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September 6, 2009

“A Healing Force” Mark 7:24-37 Rev. Phil Blackwell

      She sat outside our church office Tuesday afternoon, sobbing.  She was in excruciating pain; it was her back. She had just come from a hospital where she was examined and given a prescription for $200 worth of medicine, but she had no money to pay for it. She had been laid off from her Loop office job eighteen months ago, and now her health insurance extended after her dismissal had run out. She had to sell her condo last year to get money live on while she looked for another job, but now she was about to be evicted from her apartment because she was behind a couple of months in her rental payments.

      She also shared that she suffered from depression and had had a life-long battle with alcohol. She had been sober for three years now, thanks to A.A. But during the dark days of her addiction her family disowned her. They had run out of patience; she was on her own. And her back ached so much.

      Sickness . . . of her body, of her emotions, of her sanity, of her finances, of her relationships. She needed physical healing, spiritual healing, psychological healing, monetary healing, and social healing. And she had come to the church for it.

      Why the church? Because the hospital sent her here with a list of social service agencies who could help, and the Chicago Temple was at the top of the list. I scanned the handout and saw that we were there with clinics, halfway houses, shelters, and treatment centers. We must have been included when, back a few years ago, we worked in league with the Franciscan outreach ministry.

      We could not provide healing for all of her wounds. We cobbled together some money so that she could buy a few pain pills, but nothing close to the $200 that the hospital staff had prescribed. I told her about the aggressive schedule of 12-step programs that we have here at the Temple, including five A.A. meetings per week. And I prayed with her, a prayer for healing, hoping that by taking her seriously and listening carefully, perhaps some sort of healing might have begun.

      But throughout this episode I wished that I possessed the healing power of Jesus in our gospel today. He simply says to the mother of the ailing child, “Your faith is admirable. Your daughter at home is healed. Go and see.” And then, the deaf man pleads for healing, and Jesus simply lays his hands on the man’s ears and spits on his own hands and touches the man’s tongue. The man suddenly can hear, and hearing he can speak clearly. (I had not thought of spitting as a step in the healing process.  If it were so, baseball players would be among the healthiest people on earth.) 

      Jesus the healer, the Great Physician. And we the Church, the Body of Christ, are to be agents of healing in the world, a healing force.

      There is a problem with this first healing story in today’s gospel reading: Jesus comes off poorly. The repartee between the Syrophoenician woman and him, what is going on here? This is one of six healing stories that Mark clusters at the center of his gospel account. Those who track the geography of these episodes point out that Jesus heals three Jews and three Gentiles. We might say that this is “universal health care” of a godly sort.

       The woman’s daughter is one of the Gentile recipients of Jesus’ healing force.  We are told that she lay at home possessed by “an unclean spirit,” a very common diagnosis in Jesus’ day. The mother basically forces herself into the house where Jesus has sought refuge, bows down before him, and begs him to cast out the demon from her daughter. But Jesus replies, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

      What? What is this that Jesus is saying? That the Jews are the “children” of God and the Gentiles are “dogs”? Common curs who roam the streets?  Whoever overheard this conversation, could they have heard it wrong?

      Some have said that Jesus’ response to the woman is a very human reply of a fatigued and frustrated human being. You want your savior to be fully human as well as fully divine? Here is “fully human,” in all of its embarrassing humanness. Others have said that it is a step in Jesus’ self-understanding. This is a “teachable moment” in which he learns that he is to be the savior of all, not just some. Still others say that this is a kind of rabbinic gamesmanship on Jesus’ part, asking the kind of question that tests the other person. And yet another take on it is that it is a way of testifying to the persistence of the woman, a necessary component in healing.

      There are people today in our national health care debate who are saying pretty much what Jesus said. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Let us use all of our resources on taking care of “our own” and not waste them on “outsiders.” 

      Except notice in the gospel that Jesus relents, literally repents. He turns around. The mother cleverly replies, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” There are people saying that today, too. There is enough to go around; just the rudimentary care would be enough to heal most peoples’ wounds. An argument from abundance, not scarcity. A plea not to be excommunicated, to be banished from society because we are Gentiles.

      Jesus, the perhaps surprised, maybe even chastened, healer of all, responds, “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.” Jesus, the healing force of all, Jew and Gentile alike, insider and outsider alike. And therefore, the Church, the Body of Christ in this world, being the healing force of all.

      That is a very Methodist idea. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement within the Church of England during the Industrial Revolution, was very concerned about public health and well-being. He gathered groups of fellow Methodists into associations called “societies,” and they met weekly to study the scripture, pray, listen to lay preachers, and to take up a collection for the poor. In the primary society of London which met at an old munitions plant called “The Foundery,” Wesley set up a short-term small-business loan program that served 250 people in its first year. 

      More to the point, in December of 1746 Wesley established at this same east London location a medical dispensary. He had seen from his preaching in public settings all around the country – in open pit mines, market squares, and on rural hillsides – that many people were sick and needed medical attention. But, except for the very rich, it was not available. So, on Fridays he began “giving physic to the poor,” with the help of a pharmacist and a physician. About a hundred patients a month, Methodist and non-Methodist, all treated for a total of less than ten pounds a month. He later expanded this ministry to the Methodist preaching houses in Bristol and Newcastle. 

      He had been interested in health and well-being ever since his days at Oxford, so he had an amateur’s interest in the field. For those who could not make it to London, Bristol, or Newcastle he wrote a curious little compendium of good medical advice called “Primitive Physic,” which he gave to his traveling lay preachers to use as a second Bible as they traveled the country.

      He wrote in his 1755 edition of this little book, “It is my design to set down cheap and safe and easy medicines, easily to be known, easy to be procured, and easy to be applied by plain unlettered (people) . . . . “I have once more recommended to (people) of plain unbiased reason, such remedies as Air, Water, Milk, Whey, Honey, Treacle, Salt, Vinegar and common English Herbs . . .” Now, he also had cures that included onions, worms, cobwebs, spittle, and yarrow. So, not all his ideas have survived the test of time, but he tried to bring healing to all, always telling people to get to a doctor when one was available.

      We have a stained glass window pane in the sanctuary which shows Wesley Memorial Hospital, now part of the Northwestern Hospital complex. It was started by members of this church and the deaconess society in Chicago in 1888. Also, there is the Bethany hospital system, a Methodist enterprise, as well as the Foster Avenue home, Rosecrance Treatment Center in Rockford, and a number of other health care institutions in northern Illinois. And in many of the great cities of America there is a Methodist hospital of some significance. Why? Because it is part of the gospel imperative. Healing – physical healing, spiritual healing, emotional healing, economic healing, social healing – are all part of Christ’s call for us to be faithful, for us to be a healing force in the world.

      The Church has a role to play in the current health care debate in our country.  Not to promote one political party over another, or one politician over another, but to insist that whatever emerges, the resulting system be inclusive, affordable, accessible, and accountable. There may be many ways to achieve this vision, and there are experts in several fields who can work together to do it. But we cannot exempt ourselves from the debate and still remain Christians of a Wesleyan sort. We at least must champion the values of inclusivity, affordability, accessibility, and accountability. 

       And we must insist that any public discussion further the cause of healing, not wounding. Not just the content of the debate, but also the manner, matters. I judge that much of the public behavior in addressing these issues has been destructive, dangerous, and even demonic, possessed by a spirit of evil. Our mandate is to bring healing to this nation, even as we struggle with difficult decisions.

      Maybe we should have a healing service here sometime this fall. Let us have the Health and Wellness task force talk about it. I do not mean a “slap you in the forehead, fall back into the arms of an attendant, and cover you with a blanket” kind of service. I am thinking of the one the clergy of this Conference attended last winter. It was the opening worship service of a day-long seminar on the future of the Church. 

      It was simple, but powerful. There were hymns, there was scripture, a prayer, and a sermon. But what I remember most is walking forward with all of my colleagues, almost 400 of us, two long lines down the middle aisle, as a District Superintendent anointed each of us with oil on our foreheads and said, what? I do not remember. Maybe something as simple as, “Jesus Christ, lover of all, bring healing, bring peace.” The power was in the filmy touch, the earnest eye-to-eye contact with my superintendent, and the powerful presence of being surrounded by my clergy colleagues, with no need to explain our wounds, our pains, our anxieties, our burdens, our regrets. They were common knowledge. 

      We are all in this together. Jew and Gentile alike, male and female alike, rich and poor alike, black and white and Latino and Asian and all variations and combinations alike. In the name of Jesus Christ, healing is ours. In the name of Jesus Christ, we go to be a healing force of all. Amen.

Philip L. Blackwell
The Chicago Temple
September 6, 2009