Mark 1:29-39
February 5, 2006
The ministry of Jesus began with healing. Consider the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark. No sooner had Jesus called his disciples to his side than he cured a man with an unclean spirit. Then, leaving the synagogue, he entered the house of Simon and Andrew only to find Simon’s mother-in-law in bed with a fever. Our Lord took her by the hand and lifted her up. The fever left her, and she got back about her life.
For those whose lives Jesus touched -- whether they were close to him and the disciples like Peter’s mother-in-law or whether they were perfect strangers gathered on the street outside the door -- healing meant a second chance and hope where there had been no reason for hope. In an instant, healing brought freedom from physical debility as well as inner change and transformation. No wonder "the whole city was gathered" at Jesus’ door.
But healing was never an end unto itself in the ministry of Jesus. In his very first words, as recorded by Mark, Jesus proclaimed, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near." Healing was a window into what the coming kingdom of God which is promised to all of us. Healing and new energy are what God’s kingdom would open the door to, the kingdom is a world which transcends pain and death. God’s kingdom is a place we live in now, and it has also not come yet – both at the same time. This is what Jesus preached, the hope of kingdom – a hope that would offer lasting spiritual integrity and peace, in a world of human weakness and death.
All of us need healing, even at the peak of our physical vitality. There are a lot of very healthy-looking specimens in this world who are anything but hale and hearty on the inside. You only need to turn on the television or open one of those magazines at the grocery store checkout line to find the latest fountain of youth or miracle cure touted and sold like kitchen knives at a fair. But even the most terrific makeover, the latest cosmetic surgery, and the best advice from Dr. Phil, cannot assure us of happiness and fulfillment.
Real transformation, as understood in the Gospel, will never be a passing fancy. For paradoxically, the Gospel makes us acutely aware of our own fragility. Ultimately, the Bible says, we will all die, even those cured by Jesus became sick again at some point and eventually died. This is the "epiphany" in today’s lesson. In the moment of healing we come to experience God at work within our lives, when we recognize our utter dependence on God.
We have no power to make ourselves well. Jesus’ message would not have resonated with the people of his day, much less our own, had he not first led them to embrace their own vulnerability and need for God’s love. For Jesus, healing was not so much about breaking the laws of science -- of which he as man could know nothing -- as it was about the power of God to change lives and make all things new.
In our own English language the words "healing," "health," "wholeness," "wellness," and "holiness" all share the same etymological root, meaning "full" or "complete." At whatever stage of life we may be -- whether child, adolescent, middle-aged, or elder -- we recognize implicitly our own deficiencies and lack of completeness. We experience our need for something or someone beyond ourselves. We need the Lord’s strength not only to make us well, but to make us whole.
Jesus "cast out many demons." For some today, the quest for inner harmony and wholeness is undermined by the contemporary demons of addiction and other behaviors that lead to ruin and self-defeat, sometimes even to death itself. But for those in pursuit of the kingdom, wholeness comes in oneness with God. And healing, however or wherever experienced, makes that oneness possible. Jesus took Simon’s mother-in-law by the hand and raised her up from her sickbed, and she was made well.
How can you know when you have been healed? Seems like an odd question. For many, the answer is obvious: when the pain is gone, the fever has come down, and the disease is no more. But the Gospel gives a better answer. "The fever left her," we are told of Peter’s mother-in-law, "and she began to serve them." As she was healed, she immediately began to serve others. When we are ready to help others in their need and focus once again outside ourselves we will know that we too have been cured. We will no longer be slaves to our hurts and resentments. We will at last be made whole.
I think of the image of Princess Diana, visiting children with AIDS in hospitals around the world. Nothing endeared her more to the whole world than, moved with compassion, reaching out to the forgotten and the suffering of the world. And not only did she touch them, she picked them up, and she held them in her arms. She was royalty, who came to embrace the suffering of the world.
We believe that that is what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. He sent his Son into the world to save the world. To accomplish that mission, he was filled with the power of God. He and God were one. The source of Jesus' power is from that relationship with God. Some would say that Jesus was supernatural, he came from heaven with all this power, like superman. He came down here with power that is not available in this world. Then he went back up to heaven, and we are stuck here with the human condition.
But Mark doesn't tell the story that way. In fact, none of the gospels tell the story that way, but Mark especially emphasizes that Jesus was a human being, a human being in whom God dwelt fully. A human being, who like us, got tired, and hungry, and impatient, and even angry, wrestled with his calling, but was faithful to it to the end.
So the implication is that none of us is going to be Jesus, but we are all called to be like Jesus, in all respects. Not only to follow him into discipleship, doing good works in thanksgiving to the free salvation we have been given, but to follow him also into solitude, and keep quiet, and listen, and pray. For he not only healed the sick with the power that builds up the creation, he received that power through his relationship with the Creator, through quiet and through prayer. Parto of healing is to be as close to being one with God as we can come, and to work at it with spiritual discipline.
Byron Janis was a world-class pianist. For the last years of his career he was fighting arthritis. With the kind of cruel irony that life sometimes imposes upon us, the arthritis settled in his hands. For years he continued to play with arthritis, keeping his disease a secret. But after a while he couldn't hide it. During that period he practiced five or six hours a day to keep his hands limber. Finally they became so swollen and sore that he had to quit. He retreated into his apartment in New York, and retreated into depression. He thought that his life was over.
Probably out of that despair, he stopped taking his medicine. Then discovered that he was feeling more alert and sensitive to what was going on around him. He felt better. Then began a transformation in his life. First of all he came to terms with his condition. He said for the first time he could say, "OK, I've got arthritis. I can accept the physical deterioration, but life is more than this."
He tried out everything to improve his condition: chiropractors, acupuncture, hypnosis, meditation, diet, the whole carnival of cures. He tried them all. Nothing worked. That is to say, he wasn't cured, though he got some better. "What helped me," he said, "is something that surprised me. I can't explain it. At some point God lifted me. I think prayer is important. I think that belief in God is healing."
This story in Mark is told to encourage you in that belief. Mark says in chapter 8: "Lord if you will, you can make me clean."
Byron Janis, incidentally, did get better. In fact, he played a benefit concert at the White House for the Arthritis Foundation. At that concert he made the first public announcement that he had arthritis. He said, "I still have arthritis, but it doesn't have me."
Healing is a mystery. We don't understand it. All we can do is to prepare our bodies to receive it. That's what doctors do. They do it with surgery, with medicine, and therapy. They prepare our bodies to receive the gift of healing.
And that's all you can do too. You can prepare to receive the gift through faith, through prayer, and through openness to the power in creation that heals. Amen.