|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Deuteronomy 18:15–20 |
Psalm 111: 1–7, 10 |
1 Corinthians 8:1–13 |
Mark 1:21–28 |
Garrison Keillor retells the old joke about a patient who complained to his doctor: “I don’t know what is wrong with me. Even searching the medical internet sites hasn’t helped. I hurt all over my body, but never at the same time. If I touch my shoulder, it hurts. If I touch my leg back here, it hurts. If I touch my ear, it hurts. It even hurts when I touch my toes.” “I think I know what’s wrong,” the doctor quickly replied. “But how could you?” gasped the patient, “you haven’t run a single test, and because I hurt in so many places, it can’t be a simple diagnosis.” “I believe that you’ve broken your finger,” replied the doctor. Our society with all its sophistication, advanced knowledge and astounding speed, often finds it very difficult to identify and name where it really hurts.
Nowadays we tend to be a little embarrassed about the stories of Jesus healing in the Gospels. They seem so naive. When measured against modern medical science, they seem to be like the fantasy play of young children. However, the healing stories contain a very important capsule of the Good News and perhaps that is one of the reasons the Gospel of Mark binds together the story of Jesus calling his first disciples with his initial teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum and the healing of a man beset with a devil.
At one time the only way society thought it could protect itself was to quarantine the hopelessly sick—putting the contagious lepers in colonies away from civilization, or sending the deranged out into the desert, or putting those, who would not keep away and stay isolated, into prisons. All those whom society traditionally cast out and considered cursed, were precisely those whom Jesus sought out and healed. Jesus’ healings encompass a madman overcome by an evil spirit, another who lived among the tombs of the dead and could not be restrained, horribly disfigured lepers, and a woman with a blood disease could not worship with her neighbors because she was considered unclean and who had spent all she had on doctors. The Gospels contain a story of a foreign pagan woman who lived outside the boundaries of Judaism who quite aggressively entreated Jesus to heal her child, and the servant of an army officer of the thoroughly despised Roman occupation. There seems to be a story of Jesus healing every conceivable outcast of his time and culture.
Sometimes Jesus said just a word; sometimes Jesus laid his hands upon the sick victim’s head; and sometimes Jesus used a poultice of mud and saliva, but at no time did Jesus demand payment or personal homage in return. Jesus brokered no deals; Jesus just went out and healed.
By example Jesus offered the world the good news of God’s three-point health plan: 1. Universal coverage—no one is left out or out of reach from God’s healing grace, 2. Guaranteed availability of care—there is no shortage or limits of God’s love and it won’t run out, no matter what the demand, and 3. It is God’s gift—you don’t need to mortgage your house or your future.
That is why the meaning behind Jesus’ healing is not about the practice of primitive folk medicine versus modern medical science. The healings in the Gospels were framed in the language and thought of their time for people would not have understood them in any other way. Yet Jesus is setting an example of the way God’s vision for the healing of humanity becomes reality on this earth. Jesus gives his disciples the points of God’s health plan for the world, and then sends us out to sell it and work it out.
We are sent to proclaim that it is far better to heal and face our fears than to isolate them; that preventing sickness is far better than isolating the sick; that care offers far better dividends than neglect, and that no one is beyond hope or irrevocably separated from God.
Whether it was in the synagogue in Capernaum or the streets of Ithaca, there has never been a lack of skepticism and suspicion on what God is up to. God’s health plan for the world is straightforward, but not an easy sell as generations of disciples have discovered. Should we trust God’s promises? Is God putting us on? What about those less deserving people down the road? Is God offering them the same deal as us? Jesus told many of his parables especially for the sake of those who were the skeptics, sulkers, and those to whom God seemed too generous. I wonder if, in one sense, critics of God’s health plan are like those who seem to hurt all over, go to doctor expecting to be treated for a complicated, esoteric disease, and, while they are unable to locate the root of their hurt, would be very put out with the doctor who suggested it was really all in their touch.
And
I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
