St. Gregory’s Church Woodstock
Sunday, 15 February 2009, Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
The Rev’d Susan Auchincloss
Last Sunday we read how Jesus’ healing ministry began; today continues that story. Last week’s reading startled me; because I had not noticed before how Jesus only cured some of the people. You remember how they had eaten supper at Simon’s house, and word had gotten out to the whole village that Jesus had miraculously cured Simon’s mother-in-law. So by the time supper was over, a crowd filled the house: everyone with a sickness had come to be cured. Jesus did cure many of them, but not all. He either ran out of time or he ran out of strength. The next morning those who had not been cured the night before returned to Simon’s house. But Jesus was not there. He had left well before dawn to go into the hills to spend time alone with God. After sun-up his disciples searched for him; and when they found him they let him know that the people were waiting; but Jesus said no; I have to move on. How could he do that?
The answer lies in the difference between a healing and a cure. It is the difference between giving a person a fish and teaching the person how to fish. Jesus came, not to cure people, but to heal them. We could put it this way: if Jesus had cured everyone who came to him with all their various illnesses, no one would know his name today. But he came to heal; and the difference between them is the subject of this sermon.
Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., tells this story in her book, Kitchen Table Wisdom. A man named Dieter had cancer of the liver. His treatment involved a weekly visit to his oncologist for a chemotherapy injection. After the injection he and the doctor would sit and talk quietly with each other for fifteen minutes. These talks meant a great deal to Dieter, for his doctor was the only person to whom he could speak openly and honestly. Apart from these fifteen minute sessions, Dieter felt isolated; for neither friends nor family understood how he felt. Really to listen to Dieter made them unbearably anxious.After some time Dieter realized that the chemotherapy was no longer helping him. He suggested to the doctor that the treatments be stopped, but he asked if he could come at the regular time just to talk. The doctor refused. If Dieter discontinued therapy there was nothing more the doctor could do for him. So Dieter continued to take the weekly injection just for those fifteen minutes when he felt connected to – and understood by – another human being.
This story has a final twist. Dieter’s oncologist was also seeing Dr. Remen for counseling. He was chronically depressed, saying that no one cared about him, he didn’t matter to anyone – just a mortgage payment to his wife, just a tuition check to his son. Yet here was someone, Dieter, who was trying to tell him how much he mattered as a soul-friend – apart from any cure the doctor might or might not be able to give. But ironically the doctor was fixated on curing, and blind to the healing he was doing.
Jesus knew that healing has to do with the soul, with meaning, with putting suffering in a larger context. He put it this way: I have come that they may have life and life more abundantly. He did not come merely to prolong existence – that is the realm of cures; but to expand life itself beyond the borders of time – to deepen life, to enrich it, to give it eternal meaning.
You remember this from Psalm 42, “My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God.” We say the living God, meaning not some abstract proposition. This is the thirst Jesus came to address – the soul-sickness that Jesus came to heal. The people knew all about God, all about God’s rules and laws; but they had lost touch with the living God. Jesus knew the living God the way the Bible says Adam and Eve knew each other – deeply and with the whole of his being. He came to let us know that we, too, can be in touch with the living God. Take your hand and press it up against the chair in front of you or beside you. Now take your hands and press them together, palm to palm. Leave it there for a moment. Feel the difference. That was Jesus’ mission: to help people lean their hearts against the heart of God, to feel the warmth and the answering beat – to know God’s presence, not because they believed what the Bible told them, but because they could, themselves, feel the love, the acceptance, the forgiveness, the warmth, the oneness, the way you can feel your hand. This is healing.
Take today’s Gospel. A leper came up to Jesus. Leprosy was so contagious that touching or being touched by a leper was strictly forbidden. Jesus could have kept his distance and cured the leper, the way he would later cure the Centurion’s slave – from afar. Yet he didn’t. He wanted to do more than cure; he wanted to reach the loneliness, the sense of being a broken human being; he wanted to reach all the damage to the soul that follows from being a social outcast. He drew close to the leper. He laid his hands, gently, surely, on the skin of the leper; he prayed for his healing, and he was healed. . . and also cured. Physical cures often happen when healing takes place.
Jesus’ came specifically to heal. This is something we can do as well. To be able to heal, only one qualification is needed. Each of us has it; because who among us has not suffered? Medical experts cure, but suffering is best alleviated by those who have suffered, themselves. Enormous power resides in simple human compassion – the strength of a gentle touch, the blessing of forgiveness, the goodness of being accepted just as you are, the release of simply having someone listen. We can, just by being who we are, bring healing to those who suffer.
Healing has a social dimension as well. Social ills surround us, and we ourselves cannot escape infection. Blaming, just to name one, has become endemic. We have reached a point in our culture where blame so naturally attaches itself to events, that we are likely to assign blame before we even know what actually happened. Color is intrinsic to a flower, but blame is intrinsic to nothing. What is more, it brings us down as a people – whether we are being blamed or we are doing the blaming, it brings us down. To heal in this social realm we need to replace words of blame with words of forgiveness; words of acceptance and never rejection; words of understanding, or sympathy. Watch when the server puts out the altar candles. The server never touches the flame or the wick, but only cuts off their oxygen. We cut off the oxygen to blame when we refuse to join in. Prayer can also serve as a candle snuffer. Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples: “...those who believe in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will they do, because I go to the Father.” In the end, we cannot separate social ills from personal ills, and we have the joy of knowing that in Christ we do have the power to heal.