God Heals

Proper11BPentecost8, Sullivan Park Care Center, July 19, 2015

By Annette Fricke

            How does God through Jesus Christ view our mortality and our feeble attempt to interrupt the cycle of disease and physical malady?  What does Jesus do and what is our response? 

            Last Saturday was the date I had personally picked for our fortieth class reunion to take place at Comstock Park, thinking that we would have a nice sunny day.  The forecast said we would for the several days beforehand, yet when the day finally arrived, even the “light rain in the morning” prediction was wrong.  A classmate of mine who had been adopted finally tracked down her biological mother, learning that her mother too had Multiple Sclerosis.  Like always, here comes the rumor mill grinding up the same whole grains of truth into flour of questionable integrity. It was like being transported back in time to when we were much younger. Someone had commented that they didn’t know she was that bad!  I’m sure that some could hear me inwardly groan.  Unlike many of my classmates, including myself, she had remained living in Rockford moving only from the Freeman area.  As usual, she put on her strong armor insisting she had done well despite her illness, stating emphatically that she had already outlived her mother who died in her early forties.  She never wanted what she would term a pity party.  She doesn’t like people to feel sorry for her in her so called “condition.”  Come to think of it, when a woman is pregnant, that phrase of being in that “condition” is also used to describe such a state of being.  I have very mixed feelings about the current announcement when a husband states that we are pregnant.  Well, yes, but your body is not undergoing all those changes that produce such annoying nausea and vomiting every morning and your body is not being stretched to the limit ever becoming more and more uncomfortable. If you mean pregnant as in expecting a baby, yes.  We’re all expecting that.

            People can say things that really hurt others whether they hear it from someone directly or in person, face-to-face.  I’m not talking about those moments when the brain is simply having a difficult time coming up with the right intentional, well-meaning words.  I am talking about such statements as, “I didn’t realize she was that bad!”  It was evident years ago that she had MS and as is the course, she still has it and has not recovered.  That is the nature of MS and has been since we, as a people, observed the symptoms and came up with a name for it.  People talk as though she is the illness rather than she is a person with an illness.  She wants, as I am sure also the rest of us, the same respect and recognition as a person, not an illness. We are not our illnesses.

            Who is this God, who in Jesus already has an understanding of disease that is just now coming to be realized in the twenty-first century?  There is a mind-body connection that the medical community largely ignores and many psychiatrists do not believe in God.  The attitude is to prescribe a pill and let people go about their “normal” lives which are anything but normal.  Only certain forms of counseling/therapy and Christianity work at forging the mind, feelings, and body together into one cohesive whole.  They are not separate entities as many modern day practitioners would have you believe; they are interrelated aspects of the oneness of our persons.

            The ancient Hebrews knew that and yet somehow forgot.  Both the book of Job and Jesus fought hard to dispel the belief that people become ill or fall into misfortune because somewhere they or their ancestors sinned.  Many times, when people draw near to death, those who would ordinarily come for a visit stop coming as if death were a disease they could catch.  All relationship ties are severed.  The book of Job is very instructive as well as insightful as to the nature of what people do in the face of someone who suddenly has lost everything.  How can we, as Christians act and feel differently?  Or, more importantly, how can we teach others to look beyond their skewed notions of what other sources tell them whether it be the people in their social circles, the newspapers, the news on TV, or the internet?

            And this is the other aspect of the mind-body connection, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick;" he said. "I came not to call the righteous but sinners." (Mark 2:17).  Modern phrasing would probably render this passage as, “I am well, I don’t need your help, God.” Or “I’ll call on you when I really need your help, but in the meantime, I’m busy.”  I am busy doing other things without giving God a second thought.  I can’t be bothered with reading from the Bible and praying every day.  There just isn’t enough time in the day; I will leave it to the religious nuts.  They can pray for me; it isn’t necessary for me to do so as well.  God doesn’t need to hear from all of us. Keep telling yourself that. Keep telling yourself that God is disinterested in connecting with you.  Like parents who continue to be there for their children, so God is there for you. The prayer books, the rosaries, the pilgrimages, and the retreats are aimed at one thing: our connection with God. 

“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”  Afterwards, re-engage in the world, have compassion, teach and bring healing to others.  Jesus isn’t here physically anymore, but is still in charge and can work through you in amazing ways.  This past week, I finally managed to take a mini vacation and go out to a lake I hadn’t been at for over forty years.  Of course, it was free then; now, it’s $5.00.  I, one who is guilty of always pushing through and not taking time off, did nothing by the lake for an entire afternoon.  It felt good until I encountered the traffic back-up on the freeway as I drove home.  However, I would not allow that to bother my mood too much.  I got off on the first exit I could into the quiet of residential Spokane.

Until we come to terms with the fact that we are all sick and in need of healing, we do die in our sins.  We can so complicate our lives with the worries and preoccupations of our minds and negative perceptions of our current situation in life that “life” hardly describes our lives.  We become no better than the movies or advertisements we watch on TV.  We can begin to resemble the very things we detest, like repeating the same wording of a favorite game show, limiting our vocabulary to very simple expressions. 

No matter what we think about Jesus being our savior, the word does actually mean both salvation and healing.  The healing dimension is often what we forget, yet is most important in the present moment.  Healing is a bold concept that is meant to be acted out.  Many of you have better connections with people from the Church other than me. If you want a religious representative to do more than what they do, tell them.  Ask them.  At the same time, offer yourself towards the healing of others. Touching is fundamental, going beyond the verbal and intellectual.  Remember this: all who touched even the fringe of Jesus’ cloak were healed.