I’m
not sure any variety of Biblical story elicits as many different responses as
stories of healing, especially—as with the leper today—stories of miraculous healing.
There are two
camps who have strong reactions to these stories. There are those who have
experienced a miraculous healing in their life or in the life of a loved one,
and then there are those who have known somebody who should have been healed,
who should not have suffered through cancer or some other dreadful disease, but
their life was cut short; they found no miracle.
The difficulty we
have is that Jesus could heal the leper without him asking; he could heal all
the sick in town, no problem; he could heal all the world in an instant. Yet,
it takes an instance of being moved by pity for him to act.
“If
you choose,” says the leper, “you can make me clean.”
I
find it fascinating that the leper—standing face to face with God-incarnate—fully
expects Jesus to ignore him; it doesn’t seem like he anticipates anything to come
of this. Then, I find it even more fascinating that Jesus plays into that
picture of himself as well; it honestly seems like he does not want to heal,
but the leper gets in his way and it takes that moment of pity for him to do
it. And then, even when he does heal, he sternly warns the leper not to tell
anybody what happened.
What
is going on here?
A
few years ago I was working as a chaplain in the CPE program at Unity Hospital
in Fridley, Minnesota, when I was paged to be with a
family after the sudden death of their mother. It was pretty standard stuff as
far as chaplaincy goes; nobody was in deep emotional distress, it wasn’t 3
o’clock in the morning, thank God; all was well as far as I was concerned. But
I remember this visit because the daughter had a question on her mind that I
could see bubbling beneath the surface of our entire conversation, and it came
out eventually something like this. She asked, “My four-year-old niece had
leukemia, and she died last year. Why did God allow that to happen?”
This
story might be slightly off-track, but aren’t these the same questions we often
bring to a healing story? I wonder if the reason why Jesus is so cautious to
heal anybody is because then people will expect it for everybody. In fact,
that’s the next question—isn’t it?—why doesn’t he just get it all done with? No
more disease, death, or suffering.
Well,
to approach an answer to that question we need to take a good, hard look at
Mark’s gospel and find what Jesus’ purpose is. The Gospel of Mark moves so quickly,
like a freight train toward its conclusion, that we hardly have a moment to
breathe in-between healings and exorcisms, and preaching in parables. Just
about every new paragraph begins with “Immediately” or “Jesus went at once.”
Never do we get a break; never does the action stop. It’s sort of like those
Nicholas Cage, National Treasure
movies. They don’t care about character development at all; it’s just one
shallow, runaway train all the way to the conclusion that you can see coming
from a mile away. If we only had Mark’s gospel we might assume that the
entirety of Jesus’ ministry on earth was a few days spent moving with
incredible speed from one location to another. And the only thing stopping the
Jesus-train is that giant roadblock at the end of the tracks in the form of the
cross. That is where Mark is going and he’s not stopping the story even for an
instant to dwell on lesser points. For Mark, the cross means everything. The
healings? They don’t matter. The exorcisms? Nope. Raising the dead? Not even
close. It’s the cross, the cross, the cross.
The
only ones who Jesus heals are those who seem get in his way; a by-product of what
he’s preaching on the way to being crucified. It’s strange, weird really;
Mark’s gospel more than any of the rest offends what we would like to see. And
that is because Mark is not interested in what Jesus does; he’s interested in
where he’s going. He recognizes that healing is nice, but disease and death are
going to come back. Every time Lazarus is raised, he must die again. The point
of the story is not that Jesus can heal; it is the words of the centurion
looking at Jesus dead on the cross and saying, “Surely this man is the son of
God.”
God
is in the business of redeeming the whole creation; through healing, yes, but primarily
through death and resurrection. This is not an answer to why there is suffering
in the world—please don’t hear it as that! It is no justification for illness.
Instead, it is the promise on the far side of the pain.
This
may seem a bit unhelpful to those who are sick, so I want to clarify one thing.
Sometimes, our most immediate need is for healing, and when that is the case by
all means get in Jesus’ way; be the leper standing in front of Christ so he
cannot ignore you. Pray with the kind of certainly the leper has; Jesus can
heal you; sometimes he will do just that. However, if you are healed, like the
leper, Jesus is going to tell you to keep it quiet, because that isn’t the
moral of the story. Of course, also like the leper you’re not going to listen
and you’re going to tell everybody. But Jesus has a good reason for this
warning. And for those of you who have experienced a lack of healing you know
why. The proclamation of healing does not sound like good news to one who is
unhealed.
I
can’t help but think that Jesus knows us much better than we know ourselves. I
can imagine the despair he would have if the primary reason we believed in him
was because we were healed in God’s name. Healing happens; God is fully capable
of doing miracles here and now, and we should pray and pray without ceasing.
But that is not why we should believe. Our cue comes from Mark—the cross, the
cross, the cross. At the foot of the cross; there is the promise. Healing is
nice, but healing is temporary. The sacrifice on the cross is once and for all;
redemption beyond the ills of this world.
With Good Friday the world spins
out of control. Then on Easter everything is turned upside down. Death—meet
resurrection. Hell—meet heaven. Life as we knew it could never again be the
same, and it wasn’t because Jesus was healed.
The cross shows us
that miracles come in all degrees and varieties: to some extent what doctors do
every day is a miracle. But you will never be able to parse what is God and
what is human in the healing of sickness. You will only guess that God is
involved and invoke the miraculous when science can’t explain it. This is not
the purest form of proclamation.
When you proclaim
Christ, it is right to focus on where Christ is finally and most evidently
present. This is at the cross, dying for you, so that you no longer need the
healing you desire. Get in Jesus’ way and you are likely to get healed, but
don’t expect him to stay around and brag. He’s on a runaway train at breakneck
speed heading for the only place that matters; the only destination worth
preaching: the cross, the cross, the cross.
And with that,
I’ll see you in Lent.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment