Healing beyond Cure; Mark 1: 21-28; 1/31/2021; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; YLLC
The whole world is concerned about health right now. All our lives have changed. Millions of people are grieving or coping with illness. We’re washing our hands more, we’re wearing masks and protecting our own health and the health of others by keeping our social distance. We’re looking with hope to the vaccines and treatment advances even as we are concerned about mutations in the virus. Our prayers are for healing and protection.
Jesus was a great healer. The first chapters of Mark’s gospel are filled with his healings. In today’s gospel we read about the healing of a man with an unclean spirit. Next week we will read about the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law and many who were sick with various diseases and many who were possessed with demons. Then we’ll hear about the cleansing of a leper and the following week Jesus heals a paralytic. People are relieved of their physical symptoms and they are restored to a positive place in society. One thing we learn in these stories is that Jesus is interested in more than a purely physical cure. He also offers a healing beyond cure. And he offers it to us too.
Jesus treats, cures, heals them all, no matter what is wrong with them it seems. At one point he goes out to a deserted place to pray. When the others find him and tell him “Everyone is searching for you,” he says, “Let’s go on to other places so I may proclaim the message there too.” He goes throughout Galilee and proclaims, and casts out demons and keeps on healing people.
In our contemporary world we often view disease as a malfunction of the organism that can be remedied, assuming cause and cure are known, by proper biomedical treatment. Recently there have been all sorts of adaptations to that strict biomedical view, including energy fields, dietary concerns, awareness of toxins, supplements of all kinds, essential oils, visualization, you name it. But even in many of these approaches the focus is on restoring a sick person’s ability to function, to do. In the ancient Mediterranean world, one’s state of being and relationships were more important than one’s ability to act or function. The healers in that ancient world focused more on restoring a person to a valued state of being than solely on the ability to function. Healing included social and relational aspects, not just physical well-being.
Healing is not always one moment’s miraculous transformation. In Scripture as in our lives, healing is more commonly a process. Healing in the scriptures is linked to a deepening of one’s relationship with God. What we want for ourselves and our loved ones is a quick cure. I want medicine that will make it go away. We have been blessed with scientists and medical care givers that often can provide that quick fix for us. But such cures can come without inner transformation, without an awareness of God’s action, without gratitude or joy, and without a restoration to right relationships. The healing Jesus demonstrated, comes with an opening to God, the releasing of our fears into God’s hands, the trusting of God’s love and compassion which arises in the midst of our paralyzing fears.
Lately I’ve been thinking about my former mother-in-law, who is a breast cancer survivor. She, like most nurses, is a very practical, no nonsense woman. She worked as a Registered Nurse most of her adult life. Over 40 years ago now she was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and was physically debilitated by it. They lived in a small town and her rapid physical decline was noted by everyone she knew. She had been active and able-bodied up until then. She was working as a nurse then and had four children ranging in age from 2 to 12. Throughout the onset of the arthritis, she was deeply involved in a home bible study group and felt surrounded by the prayers of her friends. Although she got health advice from every direction, she wasn’t receiving any medical treatment other than pain relief. Then something happened. She experienced a kind of physical healing. It wasn’t sudden. Over the next few months the pain and swelling simply went away and has never returned. She was able to resume her responsibilities. It was a very transformational experience for her that strengthened her faith and her sense of connection to the Christian community she was a part of.
She called me one day because she was going to lead a bible study and discussion about healing at a camp for incarcerated young women where she volunteered. She wanted permission to tell some of my personal story and the healing that I have known in my life. Now, I’ve never experienced anything that I would call a miraculous physical healing. Healing when I’ve been sick has come through the normal options like medicine or surgery. The greatest healing I’ve personally known was of an emotional and spiritual nature. I was the victim of a violent crime over 40 years ago and for me recovery was hard won. Physical healing is probably the first thing we think of when we read the healing stories in Mark’s gospel. But that’s only one narrow definition of the healing Jesus makes possible.
Sometimes there can be healing, even when physical conditions worsen and when there is no cure. I saw a billboard once that read, “Care beyond Cure.” It was the slogan for the Red River Hospice program. Care beyond cure. That is the nature of hospice care, after all. It is medical and spiritual care given to a patient whom the doctors are no longer hoping to cure. Often it is for cancer patients, when they are no longer fighting the disease with chemotherapy or radiation. These patients often return home, and hospice provides care in the home during the time before the disease kills the body. Hospice programs acknowledge that there can be appropriate and important care that does not result in cure. Even death, for those of us with resurrection faith, can deliver the ultimate healing, a release into the unlimited grace of God’s all-encompassing love. I don’t mean to minimize the loss and grief for those left to mourn after death. It can be so harrowing. But, I’ve also seen great healing happen around deathbeds. Pretenses are stripped away and relationships can be healed. There can be an opening to the care of God that extends beyond death.
I used to be a volunteer at the homeless shelter and I remember a wonderful conversation with another volunteer there about healing. Her name was Joanne and she was trained as a public health nurse and a parish nurse. She taught nursing in several locations and worked in Bangladesh for 5 years through the Episcopal church. At the time our conversation took place she was volunteering two days a week at the CHUM drop in center in Duluth . One day, one of the clients came in and asked her if she was religious. Joanne was very gentle. She said, “I claim to be a Christian.” “Yeah, uh, huh” the man said, “so would you wash someone’s feet?” “Yes, I would.” she responded. “No, I mean for real, would you like wash someone’s feet?” he persisted. She said, “I have been a nurse for almost 50 years and over that time I have bathed bodies from head to toe, from birth to death, and even after death. I consider it a great honor to do that.” “Oh, ok.” he muttered and walked off. Joanne told me that she has always considered her knowledge of the human body to be a sacred knowledge. To know how the body works is holy and to be entrusted with the care of another is a holy thing.
Later that afternoon when the medical students from UMD arrived for their weekly 2-hour shift they conducted a foot clinic. They made tubs of warm water available for the people to soak their feet. The students and Joanne were there to help them wash and dry their feet and check for sores. There were clippers available and attention was given to problem areas. Then the feet were rubbed with a moisturizer and the people were given fresh new socks. Did healing happen? I’m certain of it. Was anyone cured? Probably not. Were they served, ministered to? Most definitely.
We are all agents of healing, all of us who follow Christ. We are all connected across the whole universe by our hope, our suffering, and our healing. We give birth with pain followed by joy. We die through pain followed by release. We breathe each other’s air, drink the same molecules of water the ancients drank. We all comfort using our arms and we weep the same streaming salty tears. We all long to be whole, to make whole, to be embraced by others and by God.
Let us pray. Dear Christ, we come to you today, each of us, in need of your healing. Be present with us, touch us, heal us, through the prayers of your people and in their touch. Set us on a journey today that brings us closer to you, and deeper into that healing which alone means wholeness and eternal life. Amen.