Scripture: Mark 1:21-28
Those of you who were here last Sunday know that the scripture that was just read a moment ago is that same one that was read last Sunday. Those of you who were here last Sunday also know that the reason we’re hearing the same passage a second time is not because of my short term memory loss, but because this short passage gave me too much to deal with in one sermon. Last week I chose to focus just on the theme of “authority”, and even then couldn’t say everything I had on my mind to say, much less everything that might be said, but the rest will wait for another time. This week, referring to that same scripture, my words will center around the notion of healing—a large subject and again clearly one that I will hardly scratch the surface of, but so be it.
The scripture passage contains the story of a healing. In a way, it’s a straightforward story that is similar to dozens of others in the scriptures. Jesus spreads mud on the eyes of a blind man and the man’s vision is restored. He lays his hands on a woman who has been bent over for years and she is able to stand up. He is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage and her bleeding stops. He speaks and a man who was mute is able to speak in return. Just in the same chapter in Mark there are accounts where Jesus takes the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law and her fever goes away. He touches a leper and the leprosy disappears. He is described as going throughout the country “casting out demons”. And in the passage we heard (for the second time) this morning, Jesus speaks to an unclean spirit that has taken hold of a man and causes the spirit to come out of the man. We are not told precisely what this spirit did to the man, but whatever it was, it’s gone.
Now…these are all stories of miraculous healings, and they provoke the kinds of questions that miracle stories do. Do I believe in the possibility of miracles, then or now? Do I believe in direct, divine intervention in human affairs? Do I believe Jesus had superhuman, miraculous powers? What really happened? Are there what we would now see as scientific explanations for what these stories are trying to describe? Do I believe there is such a thing as dramatic, instantaneous faith healings?
And then there are not so much what I would think of as questions but more like wonderings that might be connected to these stories. I wonder about the complex interaction of mind and will and body and spirit and how all those things together might work for healing, and stories like this do reawaken my sense of wonder about such things. I wonder if the various non-physical dimensions of healing, many of them currently being studied by disciplined research, can someday be understood and described and predicted scientifically, or whether there will always in the nature of things be something mysterious about how healing takes place. These healing stories about Jesus in the gospels can trigger lots of different kinds of thoughts related to healing.
But so far I have told you what I am mostly not going to talk about this morning. What I do want to talk about…well, let me limit them to three things. I’ll just be able to mention each one briefly anyway. They are all inspired by the scripture, though maybe indirectly more than directly.
First thing: There is a difference between curing and healing, or at least there can be a difference between curing and healing. We sometimes don’t recognize that distinction. We speak, for instance, of the healings that Jesus performed having in mind those times when he made a sick person well or when he restored some physical ability, say sight to a blind person.
But that is not always what healing is about. Sometimes there is healing that can take place even though there is some illness that doesn’t go away. Maybe there is peace to be made perhaps with one’s past, or with some person, or with letting go of life itself, and that peace is real healing even though a disease may still be there. It is possible, in fact it is not at all uncommon in my experiences with people in the ministry, for people say to have a life threatening illness, and yet in spite of that, or because of it, to feel closer to God than they have ever felt, to be much clearer about what’s important than ever before, to sense the preciousness of each day more than ever before. It is possible, and not uncommon, for a person to go through a very painful experience and for the hurt never to go away and never to be healed in that sense, but for a healing of some kind to occur in another part of the person’s life, drawing closer to someone perhaps, or discovering some new more purposeful path to travel.
Regaining an ability to walk or being cured of leprosy are undeniably good things, but they are not the only kinds of healing. When Jesus touched someone with leprosy he was already performing a healing act, whether or not the leprosy went away. He was overcoming the social isolation that went with the disease. When Jesus, as I am pretty sure he did, saw a person who others called a leper and saw instead a person, with leprosy, it was an act of healing all by itself. When Jesus looked into the eyes of someone who others chose not to see, that was a healing too, even if the affliction, whatever it was, remained. There are many kinds of healing that are not cures, miraculous or otherwise, and it’s important that we not let the Biblical descriptions of Jesus’ curing people obscure the kinds of healings that may be ours to offer and to receive, and that do not require miraculous powers. That’s all there in the Bible too, but we tend to get distracted by the descriptions of spectacular events. Real healing, it occurs to me, is often not instantaneous or spectacular.
Second thing: It is not always so clear who is most in need of healing. There are, as I was just saying, many kinds of healing and also many kinds of needs for healing. It is not just that this person here who has an illness of some kind may not find healing for that illness but may experience healing in other ways that are important in their own right. It is also that there may be, there surely is, a need for healing in others as well, in all of us, not just in those who happen to have some definable illness or diagnosable condition.
So here we have a story about Jesus healing someone with an unclean spirit, whatever that referred to. And that’s fine. And I’m happy for the man in the story whose quality of life was presumably improved. But I also wonder about the other people, the people around the edges of the story, the witnesses to this healing. Maybe they needed healing too, and maybe they recognized it and maybe they didn’t. Maybe there was among them a person who had always wanted to be a doctor but who was instead a shepherd because people had told her that she wasn’t capable of being a doctor and because society said that women shouldn’t be doctors—or a doctor who had fallen out of love with the practice of medicine and who longed to return to the simple joys of being a shepherd. Maybe there was someone there who had been the mayor of the town for thirty years and had lots of people every day asking him for favors or telling him what he should do, but who had no one to say, “I love you.” Maybe there was someone there who was just plain greedy in an addictive sort of way, the way someone else might be addicted to alcohol. Maybe there was someone there who hated Samaritans. And all around was a society which didn’t recognize the full humanity of Samaritans or women or people with unclean spirits. Needs for healing all around. Massive needs for healing on all fronts. When we read the Biblical story it is important to imagine those other needs for healing that may have been present then, because it is important to recognize such other needs all around us, and in ourselves.
Third thing: Jesus healed people. Praise the Lord. He also, praise the Lord, welcomed into his circle of blessedness people who were not healed. And the second thing may be the better news of the gospel than the first. It is good news that some people as a result of their encounters with Jesus were healed—healed of their physical blindness, or their spiritual blindness, or of their addiction or bigotry. It is all good news. It is even better news that being fully healed is not what being the people of God is all about. We come unhealed into the circle of God’s beloved people. We come into God’s kingdom, God’s realm, unhealed. Every single one of us does. And the parts of ourselves that are unhealed make us who we are. It’s a little bit of a tricky thing because there are some things we really do need to healed of—racism for instance—and so although we may acknowledge the unhealed parts of ourselves in that regard, and acknowledge that everyone is a child of God, racism itself is not something that can be embraced. There are also unhealed parts of ourselves that we wish away or pray away if we could, but if they are there they do not in the smallest fraction reduce the God-belovedness of the person, and indeed they become part of who we are and make us who we are, and they become part of the differences we cherish in each other and do embrace. We cannot compassionately wish that Jesus would not heal the man with an unclean spirit. But if he is not healed, he is still part of the beloved community, just as he is.
It is what communion is about. We come to this welcome table very much aware of the unhealed parts of ourselves, the brokenness of our lives. We come with prayers for healing, for all sorts and kinds of healing. We cannot do less than pray for the woundedness of our lives, the moral failings and the disease and the dis-ease and all that makes human hearts ache, that all this would disappear. But we come knowing it has not and does not disappear. Our lives remain unhealed in so many ways, and we come to the communion table scarred and wounded, with aching hearts that will not go away, and yet nevertheless, in spite of it all, knowing that we are blessed, knowing that we are blessed. Amen.
Jim Bundy
February 5, 2006