The Way of Healing

Matthew 4:12-13, Mark 1:21-25

February 21, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

The United Methodist Church in partnership with the United Nations World Health Organization, the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation and other non-profit agencies are working for the day when we can "Imagine No Malaria".

Malaria symptoms include fever, vomiting, and headache.  It is transmitted by mosquito and can result in anemia, coma, and death if left untreated. Malaria is preventable yet every year it kills 700,000 people, mostly children and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a disease of poverty.   The poor do not have the means to prevent and treat malaria. 

I contracted malaria while Bonnie and I served in Borneo thirty-some years ago and although it wasn't very much fun, my life was never in danger.  I had clean water, basic sanitation, an adequate diet and access to medicine.  For those without such essentials malaria is a life-threatening illness indeed. 

United Methodists are part of a worldwide effort that began in 2005 to eradicate this disease.  We have committed $75 million to this global effort.  Through the UMCOR, in addition to providing mosquito bed nets, our efforts in the fight against malaria include environmental clean-up (stagnant water and trash), basic sanitation (latrines and water), treatment, education, training more health care workers, and improving our existing United Methodist hospitals and clinics in the tropical world.

This is exciting and significant work but what does it have to do with God?  Why not let the United Nations and Bill and Malinda Gates handle it?  Isn't our job as a church to "save souls", to get people into heaven?  Why not leave the medical business to the doctors and nurses?   Isn't our job to pray for miracles not hand out mosquito nets?

During our journey through the season of Lent this year we are exploring Jesus' journey from his baptism and temptation in the wilderness of Judea to the cross of Golgotha.  During this season we consider where we might find our own place in the story.

Last week we considered Jesus' baptism and how immediately afterwards he spent forty days and nights of temptation in the wilderness in preparation for his ministry.  There in the desert he faced evil head-on and exposed it for what it is; empty, vile promises and lies.   The only power that evil has in the world is that which we give it.  The Way of Jesus then is to confront evil head-on and commit ourselves to the good.

In the gospels of Matthew and Mark no sooner does Jesus come out of the desert than he learns that John the Baptist has been arrested and imprisoned by King Herod Antipas.   This is the occasion for Jesus to move from his hometown Nazareth to the fishing village Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee which will become his base of operations for the next three years.  It is where he will call his first disciples, the fishermen Peter and Andrew, and James and John sons of Zebedee, along with Levi called Matthew the tax collector in the town.

Capernaum was a modest town of 1,000 people with a market place, a synagogue and a number of businesses besides fishing, such as olive oil presses.  One can visit the town today when in Israel and see the archeological sites, including the foundations of what is believed to be the house of the fisherman Peter where Jesus lived during his time there.  The Roman Catholic Church has built a chapel above the site that one can visit today.  It was near Capernaum that Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount.  It was there that Jesus taught from a small boat when the crowds got too big.  It was in Capernaum that Jesus did miracles of healing and exorcism as we hear in our story from the gospel of Mark this morning when interrupted by a demon possessed man in the synagogue.  Jesus casts out the evil spirits in the man and sets him free, much to the amazement of all who saw the miracle.

The gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus moves from Nazareth to Capernaum in fulfillment of a prophecy from Isaiah at least 700 years before:

 ‘Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’ (Isaiah 9:1-2)

"Zebulun and Naphtali" were lands annexed by the Assyria empire following a great and terrible war centuries before Jesus (733BCE, 2 Kings 1:29).  These lands would later become known as the Galilee region and as a land of Gentiles.  The people there suffered greatly during the war and as many were Gentiles, those not in the Hebrew family, they felt cut off from the salvation of God. 

The prophet Isaiah foresees a time when to the people of Zebulun and Naphtali "a light shall dawn."   The "light" to which the prophet refers is the in-breaking of God's future promise of a new Messiah.  It will be a day when "war shall be no more" (Isa 2:4, 9:5-6), when "peace" shall reign on earth (Isa 11:6-9) and that "justice and freedom" will prevail in human society (Isa 9:7, 11:4).  That "light" will be offered not only to God's chosen people the Hebrews, but to everyone even and especially the Gentiles.    

When Jesus comes out of the desert after his forty days and nights of temptations and trials, he preaches this message:

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15)

The time he is talking about is the day that The Lord had long promised when God's love, peace and justice would reign over the human heart. That's what "kingdom of God" means. 

One of the signs of this kingdom, the in-breaking of God's promised future, is physical and spiritual healing.   When the disciples of John the Baptist come to Jesus asking if he is the Messiah, we find these words in the gospel of Luke:

Jesus had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. And he answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.’ (Luke 7:21-23)

To his disciples Jesus says "I am the way, the truth and the life...." (John 14:6)  Over and over again he invites them to follow his "way", the word in the original meaning "path", "road", and “journey".  One of the first names for the early Christians was "children" or "followers" of "The Way" (Acts 9:2, 19:9, 24:22).

In the gospel of Mark there are sixteen stories of healing/exorcism miracles between Jesus move to Capernaum and his entrance into Jerusalem; none before Capernaum and none after Jerusalem. The Way of Jesus is healing.

Immediately following the story of the exorcism in the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law of a fever.   The word gets out about his spiritual authority.  Crowds begin to gather and he heals many of the sick.  He heals a leper the next morning. The crowds around Peter's house are in such great numbers that next we hear a story of four friends bringing a paralyzed man for healing and removing the roof, letting him down into the house from the ceiling just so he could be close to Jesus.

We are called to follow the Way of Jesus and the Way of Jesus is healing.   Since the beginning of the church, Christians have supported physical healing as ministry.  The first hospitals in Europe, Africa and Asia were founded by the church.   Today where governments in the tropical world cannot find the resources to provide medical services the church is there.  Methodist hospitals and doctors and nurses in Sierra Leon lead the fight to curtail the Ebola outbreak in West Africa just last year, a number of them dying in the process. The Way of Jesus is healing.

Many of us struggle with these Biblical stories of healing as if natural laws were being suspended.    If the natural order of things is suspended for some and not for others...if some get miracle healing and others don't...we are left searching for the right formula to get a miracle...the right church or the right doctrine or the right prayer to say.    Or we are left with a capricious God who doles out miracles for some and not for others.

The writers of the gospels 2,000 years ago felt that physical illness was the result of spiritual sin.  The gospel writers knew little about the medical causes of such diseases as epilepsy or schizophrenia which we find illustrated in their stories.  What they attribute as demonic possession today may be treated as mental illness or addiction.  When we only look at these ancient scriptures through the lens of our 21st century science and rationale we may end up missing their point.

Using a variety of terminology, most doctors and researchers will tell you that the spiritual intangibles of attitude and faith continue to play a significant role in one's physical and mental health.   Dr. Bill Buchholz's book, Live Longer, Live Larger: A Holistic Approach for Cancer Patients and their Families (Patient Center Guides, 2012) is a fabulous resource describing the power and potential of spirituality and healing.  One of my best friends, Art Kess in Reno, Nevada, was given 9 months to live with a deadly form of cancer.  He made it four years.    My own father, Cal Bollwinkel, was a 22 year survivor of colon cancer.  Attitude and faith play a major role in health and that is a true today as it was in Jesus' time.

One hundred years ago the thought that polio and small pox might be eradicated from the earth would have been considered "a miracle" and yet it is a near reality today.  I once met with a brilliant doctor who described to me new experimental medical technologies that will allow medicines to unlock the genetic code of diseases and effectually turn them off.  Wouldn't that seem "miraculous"?  And yet in the future that is what they may be discovering.

I say this knowing full well that for some desperate for a miracle there may not be one coming or one coming in time.   Platitudes about healing attitude and faith are empty indeed for those with plenty of both but who only see things getting worse, especially for those too young, too loved, too deserving of more life.  I can tell you from the depth of my being that in the mystery of time the God who has loved and walked with you though this life will meet you on the other side.  I can tell you that there are things far worse than death, namely never to have lived or loved while alive.  But those words are empty when the end is near.  And such words take nothing away from the cruel and capricious "final enemy" that death can be, in the Apostle Paul's words (I Corinthians 15:26).

Which is why the Way of Jesus is healing and why the church, when it is being the church, is fully committed to fostering healing...spiritual, mental and physical healing...whenever and wherever it can find itself.  We worship the God who rises from the Easter tomb to proclaim that death is not the final answer.   That the only thing that makes this life worth living...the love we share with one another...that love can never die.

And so we Methodists built hospitals and medical schools in Sacramento and Houston and Atlanta.  And we sustain hospitals and clinics in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in the Altiplano of Bolivia, and the interior rivers of Borneo.   And we stand with Casa Materna in Matagalpa, Nicaragua to assist poor women with difficult pregnancies.  And we join with the UN and the Gates foundation to wipe malaria off the face of the earth.

Because we live in the spirit of God's promised future right now.  And we saw what that future looks like in the life and teaching of Jesus.  And the way of Jesus is healing.

Amen.

The Way: Baptism and Temptation in the Wilderness

Mark 1:9-15

February 14, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

To his disciples Jesus says "I am the way, the truth and the life..." (John 14:6)  Over and over again he invites them to follow his "way", the word in the original meaning "path", "road", and “journey".  In fact, one of the first names for the early Christians was "children" or "followers" of "The Way" (Acts 9:2, 19:9, 24:22).

What does it mean to follow Jesus' Way?  How does one do so?   Why would it matter here in the 21st century?  Those questions will outline our journey through the season of Lent this year.

The Way begins in the desert.

In the gospel of Mark we have no story of Jesus' Bethlehem birth.   Jesus appears as an adult coming from his hometown Nazareth to be baptized by John in the Jordan River.   John is Jesus' cousin (Luke 1:39-42), a desert mystic/esthetic caught up in the apocalyptic expectation for a new Messiah and the restoration of Israel. The desert wilderness was seen as a purifying place cut off from the excesses and spiritual distractions of village/city life. John was offering the purification rite of water baptism in preparation for what he thought would be the immediate apocalypse and Judgment of God.   John was a fiery preacher of the "end of the world". Historians of the day reported crowds traveling the twenty miles from Jerusalem to hear John the Baptist and to be baptized.  Jesus, the son of a carpenter from the Galilee came too. 

In Mark's version of the story it would seem as if God adopts Jesus as his son as he comes out of the baptismal waters.  A voice from heaven says for all to hear, "You are my son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased."   Then the Holy Spirit immediately drives Jesus into the wilderness where he will be tested and tempted as he fasts for 40 days and nights.

The Lenten season was created by the church centuries ago as a liturgical season during which we could remember Jesus' forty day temptation in the wilderness before the beginning of his ministry (Lent is 40 days minus the Sundays, which are always designated to honor Jesus' resurrection).  Lent reminds us of all those biblical "forties" when the faithful wrestled with God to discover who they were and where they were going; Noah and his family waiting through forty days and nights of the flood (Genesis 7-9:17); the children of Israel who wandered 40 years between their slavery in Egypt until their entrance into the Promised Land; Moses and his forty days of fasting as he received the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:27-28); Elijah and his forty days of meditation and hiding as he waited for the "still small voice of God" (I Kings 19:1-f).

We mark the first day of Lent with ashes, gathered from the burned remains of the branches we waved the year before on Palm Sunday.  On that day we symbolically remember the crowds that hailed Jesus as Messiah with “hosannas”.  But we do not forget that those same crowds cried “crucify him” a few days later.   So we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross that will be the instrument of Jesus’ death and our betrayal of the God of love.

Out there in the desert wilderness John the Baptist was preaching "repentance" to those who would listen.  To repent in the original language means to "turn around".  To repent means to be transformed, to embrace the God that considers each of us "beloved".  "To repent means that we look honestly and fearlessly at ourselves to identify the ways in which we need to grow and change"; to repent means to "recognize that all is not as it should be in our lives" (Greg Weyrauch, Journeying Through Lent with Mark: Daily Meditations, Augsburg, 1999, p. 11).

Lent is an opportunity to do some real soul searching.  To honestly take a look at our lives, our relationship with God and each other.  It’s a time to face our own temptations.

​In Matthew and Luke’s versions of Jesus' baptism and desert fasting (Mt. 4:1-11, Lk. 4:1-13), we hear a dialogue between the devil and Jesus, with Satan offering Jesus three tests; command these stones to become bread; throw yourself down so that the angels can save you; and finally Satan offers Jesus all the Kingdoms of this world if he will worship evil.

​Each time Jesus answers the test by reciting scriptures; "We shall not live by bread alone, but by the words of God"; "You shall not tempt God"; "You shall worship the Lord your God and serve God only."

​Satan has no power over Jesus that Jesus won’t give him.  However you understand the devil in the Bible as metaphor for the reality of evil in the world or as a supernatural being, all the devil can do is offer the choices that lead away from life and love.  He cannot make us choose them.  Satan’s work is as tempter, tester, and accuser.  His power is in the whisper of doubt. He is "the father of lies" (John 8:44).  He is the sower of “bad seeds” (Matthew 14:39).  The devil is an "adversary" but in no way equal to God (note Job 1:6-f).

​We have all used the convenient excuse when things go bad, “Well, the devil made me do it!” (Note scriptural examples, Luke 8:11, John 13:2).  In fact, the devil can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do (Note; Scott Peck, People of the Lie, Touchstone Books; 2nd edition, December 1997).

​There may indeed be a spiritual battle between the forces of light and “darkness” (Ephesians 6:12).  But it is not the battle between two gods.   There is only one God, who by Divine love and mercy gives us free will.  The battle is among and within each of us to choose life or death, good or evil.

Let me site this example as an illustration.

Having thought that the institution of slavery had long been eradicated from earth, in recent years public awareness has grown that nothing could be farther from the truth.   It comes in new forms of indentured servitude and with a new title, "Human Trafficking".  The US State Department informs us that...

-An estimated 27 million people are held in slavery worldwide, meaning there are more slaves in the world than were taken from Africa during 300 years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

-More slaves alive now than at any other time in history.

-Approximately 800,000 to 900,000 victims annually trafficked across international borders worldwide.

-Approximately 80 percent are women and girls and up to 50 percent are minors.

-The majority of transnational victims are trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation.

-Between 18,000 and 20,000 victims trafficked into United States annually.

-In the United States alone, it is estimated that there are 200,000 living in indentured servitude, working in agriculture, illegal manufacturing and the sex industry.

Here in California, Attorney General Kamala Harris has reported that the rescue of human trafficking victims and the arrest of their captors have tripled in the last two years.  Her report says the numbers are likely much higher because many crimes go unreported. (Elliot Spagat, AP, 11/16/12)

Seven teenagers were rescued from forced prostitution in the San Francisco Bay Area during Super Bowl week, authorities announced Tuesday.  Some of the victims had previously been reported missing by their parents, Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said. They ranged in age from 14 to 17.  In all, 129 adults were picked up or cited for prostitution and 85 clients were arrested.  Over the last 13 years, the FBI and its partner agencies have recovered nearly 4,800 children and helped convict about 2,000 people in human trafficking crimes, which the agency described as “the most common form of modern day slavery.”  FBI Special Agent in Charge David J. Johnson said. (Sarah Parvini, LA Times, 02/09/16)

This social evil doesn't exist by accident or merely by cultural norms.  It exists because there is a market for this evil.  It exists because there are those who choose to pay for such services.    This evil will stop when good people are willing to name it for what it is and expose those making a profit off of such exploitation.

The devil can’t make us do a thing.   Only when in our freedom we give in to that which is wrong can evil have power in our lives and in our world.  We are always free to choose.

If the world isn’t the way it should be it’s not because God has let down God’s end of the bargain.   And so it is a young carpenter from Galilee that will show us the true nature of the Creator of the Universe:

“God made himself weak for one purpose; to let human beings choose freely for themselves what to do with him.” (Philip Yancy, The Jesus I Never Knew, Zondervan, 2002  p. 76)

“God’s terrible insistence on human freedom is so absolute that he granted us the power to live as though he did not exist, to spit in his face, to crucify him.”  (Yancy p. 78)

And so Jesus begins his journey to Jerusalem with baptism and the temptation in the desert.  He invites us on The Way, and The Way of Jesus is to face evil head on and call it for what it is.    We are invited to use these weeks before Easter to take stock of our lives, consider the freedom we have been given and the choices we have made.

It has been said, "Ethics is what we do while everyone is watching. Morality is what we do when no one is looking."

Lent is a time for us to remember our baptism and keep it holy.

Amen.

Living in the Light and Facing our Pain

John 4:5-15

January 31, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

Bob Ebling was one of the engineers at Morton Thiokol in Utah who tried to warn the NASA launch authorities that the “O” rings on the solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle Challenger were likely to fail in the freezing cold of that Florida morning thirty years ago last Thursday.  They insisted in a number of heated debates with NASA that the failure could be catastrophic.   No one in authority for the launch would listen.    As we all remember the ship with its crew of seven blew up 73 seconds into the flight precisely due to the failed “O” rings. 

For the first time in a public interview, 89 year old Mr. Ebling has identified himself as one of that team.  Although he and his team were not responsible for the disaster, he shared the guilt and pain he has carried for thirty years.  He has not been able to forgive himself, in his words, for “…not having done enough to stop the launch.” (UPI/NPR 01/29/16). 

It is hard enough to forgive someone who has hurt you.   It may indeed be harder to forgive yourself. 

"Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is an attitude."  (Martin Luther King, Jr.) 

Consider our scripture reading for this morning.

The verse just before our text today says, "But he had to go through Samaria."   He didn't have to go through Samaria.  There were other ways to get there. In fact the Hebrews would avoid travel through the apostate Samaria when they could.  There were a number of popular alternative routes.*

Pious Jews would consider themselves ritually unclean if they associated with Samaritans whom they considered to worship a false religion (2 Kings 17:24-34).  The Hebrews and Samaritans had a long history of animosity and distrust.  Jesus was well aware of this history and instructed his disciples accordingly.  When Jesus sent out the twelve he told them not to enter any city of the Samaritans (Matthew 10:5).  The disciples would be rejected when traveling through Samaria on another occasion (Luke 9:51-56).

Yet this time Jesus insists on not just traveling through Samaria but stopping there for lunch.  The disciples run off to buy some food.   Tired from the journey, Jesus sits down at the water well of Sychar.   He encounters a Samaritan woman coming to fetch water at noon.   Pious and righteous Jewish men, let alone respected rabbis, did not go out of their way to travel through Samaria, did not associate with Samaritans and certainly did not speak with unaccompanied women in public.  What was Jesus thinking?

Maybe it was that "forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is an attitude." 

Jesus had to go through Samaria to teach his disciples, and us the readers, that there are no social conventions, no religious barriers that limit God's love.  And so he goes where few dare to go.

The liturgical season between Christmas and Lent is a time to focus on the person of Jesus as God's incarnation of unconditional love.  Specifically, it is an opportunity to wrestle with the implications of such love in our lives.  During this worship series we will look at moments in Jesus' life when God's love transforms those facing the same challenges in life that we all do.  In this Epiphany season we ponder the in-breaking of God’s light into the world, the real world of flesh and blood, fear and failure, brokenness and loneliness.  What good is all this talk of God’s love if we are still carrying the guilt and shame born years ago?   What good is all this talk of God’s love if we can’t forgive ourselves? 

It turns out that the woman at the well comes at noon, the hottest time of day, to avoid the taunts and scorn of Sychar's other women who do such a physically demanding chore in the cool of the morning.   This woman has had five husbands and is now living with a man to whom she is not married. (:18)   We can only imagine the shame and woundedness she must carry from a lifetime of exploitation and broken dreams.   

Jesus doesn't just imagine it.   He can see it.  He can see right through to her heart that yearns for healing, for a life lived in isolation that yearns for community.   

How often do we learn to live with the hurt in our lives, adjust to it, and assimilate it into who we are rather than face it head on?  How often do we look for love in all the wrong places? 

Do you remember the actress Patty Duke?  (You baby-boomers will!)  In 1962, Patty Duke was the youngest person to win an Academy Award for the role of Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker".  Patty Duke's life is an amazing story of survival and healing.** 

Born Anne Marie Duke in 1946 to an alcoholic father and a clinically depressed mother prone to violence, at the age of eight her talent manager, Ethel Ross, changed her name to "Patty" and promoted her as a child actress.  Patty had amazing talent and found a variety of opportunities in New York City, eventually landing the role as the young Helen Keller in the Broadway production of the play "Miracle Worker".  By the time she was emancipated at the age of 18, the Rosses had taken most of her money.  Patty would be using drugs and alcohol herself as she struggled with what would eventually be diagnosed as bi-polar disease.  She would have four marriages.   For those who remember Patty Duke's many TV roles and productions, she performed many while addicted and suffering from mental illness. 

The turning point in her life came in 1982 when her manic-depression was diagnosed and she began appropriate treatment for it.  She would reclaim her birth name Anne in the title of her 1987 autobiography.  It was a sign of her liberation from the pain of her past.  Today along with the occasional acting role she is a tireless advocate for mental health issues, testifying in Congress and supporting the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI).   

She has said: 

"It's toughest to forgive ourselves, so it's best probably to start with other people. It's almost like peeling an onion. Layer by layer, forgiving others, you really do get to the point where you can forgive yourself." 

Jesus doesn't travel to Samaria to forgive the woman at the well of her apostasy and moral sin; although that occurs.  He really goes there to give her permission and power to forgive herself; something far more difficult to do.   

The Lord offers her a well of “living water” that can quench any thirst, heal any hurt and never run dry.  She has the wrong religion, the wrong social status, the wrong moral history and yet Jesus offers even her "living water"!  She leaves her jar behind and goes to the very people who have rejected her.  She tells them the good news of the Messiah who has come to offer the whole world "living water".  Many in the city will come to hear Jesus for themselves, and believe in him for themselves.  He stays two days at the hospitality of those his faith tradition considers unclean.  

Our text describes the power and possibility of forgiveness.  How is it that two people separated by gender, race, nationality and social status...who should have nothing to do with each other...find common ground in the promise of new life?

What is in the way of us claiming ours? 

How many hurts do we hold on to by denying that they are there?   How many slights and insults and wounds do we lug around in our inventory of disappointments?  Even more difficult, how many of us as children believed that no matter what we did we would never be good enough?   How many of us still believe it today as adults?   

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."  (Lewis B. Smedes) 

An ancient Chinese story tells of two friends who were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey, they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face.  The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, he wrote in the sand: "Today my best friend slapped me in the face."  They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath.  The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning but his friend saved him.  After he recovered from the drowning he wrote on a stone: "Today my best friend saved my life."  The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand, and now, you write on a stone, why?"  The other friend replied, "When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand, where the winds of forgiveness can erase it, but when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone, so no wind can ever erase it." Learn to write your hurts in the sand and to carve your benefits in the stone.  ("Sand and Stone", author unknown) 

Shouldn't we do the same for ourselves?    

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

(Martin Luther King, Jr.) 

If the living water of God's unconditional love can be offered to the likes of the Samaritan woman at the well...or a wayward prodigal son returning home to the embrace of a father...aren't we good enough to receive it? 

And it is my prayer that someday soon Mr. Robert Ebling can find it as well. 

Amen.

*Ferrell Jenkins, "He had to pass through Samaria", Ferrell's Travel Blog May 4, 2009. 

**Patty Duke and Kennen Turan, Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke, Bantam Books, 1987