Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Let’s talk about healing this morning. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus comes to Simon and Andrew’s home where Simon’s mother-in-law is sick with a fever — and he cures her. In several places in our Christian Scriptures, we’re told that Jesus came into the world to preach, and heal, and suffer. In all four of the gospels, Jesus is continuously presented to us as a healer — and more than a healer, because, in at least three instances, we encounter Jesus raising the dead: the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Naim, and, of course, Lazarus.
I have some very important questions about Jesus’ healing. The first one is: how did he heal? In many cases, he healed by touch, like in today’s gospel reading. He healed the man born blind with spittle. The hemorrhaging woman was healed by touching his clothing. He healed the centurion’s servant by his word alone. In each case, healing power flowed from him. The power we call “grace.”
The next question is: whom did he heal? Certainly not every sick person in Galilee or Judea, let alone the Roman world. Then, who was healed? Those who encountered Jesus, who came to him or were brought to him with faith. In his own home town of Nazareth, he could not heal very many because of their lack of faith.
The third and most important question for us here this morning is: where are these people now — today? Every one of them — including those he raised from the dead — is gone. Does that mean that Jesus’s healing power was only temporary and ineffective? Or does that mean we don’t fully understand Jesus’s healing? What was the purpose of his healing? Of course, it was to show compassion toward the suffering and to reward their faith in him. But the primary reason for Jesus’s healing was not for the sake of the sick people, but for the sake of the crowds who witnessed it. Jesus’s power to heal was to bear witness to the fact that the reign of God had come.
When we refer to the healing power of God, we’re not necessarily talking about physical health. In fact, modern science tells us that only a very small percentage of disease is purely physical. Almost all disease has a basis in mental, emotional, or spiritual factors. Here’s how it works: we assume that our perception is purely passive. That means that our senses receive the world as it really is. This is a total illusion. Our minds that process the images, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches we receive — those minds are creative. They assemble our sensory input into a cohesive whole, then they analyze what we perceive, then they apply meaning to it. People say our senses deceive us. In fact, they do not. They only register the light waves, sound waves, airborne particles, chemicals and pressures they are designed to respond to. What deceives us is our creative minds.
Our minds want to play God. They want to create a world that suits us — a world where everything unacceptable to us is banished. We create a world where our wants become needs and we begin to see every thing and every person as an enemy seeking to deprive us of what we believe we need. We create a world in conflict where, ultimately, are the victims.
This is the nature of our soul-sickness. It is the hell where evil dwells. Our word “devil” comes from the Greek term diabolos. A diabolos is one who rends (bolein) asunder (dia). Diabolos: one who tears apart reality. It’s a type of schizophrenia where our beliefs become divorced from reality. It is an insanity that tells us our interpretation of reality is right and everyone else is wrong — and not only wrong, but out to get us. Our minds create for us a hostile, fearful world that is fundamentally life-threatening. See what Job says in today’s first reading:
Job 7:1-4, 6-7
Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?
Are not his days those of hirelings?
He is a slave who longs for the shade,
a hireling who waits for his wages.
So I have been assigned months of misery,
and troubled nights have been allotted to me.
If in bed I say, “When shall I arise?”
then the night drags on;
I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle;
they come to an end without hope.
Remember that my life is like the wind;
I shall not see happiness again.
It’s a world we either constantly battle, or we escape into fantasy or addiction.
Our illness is self-created, but we’re completely unaware of that fact. It’s not deliberate, but the result of a fatal flaw within us that has been called “original sin.” The antidote is grace — the divine power that Jesus brought to all those who sought it. It was a healing that went far beyond the physical and transcended even death itself.
The divine healing power that comes to us today through the power of the Holy Spirit manifests itself in three ways: first acceptance. That is acceptance of the world exactly as it is — with all its joys and sorrows, victories and losses — and exactly as it was meant to be. We are not victims. Nothing happens to us. We are merely participants in a grand design.
That leads us to the second manifestation of God’s healing power: namely, surrender. That means surrendering to life as it is rather than as we wish it were. True surrender takes faith and hope and love. True surrender means aligning our will with the will of God, doing the next right thing, and leaving the outcome of our works to God alone.
The third and final manifestation of the healing power of the Spirit is gratitude. That means accepting things as they are, surrendering to the will of God, and giving thanks for it all. My favorite prayer was composed by Dag Hammarskjold, once secretary-general of the United Nations, who wrote: “For all that has been…thanks; for all that will be…yes.”
In the name of Jesus, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are healed. We stand with all our brothers and sisters as integral parts of God’s creation, no longer torn asunder from it or at war with it, with one another, or with ourselves. For this, we offer our prayer of thanks — our Eucharist — for, wherever there is true gratitude, there is healing, there is peace.