June 5, 2005 Matthew 9:9-13, 18-31
ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A HEALING AND A CURE
Once upon a time, at a great rally under a giant tent a faith-healing preacher called up a man who had been blind all his life and after much histrionics proclaimed the man cured of his blindness. He certainly appeared to be. But then a skeptic came up, whipped out his red handkerchief and challenged the man: "OK, if you can see, tell me what color this is!" "Why, that's easy, it's red!" "Well, if you've always been blind, then how did you know it was red?" The tent quickly emptied.
We've seen too much of that sort of thing to easily believe stories of healing when it occurs. And I suppose we should be skeptical. But we also know enough of illness and disease to wish that faith-healing were true, that there would be a way to cure it all when medical science seems helpless.
The fact is, the New Testament abounds in stories of healing. Jesus appears to have healing powers, and he uses them. The fact also is, what passes for faith-healing today in popular culture bears little resemblance to what is described in the Bible.
So many of today's so-called healers use it as their drawing card, their "hook". They use it to draw a crowd, and then take advantage of their need and gullibility to sell them something, namely, faith, though it is faith defined as "belief", and a particular kind of belief at that, usually narrow and intolerant. And there is usually a plea for money involved.
Jesus on the other hand never made a big deal of faith healing. He did not use it to draw attention to himself, and almost always instructed the healed person to keep quiet about it. Instead of using the healing to produce faith, the healing was usually the product of faith, faith defined not as "belief", but as "trust". In today’s Gospel reading, there are three successive instances of people approaching Jesus and asking for help, for themselves or someone they love. In fact, the woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years didn’t even ask - she snuck up behind him saying, “if I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” And so she was. Jesus turned to her and said, “Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well.” And the Bible is full of such stories.
So what about healing today? Can faith-healing still take place? Why do some seem to make miraculous recoveries, and others still get worse and die? I think a lot of what you see on TV and in tent meetings is not what Jesus did. It places the emphasis upon the cure rather than the healing. And it is possible that a person may be healed but not necessarily cured.
We need to understand that there is a difference between the two. A cure is purely physical, when the manifestations of the disease disappear. Healing is something far deeper, recognizing the intimate connection between the body, mind and spirit, and how a disorder in one can affect the others; and that to achieve health in one, you also have to work for health in all. The body cannot be healed apart from the mind and the heart and the soul.
I’m not sure I can explain this as well as I can tell stories about it. A religion-writer for a newspaper attended a healing service, drawn by a news release that said: "People are healing from AIDS. You don't have to die from AIDS." There she met two men who were diagnosed with AIDS four years earlier. They did not claim to be cured, but rather "healed." One said, "We know it is the spirit inside the body that heals it....The healing of my body was the by-product of the healing of my mind and spirit.. I went from living in a world with this nasty God, and I was going to die of this illness, to being with this intelligent being that was really my Father, and I was his son..." Remarking upon their new-found vitality, the newspaper woman said, "both seem to have experienced a genuine faith healing, which is not a cure for what ails you. They have been healed in faith through the discovery of their spirituality -- an awakening of or re-connection with faith that they had lost, or possibly never had in their lives."
Some years ago a friend of mine who lived here in Washington was also diagnosed with AIDS. Some of you may have encountered him, the Rev. Bill McLinn, whose chief vehicle for ministry was his impersonation of Mark Twain. After much study and prayer he elected to forgo the traditional medical approach of chemotherapy, radiation, AZT, and so on, and chose instead a regimen of a macrobiotic diet, exercise, acupuncture, herbs, meditation. He reported, "I continue to have great energy and spirit, and I know I am healed. Whatever the body decides to do is whatever the body decides to do."
Though he did all this with the consent and encouragement of his doctor, and with medical supervision, there are undoubtedly some who would call what he was doing foolish, and quackery. Some would call him naive, and I myself wondered about where is the line between denial of reality and positive thinking. But he approached his illness holistically, not simply as a physical problem. He took charge of his own healing. And longer than anyone expected, he held his own. He was by no means cured, and in fact died over fifteen years ago. He wasn’t cured. But he did proclaim he was healed. And there is a difference. His mind and his spirit were working in harmony with his body. He wrote, "My understanding of illness within the process of life and spiritual development is that it is a road to a greater awareness of living. Through my simple willingness, I have been able to see beyond the outer manifestations of AIDS in my life to the gift that it has become within it." (An incredible statement! Only someone who had experienced healing could make it!) "I have come to understand the only sure thing in life is that every experience has a gift to give. Love does not come by our hiding what we feel is unlovable about ourselves, and only in a willingness to see beyond our perceptions can it be received....Love is the power that heals all things...Our resistances to love have created the conditions we find on earth today. By facing our resistance and releasing judgments, the healing we seek will come."
Decades before there was Bishop Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Church, there was another Bishop Robinson, also famous or infamous depending on your point of view, one of the great prophetic and perceptive theologians of the 20th century. He was the Bishop of Woolwich, England, best known for his book Honest to God. In December of 1983, Bishop John A.T. Robinson died, following a six-month battle with cancer. Perhaps battle is not the right word, for he had made his peace with the disease, and in a remarkable sermon preached at Trinity College in Cambridge just two months before his death, he described how he had "learned" from cancer, had seen God at work in it, how he had been able to live far more fully in his last months than ever before. Given six months to live -- and he died six months to the day after the prognosis was made -- he decided to make the most of the time he had left. He visited some places he had never been to, continued his writing and research, shared time with his family and friends, and completed the introduction to his last book only hours before his death. In his final sermon Bishop Robinson said, "I have discovered this experience to be one full of grace and truth. I cannot say how grateful I am for all the love and kindness and goodness it has disclosed, which I am sure were always there but which it has taken this to bring home. Above all I would say it is relationships, both within the family and outside, which it has deepened and opened up. It has been a time of giving and receiving grace upon grace...." He concluded, "Health means wholeness. It is not concerned simply with cure but with healing of the whole person in all his or her relationships. Hence the high point of the communion service, the gift of the bread of life and the cup of salvation, has traditionally been accompanied by the words `Preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life,' and it has ended with invoking `the peace (the shalom or wholeness) of God which passes all understanding."
Was Bishop Robinson cured? Of course not. He died right on schedule. But was he healed? That is another story, for certainly he was a man at peace with himself and God and the world, a man whose body and mind and spirit were working in harmony, a man who received the great gift of life and made the most of what was given, and returned it gratefully and lovingly to God. Surely that is what healing means.
In once sense this is all a great mystery. Sometimes we can discern the cause of illness, point to smoking or stress or heredity. We know that people who get one part of their life out of kilter -- who live dishonestly, who carry burdens they need to unload, who live fragmented lives -- are at greater risk to physical illness than those who "have it all together". But sometimes illness strikes them down too. There is no good answer to the question "Why?".
And there is not always a rhyme or reason as to why some get better, are cured, and others aren't. Sometimes all the medical help in the world won't cure an illness, and sometimes people get inexplicably better with no treatment at all. But in the last analysis, healing takes place when love is allowed in, and when all the parts of a person begin to work in harmony with each other and with God. And then life is lived in abundance, to the fullest, and it is returned to God abundantly and with love. And that is no less a miracle than when the lame walk and the blind see and hemorrhages cease.
That’s why we regularly offer a service of healing here at Westmoreland, on the third Sunday of each month, because we believe in the healing power of touch, and faith, and love, and even though it is mysterious and not always evident to our earthly senses, something indeed happens, and we are made whole.
One final story – I thought I had heard all my father’s stories over the years– most of them more than once – one of them being how when I was about two he was hospitalized and scheduled for serious back surgery for a slipped disk, surgery which would have laid him up for six months, a surgery which for some unknown reason never took place. It was only when he was on his death-bed two years ago that I heard the rest of the story. It seems that on the Friday before the surgery, which was to take place on Monday, his mother went to see her minister, a saintly lady in the metaphysical tradition we knew as “Mrs. Cate”, who preached into her 90's, by the way. Anyway, my grandmother told Mrs. Cate the situation, and she simply said, “I’ll take care of it.” “Don’t you want to go see him?” my grandmother asked. “No,” said Mrs. Cate, “I’ll take care of it.” When the doctor came in on Monday to prep my Dad for surgery he re-examined him and said, “Well, this is astonishing, you can go home now!”
My father wasn’t cured of his back problems – he had trouble for the rest of his life and had to restrict certain activities. But he was healed, and I think he chose to tell us the rest of the story when he did as a way of saying that no matter what happened to him in his final illness, he was indeed healed; his faith had made him whole. And so he was, and is, and so may it be for all of us!
