2022.02.13 | Reclaiming the Ministry of Healing
“Reclaiming the Ministry of Healing”
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, Senior Minister
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, CA 94541
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
The setting for today’s gospel reading calls to mind the first time I walked into the old Highland Hospital Emergency Department in Oakland, about twenty years ago.
The scene did not inspire confidence. I remember thinking that I had been in more modern hospitals in the third world. The waiting room was packed. The seats were full. The healthier looking people stood next to the sick and suffering. The more distressed were sitting on the floor, leaning against the walls, or laying on homemade blankets and throw rugs brought from home.
The lighting was poor. The air was dank. I could hear coughing and moaning from every direction. I recall feeling grateful that I was up to date on my childhood and travel vaccinations.
Elders held their heads in their hands. Weary parents who were trying to comfort sick children. Occasionally folks looked at the wall clock and wondered how much longer until they could see a doctor and get some relief.
If there was an organizational system for triaging walk-ins at the Highland ER that day, I couldn’t figure it out. So I asked the seasoned security guard who monitored the ambulance bay for guidance.
He kindly pointed me to an unmarked door on the far side of the waiting room, and told me to walk over and knock. He said that when someone answered, I should tell them the name of the family who had called for me. I did as the guard instructed and was quickly united with the family.
II
In a similar way, visitors from the four corners of the known world gathered in and near a house in Capernaum in today’s gospel story. There were no open seats. It was standing room only. The scene was a crucible of everything that was wrong with Israel’s first-century healthcare system.
The most common diseases were preventable if good public health, health education, and sanitization practices were employed; but they weren’t, so the 99% suffered unnecessarily.
To compound matters, those who were sick and infirmed suffered not only in body, but they suffered emotionally and spiritually.
Many struggled with the problem of suffering. They found it difficult to live with ambiguity or to embrace tragedy. They needed answers--even wrong answers would do--to explain why bad things happened to good people. So they blamed the sick and suffering for their maladies.
All of this shaming and blaming lead to a tremendous amount of emotional and spiritual distress for the identified patients. But it wasn’t just individuals who suffered. The identified patient’s whole family and their friends and associates suffered, too.
Consider the paralyzed man whose companions had brought him to Capernaum that day. We don’t know how many there were in total. Luke doesn’t say. But considering the size and weight of a grown man, and the amount of people needed to carry a man even a mile, it’s plausible that at least four friends, maybe six, accompanied him to see Jesus.
Consider, too, that collective need represented by five to seven men. These men were peasants. They worked the better part of every day just to feed themselves and their families. So something in the range of thirty people were directly affected by the paralyzed man’s health condition. Thirty people or more were food insecure, at least until the paralytic was healed, and he and his friends could return to work, and provide for themselves and their families.
It’s no wonder that the friends circumvent the cue in the ER waiting room. Rather than waiting for their number to come up, they climbed up on the roof, removed the tile roofing, and dug through the mud that formed the base of the roof, until they had created a hole large enough to fit their friend through. Then they lowered the man--palate and all--to the floor in front of Jesus. And, then they waited pensively to see what would happen.
According to Luke, Jesus did not disappoint. The sick were healed. The deaf heard. The blind received their site. The demons were gone. The dead were raised. And their friend took up his palate and walked. They were resuming their livelihoods, and reclaiming their roles in the Temple and the larger society. In sum, those who had been sick and who were suffering were whole again.
Yet the Pharisees and teachers heckled Jesus and criticized the work that he was doing. They claimed that his credentials were fraudulent, and that his practice of forgiving sins was blasphemous, i.e., that he was playing God.
The one percent who are benefitting from Israel’s dominant health care system affirmed the Pharisees and teachers’ critique of Jesus, but the 99% who had unresolved needs were undaunted. For them, the proof was right in front of them. Jesus wasn’t selling snake oil or playing God. Jesus was God.
III
Modern Christians, particularly those of us who have grown up in Mainline Protestant traditions, and who believe that God works miracles through reason and science (rather than hocus pocus) are often perplexed by the many accounts of Jesus' healing miracles in the gospels.
As a result, we look to scientific reason to explain away how Jesus cured people, and we frame the gospel miracles as literary devices designed to illustrate Jesus’ divinity. But in doing so, we downplay the reality of human suffering, and we inflate our erroneous assumption that we are in charge of our fate.
In times like these, it’s good for us to revisit passages like the healing of the paralytic and to be reminded that Jesus was not “playing God,” as the Pharisees and teachers claimed. Jesus was God in human flesh. Imago dei. And, only God can heal us from all that harms us.
To underscore this point, I’ll close with a true story about a man who came to me for healing almost 35 years ago. His name was Brad Truesdale. He was a member of the Old South Church in Boston where I served when I was fresh out of seminary. Brad came to see me within the first few months after I had accepted the call to serve as an Assistant Minister.
Brad was very direct with me. He told me that he had AIDS and that he was involved in an experimental treatment at one of Boston’s famous hospitals. He said that he didn’t expect to survive much more than a year or so. He also said that living with AIDS had forced him to pay more attention to his spiritual life, and that he felt compelled to look for a church home. I asked Brad how I could help.
Brad said, “You know Arlene, I have a lot of doctors and nurses in my life. I have a pharmacist, a social worker, a psychotherapist, a nutritionist, and a personal trainer. What I don’t have is someone to pray with. I am hoping that you and others at this church will pray with me.”
I reached out, held Brad’s hands, and said, “You can count us. We will pray for you and with you.” And we did. I prayed with Brad in my office that day. Together we launched an AIDS Prayer group for others who were living with this disease, for partners and other loved ones, for health care workers, and for those who identified as the “worried well.”
Together, Brad, his family, our Board of Deacons, and a handful of tall steeple preachers from downtown Boston started monthly AIDs healing service. The service was kind of a moveable feast. We started by rotating the services around the downtown area. As interest grew, we doubled the number of services, and expanded the locations to include the churches on the outskirts of the city, and the surrounding suburbs--adapting the liturgy as we went to suit the tradition of the host congregation.
We, and others, literally blew the dust off of our pre-dues, that’s French for “kneelers,” which in recent years had only been used for ordinations and the random very traditional wedding ceremony. We dug deep into the liturgical histories of our respective denominations and the Christian tradition writ large. We had thoughtful and important conversations about the difference between healing and curing, and we earnestly tried to sort out what we did and didn't believe about healing, and what we were and weren’t offering with this ministry.
Initially, hundreds--and eventually thousands--attended these services. I honestly don’t know if anyone was cured of HIV/AIDS as a result of the anointing oil, the laying on of hands and prayer, or the hospitality that was offered and received at one or more of those services. But I can tell you with great certainty that a cast of thousands, including this preacher, were healed--healed of our fear of dying and death, healed of our homophobia and heterosexism, and healed of the ridiculous idea that we were masters and mistresses of our own destinies. And, as a result, we were healed. Thanks be to God. Amen.