Sermon: The Shape of Healing

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The Shape of Healing

By Charles Rush

Oct. 21, 2001

out six months ago, I got an earnest phone call from a religious travel agent, desperate to book some tours to Israel. I only listened to him because that is just such a tough sell right now I was curious. They had two new features. One was the opportunity to rebaptize any and all of you from Christ Church in the river Jordan just outside of Jerusalem. I visited the river Jordan when I was in college and was surprised to learn that raw sewage had flowed in it from time immemorial, even in John's the Baptist's day. It is Holy Water with a hint of merde. Perhaps, it added a little political sarcasm to John's call to Jerusalem- i.e. “better our own stink, than the perfume of the Romans”. I cannot say. I asked the travel agent if he would provide any cover from machine gun fire during this meaningful time of baptism, since the river Jordan runs right through hotly disputed territory in the West Bank.

The kicker, he was saving this one. They had recently installed, on the lake of Galilee, a fiberglass walkway two inches below the surface of the water for several hundred feet, so that all of us together, could have the experience of walking on the water like Jesus. Picture Barbara Bunting, Squire Knox, Wayne Bradford… “whew, it doesn't get any more exciting than this.” No tour is planned for the near future. Although, I do look forward to the day when peace returns to the region and we can actually go together, because it is truly remarkable and life-changing, only not in the kitsch spiritual way our travel agent imagined.

When it comes to healing and healing stories many, if not all of us, have to get by images of kitsch religion. There are the tacky evangelists on T.V. in the rest of our country that are hawking vials of holy water from the river Jordan with miraculous powers. There are the tacky Catholic trinket shops that adorn so many pilgrimage sites around Europe, many full of superstition and legend.

And it is true that the stories told about Jesus in the bible were also told to convince a Greco-Roman society that Jesus was divine because he did miraculous stuff. Only divine beings did miracles- like Zeus or Hercules. Jesus was, unquestionably, regarded as a miraculous healer. Even his critics acknowledged this in the ancient literature.

But there is another dimension to Jesus' healing I want to lift up today. It is subtle but I think profound, even though it is simple. It has to do with the humane dimension to Jesus' spiritual healing. You can go to these religious sites around Europe, like Lourdes, where people have come for miraculous healing, and you can think- superstitious, well meaning people. But from the human dimension, I sometimes read the notes that people leave, and think, simple folk maybe, but such deep groaning. They are at the end of their rope. They have no where else to turn. They want their baby healed. So much love.

And in these stories, if you read them from this perspective, Jesus releases positive spiritual energy and I think that God wants us to release that positive spiritual energy too. This positive energy brings simple sobriety, it brings physical health, it makes accessible the higher reasons for which we live, creating joy. It is a positive energy.

Of course, not all spiritual energy is positive. Most of us here know what it is like to live with religious guilt, some of us know what it means to live under religious fear, some what it is like to live under spiritual judgment. It is an option. Indeed, probably too many clerics think this is the major way religion ought to be.

The negative force of spirituality is very powerful nevertheless. I was starkly reminded of that watching Osama give essentially a spiritual speech on Al Jazeerwa, delivered in such a pacific tone, a gentle man. But Thomas Friedman, writing for the New York Times, was practically the only person willing to actually respond to what he heard on that tape, which was really quite chilling, violent, and hate filled.

Friedman said that what the Islamic world needed to hear was a positive spiritual message, something that could become the foundation for building their civilization from the ground up. He reminded us of the Golden Age of Islamic civilization in the Middle Ages when they promoted tolerance towards Christians and Jews, trade with the West, the free exchange of ideas. It was then that Mathematics, science, and the arts flourished and their civilization was at it's height.

But what could you find in 's speech or his view of the world that could produce such development and growth? Nothing. He pointed out that was essentially a hijacker. His men hijacked planes that they couldn't really fly, knowing just enough to destroy them. They hijacked television, which they really don't know how to use, knowing just enough to disseminate their propaganda. They hijacked the Afghanistan government, not knowing how to lead people toward peace and prosperity, knowing just enough to allow independent clans to act as they please, free of foreign domination. They hijacked Islam, not virtuous enough to explore it's full breadth and scope, using just enough to control the uneducated around them and spread fear and violence to enemies they have never met.

I like that concept of Hijack, underscoring as it does, the essentially fake, negative quality of the movement. The famous theologian, Karl Barth, used to say that evil was essentially a schadenexistenz, a shadow of real reality. It's only actual existence is as a perversion of the good, and it is the Good which is fundamentally real. Evil is a sad, if powerful, imitation.

What strikes me these days is how easy it is to release negative spiritual energy and how hard it is to cultivate the positive. We have been indundated this past week with an anthrax threat. On the one hand, it is a threat that must be addressed. But it was overexposed in the news, overcovered, the threat overblown to the point that the news coverage itself created an anxiety nearly unto panic and dread. In the process, a negative spiritual energy was fed and fed and fed.

We know about this phenomenon in our homes as well. The psychologist John Gottman studied marriages in what he used to call his ‘love laboratory'. Gottman was struck by the particular dynamics that affected relationships that were in trouble. Gottman noticed an increased attention to negative events in these situations. Like most third party observers, he was struck by the fact that a couple could have 25 years of really solid relationship, one year of difficulty, and the only thing either of them could focus on was events during that one year. He commissioned a study to see just how many good things to bad things had to happen in order for a relationship to turn the corner. You know what the ratio was? 7 to 1. A spouse had to do 7 really good things for every boneheaded move in order to move the relationship forward. 7 to 1! People fixate on the one negative thing. They hold on to it, stew on it.

Humans appear to be hard-wired to retain negative images. Common sense suggests this may be an important evolutionary adaptation for survival. The caveman is attacked by a sabre tooth tiger and retains a particularly vivid image that kindles fear each time he remembers it. Those cave men that did not remember the Sabre tooth tiger with fear, eventually ended up as lunch, so our gene pool has been selectively developed.

Yet, today this survival technique, combined with media technology, is actually an obstacle to healing. Added to the real horror downtown, we have replay after replay of the Trade towers falling down. And if you have a hard time getting these images out of your mind at night and can't sleep, turn on the television and watch hour after hour of the crisis around anthrax. We are surrounded by a slough of negative spiritual energy, real and rewound and rewound and rewound. So these negative images are becoming deeply imbedded in our consciousness.

By contrast, let us look at this series of healing stories that we read today. Look at the shape of the healing that Jesus does. In every case, he radiates out a humane power. It is subtle in our texts because they have been written in a symbolic fashion and some of that is lost on us today.

In each case, the people healed are outsiders. In the first case, Jesus goes over to the Decapolis, that is the Gentile section on the other side of Lake Galilee, in what is today the West Bank, near the Golan Heights. There he finds a man that is possessed of a demon. This is somewhat lost on us today because we are not much interested in demon possession. But Romans were very interested in demon possession. They thought demons could get into you in all sorts of manner and popular Roman religion was filled with incantations to get rid of demons. That is where we get the practice of throwing a pinch of salt over your shoulder. That is where we get the expression, ‘step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back.' Romans were fairly obsessed with warding off evil spirits that your enemies would sick on you or some angry dead relative would sick on you.

So our story is symbolic of the universal scope of Jesus' message. It is not just for Israel, Jesus also goes to Gentile regions. It is not just about Jewish law, Jesus also addresses the concerns of other religions. He finds this man bound, without clothes, out of his mind, in a graveyard. He is bound in every which way by demons. Jesus asks the demons what their name is? That is the way, in the ancient world that you gain power over someone else, to be able to use their name. They answer, ‘Legion'. Surely, this is a little political satire in the middle of the story. The demons are also the name of a garrison of Roman soldiers that are occupying Israel at the moment. Jesus has power over the whole Legion, so to speak. And he casts out the demons.

It appears a violent casting out and chaotic at that. The demons head into a herd of swine that run over the edge of a cliff. Okay, so the guy is cured but what about a little compensation for the poor farmer that owned the swine? What about the poor swine for that matter- not a lot of ecological sensitivity here? Again, the story is told symbolically. Swine are symbols of everything not-kosher. They destroy themselves. We are witnessing a divine cleansing.

Our focus this morning is not on these things but on the gentile man that is made whole. He is not destroying himself anymore. He is sober and calm. He is ready to return to the land of the living, having been living in the land of the dead. Other people have abandoned him and quarantined him. Jesus speaks to him gently and heals him.

The woman with a bleeding condition that wouldn't stop. She is Jewish but she, too, is cut off. Her condition makes her ritually unclean. That means that she can't participate in the full life of the community. In this case, the religious authorities keep her isolated from everyone else. How full of sadness I assume this woman must have been- cut off, isolated, told that she was not fit… I saw a documentary movie made by women in Iran about women's condition there, never able to go out, never able to see the wider world, some of them suffering from diseases you get from a lack of sunlight- another inhuman religious sanction. This woman has a health issue that prevents her from social contact. Over the years, I have visited many people in long-term care facilities or nursing homes. Every once in a while, I will see someone regularly for months on end who is confined for health reasons and they see almost no one except for their care givers or the person that lives near them. And there is nothing that can be done about it and nothing will likely change. I think for me, it is that social isolation that is so sad…

And this woman takes matters into her own hands. Perhaps she is desperate. Perhaps she has exhausted all known cures and remedies. She takes matters into her own hands. Despite being a woman, she is aggressive. Despite being ritually unclean, she approaches Jesus and she touches him. Jesus turns to her and she trembles. God only knows what she has experienced in the past to tremble. Jesus turns to her and says, “Peace be with you… Your faith has made you whole.” Such words of simple humanity and healing.

He goes to the home of the Chief of the Synagogue. I like this because their might be hope for us clerics as well. Notice too, we are on the outside perimeter, with the Gentiles and the Women. In this case, the Rabbi's daughter has died. It is a burden that no one should have to bear. I remember being called out of a seminar with the sober words, “your five-year-old Son has been hit by a car”. It is such a leaden, soul-numbing moment. I think of these mothers that have to watch their children get sicker and sicker and they can't do anything but walk with them through the valley of the shadow of death. It is a grief and a sadness so deep that some people can never really recover from it. This is the situation for this Rabbi and his daughter. And Jesus heals her too.

God wants us to be healthy and well, alive and in our right mind, back in touch with other people, moving in the community. There is such a warm touching humanity to the shape of Jesus' healing. That is what the spiritual life is all about. Jesus releases this positive spiritual energy in the midst of brokenness, exclusion, and fear. He beams out compassion and beckons what is humane in each and every one of us telling us, we are accepted, we are important and we are needed.

When people hear this, when they really get it, it can change their life forever- like a great, wide door swinging open before them, giving them a new chapter on life. There is a miraculous quality to those changes, even if they are seemingly ordinary. This is the shape of healing that God wants us to be about, to be channels of positive spiritual energy in the midst of a broken world, to be compassionate to those on the periphery, to bless those that have internalized shame and cannot accept themselves. Release it and stand back. The kingdom of God will blossom before us. Peace be with you this day and through this week. May you too be privileged to see stand in awe before God's grace in our midst.

Amen.