What Jesus Heals from the pulpit of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania by the Reverend Dr. Agnes W. Norfleet

Transcription

1 What Jesus Heals from the pulpit of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania by the Reverend Dr. Agnes W. Norfleet Readings: Mark 1:29-39 February 8, 2015 Isaiah 40:28-31 By my count, these ten verses from Mark s gospel contain twenty-nine verbs. We are still in the first chapter, and already the gospel is breathless from Mark s fast pace. Each of the four gospel writers has a certain theological perspective on the life of Jesus, and they all have their own literary style in the telling. If

2 Matthew invites us to sit down and listen to long sermons, like the Sermon on the Mount; and Luke saunters from one dinner party to another; then Mark s gospel sprints more like a track meet, moving swiftly as if the news about Jesus is so good it s hard to get it out fast enough. Not only is Jesus moving quickly from synagogue to homes to the neighboring towns, but the crowds are also swelling rapidly wherever he goes. When Jesus has to sneak out in the middle of the night just to be alone for some prayer time, the disciples hunt for him saying, Everyone is searching for you. Wherever he goes, Jesus demonstrates remarkable power, a power capable of many wonderful things, but is known, above all else, as the power to heal: He heals a man with an unclean spirit disrupting worship in the synagogue; He heals Simon s mother-in-law; He casts out demons and heals diseases; He takes people by the hand and raises them up. No wonder everyone is searching for him! It is what we search for in Jesus, too, isn t it healing of body and spirit. Next to our prayers of thanksgiving, I imagine prayers for healing are often at the top of the list. We pray for God to take fleeting illnesses away; we beg God for cures of cancer; we yearn to be healed of many forms of brokenness in our lives, our relationships, even the world; we ask God to take away all kinds of pain; and when the time is come we pray for the ultimate healing that only death can bring to free us from those things that can never be cured, and take us to that realm where mourning and crying and pain will be no more. 2

3 Everyone is searching for you, they said to Jesus, and anyone who has ever prayed for healing understands their sense of urgency, because we know what it s like to long for the healing Jesus offers. James Kugel has put that yearning into words as well as anyone I ve read in a long time. Kugel is Professor Emeritus of Hebrew literature at Harvard University. His book, In the Valley of the Shadow, recalls his journey following being diagnosed at the age of 54 with an aggressive form of cancer. Kugel uses an image that expresses so well what people experience when they get a terrible diagnosis. He writes: The main change in my state of mind was that I can t think of a better way to put it the background music suddenly stopped. It had always been there, the music of daily life that s constantly going, the music of infinite time and possibilities; and now suddenly it was gone, replaced by nothing, just silence. 0F1 When his regular daily rhythms suddenly became planned around pills to take, and doctor s appointments, and finding shortcuts to the hospital and the best places to park, that s what it felt like the background music of infinite time and possibilities turned to silence. No wonder the demon-possessed man, and Simon, on behalf of his mother-in-law, and the people of the neighboring towns grew in number and clamored after Jesus for what he heals because they had experienced, and come to believe, that Jesus can turn the background music on again the music of daily life that trusts there is a good future with infinite possibilities. 1 James L. Kugel, In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief, p. 2. 3

4 That is the kind of healing Jesus offers. Do we experience it as getting well? Of course we do sometimes. Do we call it being cured? That too sometimes. But we also know that what we receive from Jesus is more than being cured or getting well, there is more to what he heals. That s why someone like the actor Michael J. Fox, who has struggled very publicly with Parkinson s disease can say, For everything this disease has taken, something with greater value has been given sometimes just a marker that points me in a new direction that I might not otherwise have traveled. So, sure, it may be one step forward and two steps back, but after a time with Parkinson s, I ve learned that what is important is making 2 that one step count; always looking up. 1F Jesus seems to bring the background music on again, and to have people always looking up. Looking up from their plight in life toward a new notion of hopefulness; looking up from their pallets and wheelchairs and beds toward a new form of healing; looking up and seeing in Jesus that something greater than a cure for this or that particular illness. Something altogether more significant is happening than sick people simply getting well. There is a hint as to what that is in our scripture reading this morning when Jesus heals Simon s mother-in-law. Listen again: They entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. Jesus came and took 2 Michael J. Fox: The Secret of his Strength, Good Housekeeping, April, 2009, p

5 her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. Now, haven t you always thought it curious that as soon as she is healed, the poor woman is back in the kitchen serving the men? Maybe she d rather have stayed in bed with her fever and the remote control and a stack of magazines! If she d been so sick, then why aren t they dishing up soup for her when she s well enough to get up? It is all because there is more at stake here than it might first appear. When Jesus takes her by the hand, and the text says, and lifted her up, the word that describes this action is the same word that describes Jesus own resurrection. Here in the first chapter of the gospel we see already what will come in the last. Jesus lifted her up is a parallel saying to the angel telling the women at the tomb on Easter morning He is not here; he has been raised. He was lifted up! When Simon s mother-in-law is raised from her fever, she is not just suddenly well it s more than that she becomes the first deacon in the gospel. This is not a woman bowing to cultural convention and keeping her restricted place as the one who runs the kitchen; she becomes a disciple who quietly demonstrates the high honor of service for everyone else who will follow Jesus. Simon s mother-in-law is raised; she is resurrected to the role of a deacon, a servant of Jesus Christ who models faithfulness by what he heals. 2F3 Whether you have ever 3 Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 1, p

6 been really sick or not, we all have access to this power. In Jesus Christ, in this life, we are raised to a life of meaning and service. Jane Teas is assistant professor at the Cancer Research Center at the University of South Carolina. While we lived in Columbia, she wrote about a grant she received from the Center for Disease Control to study the connection between faith and healing. The grant enabled her to hire a team to interview people about their experiences of healing power and faith. Her interviewing team talked to people about their emotions, feelings, the words they used to describe what happened to them when they were healed, and how they understood it. They collected nearly fifteen hundred pages of transcripts from these interviews, which are now in the oral history collection of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, and forty-four of these stories were collected into a book called Faith that Heals. Making connections between faith and healing, in Teas words, these are stories that reveal the fullness and diversity of God. The people I talked with spoke of the curing of a physical injury or illness as secondary to the profound sense of meaning the experience gave the person. There will never be a pill that confers meaning in life, nor will there ever be explanations of why faith heals some people but not others. Since death is inevitable, even in the face of the best medical practices, our earthly endeavors are limited. However, There was a clear difference between the secular condition that medicine could cure, or not, and the spiritual condition that only God could heal. 6

7 In the stories we heard, God is active, sometimes appearing unexpectedly, sometimes healing in timeless ways almost identical to those described in the Bible. Sometimes God serves as a comforter in times of trouble. Sometimes God is at the beck and call of the petitioner, responding to desperate pleas, to awkward reproaches, or to someone who bargains for healing in return for faithful service. Through these different experiences she finds a common thread. A strong sense of 4 grace, that elusive quality of mercy pervades all these tales. 3F You know, I think that s why Mark s gospel moves us so quickly from one healing story to another. Mark wants us to know that Jesus is God with us, up close, in person, moving through our lives, touching our wounds, raising us to new life, equipping us all to be deacons, servants who share in his healing ministry. Whenever the background music of daily rhythms has been silenced by some dreadful diagnosis or whatever it is that ails us, Jesus comes to restore the hopeful sound of infinite possibilities. For as he says to those who search for him, Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message of good news there also; for that is what I came to do. AMEN. 4 USC Professor Studies the Miracle of Healing, The State, 3/15/10 and Anita Baker, Faith that Heals, The Star. 7