Heal us by your grace, O God, that we might go
forth in your peace. Amen.
By now, many of you have heard enough sermons to have a sense of my theological perspective. For example, if I say: “the gracious love of God is making all things well and we most clearly and fully see this love in the Eucharist,” that statement would surprise no one. That’s pretty much the foundation of my faith. And I bet you also know what makes me the most uncomfortable theologically, the thing that I struggle with the most – healing narratives such as the ones we heard in chapter five of Mark this morning.
To
be clear, it’s not that I struggle to believe that these healings happened nor
is it that I struggle with why bad things happen. No, that’s not the issue. I
absolutely believe in an active and powerful God who heals the sick, raises the
dead, and forgives the guilty. I’ve also come to terms with the reality that
Sin and Death are the inevitable consequences of the freedom that God gives us
in love. Suffering and love go hand in hand, and I’m on board with that. My
struggle with healing stories in Scripture is what about the other daughters
who died and were not raised, and how come not all of the people experiencing
long-term illnesses aren’t cured by Jesus. Sure, this woman touched his robe,
but I know a lot of people suffering from depression, addiction, dementia,
cancer, and achy joints who receive the Eucharist, the very Body and Blood of
Jesus, and aren’t immediately healed. So what gives? That’s the thing I
continue to struggle with.
Most
sermons aren’t what we, preachers, think you all need to hear. Sure, sometimes
that’s how we come up with the focus on a sermon. But more often than not, the
preacher spends time with Scripture, and through prayer and study, you get to hear
the sermon that the preacher most needs to hear. Well, that’s absolutely what
is going on today – this is my attempt to reconcile my foundational belief that
God’s love is making all things well with the reality that some people, such as
Jairus’ daughter and this hemorrhaging woman are healed, but plenty of others
are not. My prayer is that through this sermon, God will speak to us all and
give us not so much answers, but an assurance that allows us to go in peace.
This
morning’s Psalm captures well the intended trajectory of the sermon – we begin
with “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord.”
We’re all acquainted with the depths. It might be piling up deadlines at work, bullies
at school, bills that you don’t know how to pay, conflict within your family, a
medical concern about you or someone you love, or the state of politics.
Whatever the depths are – we’ve been there and called out to God for help. And
then we wait. As the Psalm puts it “I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope. My souls
waits for the Lord, more than
watchmen for the morning.”
I
guess I’m not all that great at waiting – as that’s where my theological angst
is rooted. I absolutely trust that all shall eventually be well. But I’d really
prefer that every parent who prays to God on behalf of their sick child receives
the miracle that Jairus did. I pray that every person who is suffering and
outcast, like this woman, is healed and restored to their community.
To
make the point very clear – the issue is not that God is unaware or unmoved by
our suffering. It’s not that God sees our suffering and chooses to let us
remain in pain like a sadistic person who enjoys watching the suffering of
others. Any such conclusions must be rejected. For centuries though, this has
been the attack of atheists against people of faith – in the face of abuse,
genocide, famine, and disaster, where is God? It’s the question that Dostoevsky
contends with in The Brothers Karamazov. You don’t have to read Russian
literature to get the argument: if God is good, why does bad exist? Some would
say it’s because God is not good, or that God does not exist. But that’s not where
we come down on the issue.
The
Wisdom of Solomon is book that’s found in that section of the Bible between the
Old and New Testament – if you’ve got questions about how that works, we can
talk later. A part of what it says though is this: “God did not make death. And
God does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so
that they make exist.” It must be said loudly and clearly, God does not delight
in or want the death or suffering of any living thing. Yes, we might have
questions about why she is healed and he is not, but the issue is not God’s
apathy.
Now,
I’ve studied enough theology to have some pretty good answers as to why not
everyone receives this healing – and that would be another sermon for another
day. To paraphrase St. Augustine, “without God, we cannot; without us, God will
not.” In God’s infinite wisdom and sovereignty, God has chosen to act through
Creation. Salvation did not happen in the mind of God, it happened on a Roman
cross with a Galilean peasant nailed to it. By choosing to work with creatures
in this fashion, God willingly has chosen to be limited. Could God fundamentally
change the laws of nature and molecular biology such that our bodies would be
like some alien species from science-fiction in which our wound just instantly
heal themselves? Of course, God can do that. But as we know from Scripture and
through the witness of Jesus, God is love. And love is not coercive; as we hear
at many a wedding, “Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious,
boastful, arrogant, or rude. It does not insist on its own way.” So it’s not so
much that God can’t heal everyone, it’s that God is a God of love, not of brute
force.
Understandably, some don’t
like that, but at this point we reach the limits of human reason. God’s response
to Job is really the only rebuttal to those would tell God how to be better at
being the Almighty: “Then the Lord
answered Job out of the whirlwind: Gird up your loins like a man, I will
question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the
foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding.” Our only response,
of course, is humble silence, for God’s ways are higher than ours.
My struggle isn’t so much
intellectual – I can write the paper and give the presentation. It’s a visceral
struggle. The spiritual word for it is lament. I can understand why some are
healed and some are not, but I lament that not all are. Again, to be clear, I
believe that God laments this as well. It becomes a question of what we do with
this lament.
Some will talk about the
different between being healed and being cured with healing being an inward
state of calm acceptance and curing being a physiological change that can be
charted in a medical record. And while it is absolutely true that the Holy Spirit
brings us comfort in our afflictions, I don’t think Jairus was asking Jesus to
help him with grieving the loss of his daughter, he wanted that loss to be
prevented.
Others, as I have already
mentioned, reject God and faith altogether because of this lament. It’s not so
much that they stop thinking that God is real, it’s that they become estranged
from God in the same way that we might avoid a family member we’ve had a
falling out with. Thanks be to God that God is like always ready to welcome us
back into the embrace of love with no questions asked when we stray from the
fold.
Still
others will do what we heard about in Mark. When Jesus approached the house
people were making comments. You know how people are, offering input no one
asked for. Well, some of them say “Why trouble the teacher any further?” Isn’t
interesting that by calling him teacher they are already limiting him. Do we
think that the woman who touched his cloak thought he was just a teacher? Of
course not, Jesus is a healer, a Savior. This crowd though has limited what
Jesus can do and essentially asked “Why are we wasting our time with this?” Its
why church pews aren’t full every Sunday, because, for various reasons, our
expectations are too low.
Just
as we’ve heard about Jesus silencing a storm on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus
silences the storm this crowd is stirring up: “Why do you make a commotion?” We
do make such a commotion, don’t we? Speaking for myself, though I don’t think I’m
the only one, we love to get a word in, to be “on the record,” to gossip, to
talk about people instead of talking to people. Jesus then tells them that this
girl isn’t dead, but merely asleep. And they laugh at him.
What
happens when we hear the promises of God? Do we roll our eyes and think of it
as a fairy tale? Do we say “Well, maybe God used to do stuff like that, but not
anymore.” Do we laugh and sneer? Do we continue to take matters into our own
hands? Put differently, are we resigned to accepting the brokenness of this
world, or do we actually expect that Jesus can do something about it?
One
theologian has said that our problem is that we suffer from psychosclerosis.
You’ve perhaps heard of atherosclerosis, the hardening of the arteries. Well,
psychosclerosis is the hardening of our hearts, of our imaginations, of our
spirits. It’s when we become closed off to what God is doing, when our imaginations
become clogged with the intractable conflicts of our society, when we set our
expectations so low as to never be disappointed. This crowd, like us, had
become adjusted to death being a period, even if Jesus says it’s a semicolon.
Is
our lament more than just our yearning for greater healing? Is it, perhaps, a
sign that we’ve given up on healing as a real possibility? Has our modern world
constricted our imaginations to the point that we’re blind to what God is doing
all around us?
If
that’s the case, one of the best changes to make if you have a diagnosis of atherosclerosis
is the same as for psychosclerosis – diet and exercise. What sort of media are we
ingesting? I’ll tell you right now, and this is a godly admonition in an
election year, turn off the television. There is nothing that a pundit is going
to say that won’t clog your spiritual arteries. Instead, read some CS Lewis, or
Demond Tutu, or Flannery O’Connor, or some Psalms, Luke, or Ephesians. In such
a noisy world with so much commotion, how much time do we make for silence and
listening?
And when it comes to
exercise, we can cultivate hope. Steeping ourselves in God’s promises and
presence in Scripture is a good place to start. There are many ways to pray.
There is beauty in nature, music, and galleries to open our minds to the flow of
possibility. And there is service with and for those who are suffering. Visiting
someone who can’t get to church, or bringing them flowers or cookies, sending a
“thinking of you card” – these things are spiritual exercises that open our
hearts and minds to the flow of love, the love which is making all things well.
And
what this diet and exercise can help with our psychosclerosis that might make
us spiritual pessimists. Instead of asking “why isn’t everyone healing” we
might shift toward a more optimistic declaration of “Look what God is doing.”
These healings are not nice things that Jesus did for some, but not others. Not
at all. They are signs of Easter. They are the early buds of spring that show
us what is brimming under the surface. They are cracks in the walls of division
al around us. Miracles aren’t things that some people are lucky to get and
others just have to be jealous or indignant about. No, they are signs that all
things are being made well, that all things are moving towards healing, that
God’s love is coming on earth as it is in heaven.
As Jesus dismisses the woman he healed, he tells her to “Go in peace.” It’s not simply a spiritual way to say “good bye” or “be calm.” And though it can get lost at the end our liturgy between a blessing and getting on with your Sunday afternoon, “go in peace” is one of the most important phrases in our worship. It’s not telling you to go out and be nice, calm, or happy. It’s a gift. Go in the peace of God and with the peace of God, having heard in Scripture the promises of God to heal, restore, and forgive, having gathered in the beloved community of God’s name, having been fed with the grace of God in the Eucharist, having witnessed in our prayers that God is on move, we go in the peace of worshipping and serving a living God who is about the business making all things well. This might not answer every question or lament we have about suffering, but I pray that it allows us to go in peace.
