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Healing or Cure?

Mark 5:21-43

Rev. Dr. Marisa Laviola

 

 

Last summer I served a church in Weston, MA, as interim pastor while the settled pastor was on sabbatical.  There is a woman in the church who was recently diagnosed with melanoma and had surgery to remove a large mass in her arm.  At first her oncologist thought they had removed all of the melanoma.  However, at her most recent check up they told her that because the mass was so large, she may have more cancer “floating around in her body.”  But they were not sure and they could not predict.  She could be cancer free or the melanoma could come back at any time.  They suggested interferon, a two-year treatment that could possibly cure her, but would leave her weak and incapacitated.  She requested that I sit with her as she struggled with this decision.  After a few times of talking and praying together, she decided not to have the debilitating treatment through which she felt she would hardly feel healed, and to instead attempt to live her life to the fullest.  A few months later when I saw her again, she told me “I feel God is healing me, and maybe God will cure me of the cancer.”  She was praying, and continues to pray, for healing that leads to a cure for her physical illness, a cure that will restore her physically to this earthly life.  Nonetheless, she feels God is healing her spirit and her emotions as she is learning to live more fully with her God and with those around her.

A high level religious leader comes to Jesus and asks for Jesus’ help.  “My little daughter is at the point of death.  Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.”  On the way to this leader’s home Jesus knows that someone has touched him, someone who is in great need.  And he stops and searches frantically to find who touched him.  He refuses to continue on his mission to the little girl’s side until he finds that precious one who touched him.  He must encounter that one face to face.  He seeks until he finds her.  And when he finds her he meets her in an intimate moment.  He meets her face to face, a woman who has suffered with a blood disorder for 12 years. 

Now, men and women of the culture at the time were not allowed to encounter each other face to face, particularly if the man was considered a teacher or Rabbi.  And a woman who is bleeding is not to be encountered at any time and at any place, as she is considered unclean.  This woman is convinced that just touching Jesus has cured her of her bleeding. 

But at what point in their encounter is she healed?  At the moment of her touching him?  Or at the moment that he seeks and finds and encounters her lovingly face to face?  At the moment he breaches cultural mores and touches her with intimate care?

When Jesus comes to the little girl, she is already dead, or so it appears.  And in the Jewish culture of the time living people are not permitted to touch dead people because dead people are unclean.  Jesus takes the hand of this presumably dead girl over the protests of the well-meaning crowd and tells her to rise and live. 

I wonder how this girl lived after this encounter.  Girls were hardly valued in the culture at the time.  And yet, Jesus touched her and said, rise and live. 

Parents barely attached themselves to their children in that culture because 60% of live births did not live past mid-teen years because of disease, hunger, and lack of clean water.  Yet, this father pleaded for his daughter’s life.  To what life did Jesus heal her?

             Last week we talked about how bad things happen to people of good character and people of great faith.  We talked about how God will not rescue us from the calamities of life, but will be with us through every struggle and every difficulty, no matter what the outcome.  And we talked about how lovingly being with one another in the midst of life’s trials is a precious way to bring God into the midst of our struggles. 

Today we go a step further.  Today we ask the question, “What is healing?”  Why are some people healed of physical illness and disease and some are not?”  What is God’s role in healing?  What is our role in healing?  What is the meaning of our praying when we pray for someone to be healed?  This particular question is even more difficult when sitting with a loved one whose precious one is dying.  I often have had people say to me, “Is this God’s will? If it is, why her, why him, why now?”  And if it is not God’s will, why then does God not intervene as I pray for God to intervene?”  We often then sit together in painful silence, in tearful silence.  At those times there are no answers that will soothe that dear loved one’s grief.

          This text provides no easy answers.  But as any good exegesis of a text from Scripture, we must dig underneath the story and look very hard for the message that God has for us. What is Jesus trying to tell us?  Are we to listen to Jesus’ words or to his actions? 

          Jesus says fear not.  Jesus says your faith has healed you.  What does Jesus do?  Jesus does everything to dispel any fears.  Jesus does everything possible so that these dear ones can have faith that God is actively interested in their suffering lives.  He reaches out to the isolated and shunned woman.  He touches the girl and tells her to rise up.  How do his actions impact their lives?  Does his active encounter with this woman give her new hope of life in community with family and friends after 12 years of isolation?  Does his touch of this girl heal this family of their disconnection from each other because they are afraid that one more child will not live past adolescence? 

The dear woman in the church in Weston said she feels God is healing her and that she is living her life to the fullest, and that she continues to even pray for a cure.  She makes a distinction between healing that leads to full life on earth despite one’s physical reality and cure that brings restoration of the body to its earthly health.  This dear woman is very active in her faith community, and graciously gives of her gifts with a joyful heart.  Yes, she would love to know that she is cured of a dreaded disease and longingly invites such cure.  But she has responded to a face to face encounter with Jesus, has put her hand into the hand of Jesus, has risen up and begun a walk of faith that belies all fear.  That is not to say that she does not fear that she might die and leave this earthly life.  And when she does become afraid she returns to Jesus’ side and she turns to friends in her faith community for support and nurturance.  She is not isolated in her physical illness as the woman in Mark’s Gospel.  She is not seen as lesser than as the girl in Mark’s gospel.

             Perhaps the message from our text is that God comes to us, seeks us, seeks to touch us in the most wounded areas of our lives.  God seeks until God finds, unrelenting, inviting, yearning for us to reach back.  And no one can deter God.  The disciples could not deter Jesus from seeking the woman for a face to face encounter.  The well-meaning crowd could not deter Jesus from touching the presumably dead little girl. 

Perhaps this message, perhaps this story is our story, a story about who God is and how God seeks us and invites us to respond in faith, to “fear not” because God is ultimately in charge.  Perhaps the message is “see who I am and have no fear.  Know me and you will have faith.”

This message may give a different twist to what prayer is:  not an exercise in asking for what we want, resulting in futility at times, in celebration at times. Perhaps prayer is an exercise in meeting God face to face, in acknowledging who God is, in giving praise and thanks for God’s steadfast love surrounding us, and in asking God for how we can participate in God’s love and care for each other and those outside our doors.        

This message may give a different twist to what healing is:  yes, sometimes it means cure for physical illness and restoration to an earthly life.  But it always means an invitation to live into wholeness, to seek deep meaning in one’s life, no matter what the physical circumstance:  deep meaning that involves openness and trust in our creator who is ultimately in control, willingness to participate in the evolving of creative forces toward healing and wholeness; deep meaning that involves the healing of relationships and wounded lives that beg for restoration to wholeness.

And how does God invite us to participate in healing, and perhaps even cure? There are so many women who feel isolated, girls who die everyday from physical illness that overwhelm them because of lack of food and clean water.  There are so many men who suffer from the toil of unending work for so little gain in this global economy.  There are so many boys who die from disease because of lack of medical care.  How much does God ask our openness, trust, willingness to participate in the creative forces that help provide loving community to the lonely; food, clean water, clean air, and medical care for children; relief from the financial struggles of those who are most hurt by the economy?

Perhaps part of the message today is for us to care for ourselves and one another in this our town of Morrisville so that all people can rise up to new life.  Perhaps part of the message today is for Christians around the world to respond to the example of Jesus and work to transform the world's systems, and the hearts of its people, so that all in need can rise up to new life. 

Perhaps our prayers can focus less on what we want and more on how God wants us to be, to care, to care for our own health and wholeness and the health and wholeness of those around us.

We may feel overwhelmed by the suffering of the world, even our little corner of the world and understandably so.  And we may find ourselves passively accepting it, out of our sense of helplessness and smallness. However, if we look at this story of Jesus in Mark, his attentiveness, his concern to each of these women, we can see that all suffering people are on God's mind. In this story, Jesus refuses to passively allow a person to walk away, knowing quite well that only personal relationship with her savior will heal her.  Jesus refuses to allow the overwhelmed passivity of well-meaning mourners to deter his touch of a little girl in need.  And next week we will talk about how Jesus sends his disciples, two by two, to encounter the lonely, the sick, and all those in need of a healing touch.

My friends, we all know that sometimes people are not healed in body, are not cured, to use the terminology of the woman in Weston.  We all know that some people survive dreaded illness and some do not.  Some people survive serious accident and some do not.  Sometimes it is healing for a person to enter into the eternal fold of life, beyond the physical strictures of disease and illness, disability and despair.  We also know that those of us who are left behind with our grief may not believe this to be so.  We long for our loved one’s physical presence, what was and what could have been.

We can also know that God cares very deeply and is present intimately every time someone is born and every time someone dies.  God’s intimate presence follows us all along the traverse of life no matter what our physical status, no matter what our spiritual state, no matter what our emotional condition.  God travels alongside, inviting encounters all along the way, inviting us to touch the hem of God’s garment, to receive the touch of fullness and richness, for healing that brings wholeness to body, mind, and spirit.  God invites all of us to “rise and experience the fullness of life.” 

Look and see that God is here.  Take in the healing balm of the loving relationship with your creator, redeemer, and forever guide.  Are you catching those moments?  Are you looking in the right places?  Look upon the God whose creative energy surrounds you and invites you into life.  Look upon the God who saves you from your shortcomings and invites you to care for yourself and others with a forgiving and reconciling love.  Look upon the God who stays with you, who travels with you, who is right here every time you turn to the right or to the left, when you look up or down, inside or outside.  Look into the supportive eyes of loving family and friends and you will see the eyes of your God.  Put your hand into the hand of the person beside you and you will touch the hand of your God who bids you to rise up, to be healed, and to live abundantly.

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