are going on in the story.

      For one thing, there is a powerful undercurrent of claustrophobia,

            Jesus is surrounded on all sides

                  by so many people he can barely function.

Modern psychology might interpret Jesus’ command to the leper

            not to say anything as a plea not to be further swamped

                  with people asking to be healed.

                         But that view is of our time, not Mark's.

From the very start, Mark wants to save insight into Jesus’ saving identity

      until after the cross, because for Mark the cross is the only lens

                  through which the real Jesus can be seen.

 

Then there is the whole notion of how Jesus compares

      with great prophets of the past, prophets like Elisha,

            whose story of healing a leper Susan read in Second Kings.

Part of what is going on is Mark saying,

      “See, Jesus could heal lepers, too.

            And a leper more seriously ill than Naamon,

                  who was still allowed social contact, while this man was not.”

Thus the story fulfills a teaching role:

      "Jesus-is-more-than-a-prophet-like Elisha."

            But again, that is not the heart of things,

                  at least not for me on this particular day.

                        For me the heart of the matter is healing.

 

Our story is in the very first chapter of Mark when

      Jesus’ public ministry has just begun,

            and from the very beginning healing has been prominent.

After a time of trial in the desert, and the arrest of John,

      Jesus began his public ministry with the announcement

            that “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.”

The next thing we know he has called

      Simon, Andrew, James, and John to be disciples.

Very swiftly the story moves to Jesus casting out an unclean spirit.

      It wasn’t something he planned to do.

            He was in the middle of teaching in the synagogue,

                  when the unclean spirit recognized him and cried out in fear.

He ordered it to be silent,

      much as he does the man with leprosy in the story we read today.

He silenced and dispatched the whining spirit,

      and that healing, along with the startling directness of his teaching,

            became the basis of instant fame.

Mark uses the broadest possible terms to describe it

      saying Jesus’ fame spread everywhere

            “throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.”

The very next thing you know,

      Jesus is healing Simon’s mother in law.

And that evening, Mark tells us, all who were sick

      or possessed with demons were brought to him.

The picture is one of long lines of people on crutches,

      or carried on hastily-made stretchers,

            of children in arms, and old people leaning for support on

                  the shoulders of their adult sons and daughters.

They form a shifting crowd whose boundaries must have stretched well past

      the limits of Simon’s front porch light.

"The whole city was gathered together about the door,” says Mark.

      “And he healed many, and cast out many demons.”

            It is almost too big a picture to take in.

 

Next Jesus takes some needed time out

      to go to a lonely place to pray.  But it doesn't last long.

            The disciples come and say “Everyone is searching for you,”

I could not help but think of the cartoon

      a pastor friend of mine has on his door,

            which pictures a woman barging into the pastor’s study.

                  Finding him on his knees she says, “O good. You’re not busy.”

“Everyone is searching for you,” the disciples tell him,

      but Jesus does not go back to Simon’s house, and the longing crowd.

He says “Let’s go to the next town

      so that I may preach there, for that is why I came out.”

            Notice he says “Preach,” not “heal.”

That’s where we are today when the leper shows up,

      on a road somewhere.

According to Mark there isn’t anyone at this point who hasn’t heard about Jesus,

      so the leper comes and kneels before him saying,

            “If you choose, you can make me clean.”

 

Suddenly the movement of the story slows down.

      Mark, who has not yet in his gospel said one word

            about Jesus’ inner state of mind,

                  now tells us what he was feeling.

Our translation uses the word "pity" for Jesus response,

      but older texts of Mark use a different word,

            "indignant" or, better still, "angry."

Jesus was moved by anger when the leper appeared,

      not at the man, but at the diseased world

            that appeared around him wherever he turned,

                  and at the isolation illness brings.

 

Although most of us want to picture a tender Jesus who is moved by pity,

      a Jesus who is angered by illness and its attendant isolation,

            so angry he stops what he's doing to heal it,

                  is a good deal more powerful to me than pity.

I don’t know about you, but I am often moved to do a needful thing

            by anger or distress, rather than compassion.

So much of what we see in the world feels wrong,

      despite the explanations.

Why should it be that our children have not only books

      but roofs and walls around them while they learn,

            while other children have no such things?

Why were my children born in a hospital after all manner of prenatal care

      when mothers in Malawi may get no pre-natal care at all,

            and die in childbirth at one of the highest rates in the world?

It is alright, says this story, to be motivated for mission by anger as much as by concern.

      Call it pity, or indignation or anger,

            Jesus is moved to act and, he stretches out his hand,

                  and touches the leper.

 

The story slows to a crawl.

      It is slow because what is happening is astounding.

Lepers are not people to be touched, not even by healers.

      Elisha did not even come outside to Naaman.

It was believed at the time that certain skin diseases

      could be spread by touching, and people stricken with them

            were condemned to live on the edges of society,

                  away from the towns. This leper is one of those

                        whose suffering is social as well as physical.

"If you choose, you can make me clean," says the leper,

      and Mark draws our attention to Jesus’ feelings,

            then to his arm as it moves forward, to his hand as it makes contact

                  with one who has felt no one’s touch in who knows how long.

But that is not even the end.

      We look back at Jesus’ face as he says “I do choose; be clean.”

                  All of that is here in one incredible slow motion sentence.

 

How many people who are ill have prayed for

      this very scene to happen to them?

All right, Jesus is not among us in the flesh,

      but we believe in a risen Lord who is present with us in Spirit.

We don't believe in a heavenly idea,

      we believe in a Savior who is angered by illness and isolation

            who does act and is acting now

                   to heal us and the world we live in.

One of the people who ought to be here today is Lynn Barber.

      It was Lynn who helped set up our Malawi partnerships –

            who wrote the grant requests that brought in funds.

                  It was Lynn who made Ndalapa and Absalom feel at home. 

                        Many prayed for her release from the cancer that took her life.

And, as if that weren't enough, we all know of healings

      that can't be explained except from the standpoint of the miraculous.

How many times have faithful people pleaded with God

      “If you choose, you can make me well, whole, clean, healthy, strong.

            Please God, please, take this cup from me, make me well.”

                  And sometimes, not often, but sometimes, it happens.

 

“I do choose,“ says Jesus, “Be clean.”           

      And he tells the man to go and do the things necessary

            to end his social isolation, to show the priests that he is clean.

Again, the words and the tone he uses are harsh, (stern our text says)

      more harsh than they appear to us.

      Our bibles say the man should show himself "as a proof to the people"

            but the literal meaning is "as a testimony against them."

Jesus is still angry at the terrible suffering that results

      from being cut off from community.

Even his tone is harsh.  He “snorts” at the man not to tell anyone,

      it says in the Greek.

            The word is the same one used in the earlier story

                  about the unclean spirit.  He snorted at it "Be silent!"

 

But astonishingly the man disobeys.

      And I have to wonder whether the story is trying to tell us

            that healing is not something it is easy

                  or perhaps even possible to keep quiet about.

The healed man is unafraid of Jesus' sharp tone.

      He talks freely, as anyone would,

            and the press of people coming to Jesus for healing increases even more

                  so that he can’t even enter a town,

                        but ironically is forced to stay out in the countryside.

                              When the story is over Jesus has traded places with the leper.

 

I can’t answer the question that intrigues me most in this story: 

      Why people of faith who pray to God for healing

            are not healed more often in our time.

When I first wrote it, this was a seventeen page sermon

      in which I carefully laid out all the rationales

            about why healing doesn't always occur.

After I laid them all out I went running back

      as fast as I could to a road somewhere in Galilee.

Because not a single one of the theories

      about why more people aren't healed by prayer in our time,

            whatever rationale you might be thinking of now,

                  not a single one is supported by this story.  Not one.

 

This story says Jesus came to proclaim the kingdom of God is near

      and immediately people come to him for healing

            and many, not few, were healed.

A man asks for healing and Jesus' response

      is to stop what he’s doing and,

            in anger at the widespread destructiveness of disease,

                  to reach out his arm in rebellion and say to him

                        "I do choose, be made clean."

"I do choose" says God, and all the counter rationales in the world

      tumble over in a useless heap.

I don't know why people I have loved and prayed for,

      whom the church has loved and prayed for,

            have often times not been healed.

                  But I do know that often we pray for healing

                        as if it were a foolish or even a pointless thing to do.

Lynn Barber might be the first to say she did find healing;

      just not the kind that prevented her death.

 

What might happen if we simply decided

      to make Jesus' words "I do choose," the heart of healing.

"I do choose" we could hear God say every time we prayed for healing

      for ourselves or someone we love.

"I do choose" we could hear God say when the CAT Scan or the MRI is turned on.

      "I do choose" you could hear God say

            when the chemotherapy results aren't what you wanted or the pain is still there.

“I do choose” we could hear God say when we look at

      inequities and wrongs in the world that seem beyond bearing.

"I do choose" you could hear God say when fear comes close,

      and no other comfort is at hand.

"If you will," Jesus prayed to God in a garden

      "you can take this cup from me."

            "I do choose," said God on Easter morning.  AMEN