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.