Healing Relationships

In the gospels it is clear that Jesus expects his followers to do some healing too. That would be us. It can be a very human reaction to turn away from other peoples’ suffering.  Especially when we can’t fix it, or we fear the attempt will demand of us more than we’re up for. And when we turn away, we leave a suffering person even more miserable.  But with God’s leading, we do not have to fix anything.  We just share the love and power we’ve been given.  Loving relationships are healing to mind and spirit, and a healed mind and spirit can set the stage for bodily healing.  That love is contagious, and its Source is infinite.

Art: a quilt from the 2017 Sacred Threads exhibit.

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Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

February 4, 2018

Rev. Dr. Terry LePage

Healing Relationships

Mark 1:29   As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.  30 Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once.  31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

            32   That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons.  33 And the whole city was gathered around the door.  34 And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

            35   In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.  36 And Simon and his companions hunted for him.  37 When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.”  38 He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”  39 And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

            40   A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”  41 Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”  42 Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.  43 After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44 saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”  45 But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

We are back in the Gospel of Mark, after Jesus has called a few ordinary people to follow him. Now buckle up, because a lot happens in these few verses. 

The new recruits were all going to go to Peter’s house to relax, have a meal… but Peter’s mother-in-law is sick in bed. I love it that Peter had a mother-in-law, but that’s another story. And Jesus heals her. This woman is now well enough to take her rightful place as the host of the party. Jesus heals. Which, we should note, is the same in the original Greek as saying, “Jesus saves.”

How infuriating it would have been to Mom to be stuck in bed, listening to these young men clashing around her kitchen trying to make their own dinner, and not being able to see for herself the wild preacher who has captured Peter’s imagination.  In her encounter with Jesus, Mom was not only saved from her fever, but restored to her rightful relationship to her son-in-law, and with this wacky group of friends he brought home to dinner. 

So Jesus healed, and people found out about it. By sundown, the whole town was lined up at the door with their sick family members. And we see a touch of Jesus’ humanity in Mark’s gospel that the later gospels don’t bother showing: physical healing was a wonderful gift, but Jesus got overwhelmed sometimes by the level of need he faced.  He really was human.

And Jesus, being human as Mark so clearly shows us…at this point, Jesus runs away and hides.  What the scripture says is, In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.  And Simon and his companions hunted for him. Jesus needed a break.  He needed to regroup and pray and figure out how to deal with his newfound popularity. And these eager new followers can’t bear to be parted from him, so they hunt him down.  So much for a break. Back into the fray.  At the end of the reading, they all go hide together.

In the worldview of Mark, events are always happening on two levels.  There is ordinary reality that everyone witnesses with their own senses; and intertwined with it, there is a non-ordinary reality. This reality is not visible to the naked eye, but it’s clearly perceived by Jesus, and revealed to us readers, at least in part, by Mark.  Mark understands this unseen reality to be as powerful and real as the physical world, if somewhat mysterious. It is the stage on which the Kingdom of God is growing, like a seed sprouting, not yet seen above ground.  This hidden reality is where unclean spirits are unmasked and sent packing from the innocent people they are oppressing.  It is where those same spirits clearly recognize Jesus as their adversary, and know him as “the Holy One of God.” (Mark 1:23)

Jesus keeps saying, “Shh… don’t tell people what I’m up to.” Jesus doesn’t want to call attention to his mission, so that the Roman occupiers or the religious watchdogs don’t come down on him before he’s even had a chance to spread his message. 

What is hidden from ordinary reality is already unfolding in non-ordinary reality. The demons already know and fear him. Meanwhile, back in ordinary reality, tethered to a human body, Jesus hits his physical limits repeatedly, and has to hide because he cannot keep up with the requests for healing that he receives.

Mark and the demons tell us: Jesus is the Holy One of God.  His mission is to proclaim, and to launch, the upside-down Kingdom of God, where human value no longer depends on status, or wealth, or good fortune, or political power.  He is taking non-ordinary reality, that system of beliefs and values that orders peoples’ lives, and turning it on its head. The Roman overlords and their Jewish collaborators are to Mark physical manifestation of the Powers of the Domination system, but the system of imperial conquest, oppression and debt and religious legalism are the spiritual counterparts of those physical Powers that are binding the people.  And Jesus saves.  Jesus heals.  When those Powers perceive the threat that Jesus is to their domination, they will seek to crush him. That will happen, but Jesus will decide the time and place, and make it work to his purpose. This drama was playing out behind the scenes, but Mark has let us in on the secret. 

When we recognize this non-ordinary reality in Mark’s stories, we see that more is going on in his healings than the mending of physical bodies.  Healing is also rescue, salvation: restoring peoples’ freedom and power this spiritual level of reality. Mark often describes this as driving out demons, which sounds improbable and disturbing to our modern ears.

But what if we rename the demons of illness as the kinds of thinking that promote suffering? Despair. Isolation and loneliness. Shame at being different. Guilt at not being able to keep one’s obligations at work and at home. Believing you’re a failure. Loss of identity. Guilt at the expense and bother of your care. Fear of the future. Weariness at the struggle to do what is simple for the able-bodied and well.  Guilt in imagining that if you had just done something differently, you wouldn’t be ill. Have you had enough yet? That’s oppressive. All that suffering, before you even get to the physical. And it can spin like a vortex, dragging you down.

I want to take Mark seriously when he tells us Jesus is an awesome healer.  I do believe that miraculous physical recoveries can sometimes happen, though seldom on our schedule.  And Jesus has the power to free people from the spiritual oppression that binds them, from that downward spiral of harmful thinking that begets ever more suffering.  He has the power to restore people in mind and spirit, and restore them to right relationship with their family and community whatever their physical condition.  This in turn creates the best environment for whatever physical healing is possible.  And that’s before you even get to things like physiological entrainment and the placebo effect, which are very real and very useful factors in healing touch.

Among the countless healings Jesus did in this brief time that elapsed in our reading, that leper’s healing in verse 41 is told because it became so publicized. Leprosy, or whatever dreaded skin disease it was, required the sick man to be outcast, unable to live with his family, to touch or be touched by anyone but another leper.  So this man’s healing is a huge restoration of relationship: after he has the proper approval, this man can reclaim his place in his family and community. 

Watch how this works. Everybody thought you should not touch this person, because you would catch the illness that he had. Illness is contagious. Jesus turned that around.  The man caught the healing that Jesus had. The Holy Spirit is contagious. This doesn’t work with the flu. But it does work with the Gospel. God’s love and power are contagious. Loving kindness is contagious. Hope is contagious.

In the gospels it is clear that Jesus expects his followers to do some healing too. That would be us. It can be a very human reaction to turn away from other peoples’ suffering.  Especially when we can’t fix it, or we fear the attempt will demand of us more than we’re up for. And when we turn away, we leave a suffering person even more miserable.  But with God’s leading, we do not have to fix anything.  We just share the love and power we’ve been given.  Loving relationships are healing to mind and spirit, and a healed mind and spirit can set the stage for bodily healing.  That love is contagious, and its Source is infinite.

In the early centuries of the church, the call for Christians to heal was taken seriously.  They did so by the laying on of hands, prayer, anointing with oil (which is a reminder that we are children of God), and inviting repentance and transformation.  They also healed by building hospitals and by caring for sick people who did not have families or resources.  Some Christians even tended plague victims, because their love of God and humanity freed them from fear for their own lives.

We can follow Jesus in a ministry of healing, and we don’t have to go to extremes.  We can pray with compassion, and trust that whatever happens in ordinary reality, non-ordinary reality is shifted by prayer.  We can even lay on hands with some simple training, and this makes our love concrete by physiological entrainment.

More conventionally, we can nurture healing relationships by visiting and calling and sending notes to those who are suffering, especially if their condition prevents them from getting out and doing the usual relationship things. We can advocate for affordable healthcare for all, as something all God’s children need, and deserve. And some of you have medicine as your vocation; we can advocate to preserve your jobs from being squeezed by profit-making bosses into their own kind of suffering.

When I lived in Virginia for the last two years, I volunteered with hospice. Ironically, despite being for the dying, hospice really is physically healing.  Studies have shown that people who accept hospice as soon as they’re eligible live on average a couple of months longer than people who opt out of hospice. But that is not the point.  The purpose if hospice is to give people comfort and choice and dignity near the end of life. 

I visited people in hospice care and their families, sometimes in the role of a minister and sometimes with Reiki healing touch. The medical staff worked hard to keep these people comfortable. And I did whatever I thought might help for them and their loved ones.  Sang a song, prayed a prayer, held a hand. I think what I was really doing was sharing with them what God gives me: a Presence that does not fear death or suffering, that honors the sacredness of life, so that they could relax into God’s love.

In Jesus’ upside-down Kingdom, God’s love is contagious, and it conquers fear.  God’s healing power is contagious, and it drives out oppression. Whatever our physical situation, we can claim these things. They never run out, and as we share them, they even multiply.  This is not ordinary reality. This is God’s reality, made known to us through Jesus.  May you experience that healing relationship.  Amen.