Acts 3:1-10
Peter and John went to the Temple one
afternoon to take part in the three o’clock prayer service. As they approached
the Temple, someone lame from birth was being carried in. Each day he was put
beside the Temple gate, the one called the Beautiful Gate, so he could beg from
the people going into the Temple. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he
asked them for some money.
Peter and John looked at him intently, and
Peter said, “Look at us!” The lame person looked at them eagerly, expecting
some money. But Peter said, “I don’t have any silver or gold for you. But I’ll
give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!”
Then Peter took the person by the right
hand and helped him up. And as he did, the man’s feet and ankles were instantly
healed and strengthened. He jumped up, stood on his feet, and began to walk!
Then, walking, leaping, and praising God, he went into the Temple with them.
All the people saw him walking and heard
him praising God. When they realized he was the lame beggar they had seen so
often at the Beautiful Gate, they were absolutely astounded!
Mark 6:53-56
After Jesus and the disciples had crossed
the lake, they landed at Gennesaret. They brought the boat to shore and climbed
out. The people recognized Jesus at once, and they ran throughout the whole
area, carrying sick people on mats to wherever they heard he was. Wherever he went—in villages, cities, or the
countryside—they brought the sick out to the marketplaces. They begged him to
let the sick touch at least the fringe of his robe, and all who touched him
were healed.
****
Will you pray with and for me? Holy One,
you are the healer of our spirits. Be with us as we open our hearts to your
presence with us, and give us grace in this time to truly take in your love and
wisdom. In all your names, amen.
Healing has always been important in
religions, in cults, in spirituality. It’s not difficult, I think, to
understand why. When a person is ill, whether in the body, mind, or spirit, all
they want is to get well, whatever that takes. And sometimes it is hard to know
why you are ill—this was especially true in the distant past, before humans
understood about germs and viruses and antibiotics. A person would just
suddenly get sick, and sometimes would get better, and sometimes wouldn’t for a
long time, and sometimes would be OK afterwards and sometimes would suffer permanent
damage—and sometimes wouldn’t survive at all. Injuries too—sometimes people
could be sewn back together and would be OK and other times not. They didn’t
know about keeping wounds clean and infections and internal bleeding. Obviously
they could observe that people whose wounds were kept clear healed better, but
that wasn’t always possible—and sometimes they died anyway, if they had
internal injuries, or if the wounds were worse than they appeared. Even into
relatively modern times, something as minor—to us—as a cold could be deadly.
When we read Jane Austen novels---or at least when I do!—and we read of someone
spraining an ankle and having to stay as a guest where they had just been
passing by, we might think it contrived. But the reality is that in those days
of no springs in the carriages—which meant a lot of bouncing around—an injured
rider was bound to injure herself again. And of course she couldn’t ride
horseback—you need feet and ankles for that even sidesaddle. Walking was
naturally not an option. And so, in one of her books, a character does stay on
a visit of several days with friends she had not even been planning to see,
when she twists her ankle and cannot get home; and then catches a cold which
threatens to turn into pneumonia—and this in the days before penicillin,
remember.
So in Jesus’ day, while medicine could do
some things, and people had more medical knowledge than we often give them
credit for, knowledge that was mostly lost in Europe during the Middle Ages,
health was still crucial. Someone who became ill, or had a chronic illness, or
a disability, was an economic liability to his or her family. It is a cruel
truth. A person who had mobility limitations—this in the days before
wheelchairs or artificial limbs or elevators or ramps; or who was visually or
hearing impaired; or simply had cancer—this person could not contribute much to
the household income, could not work in the field very well or care for the
children or weave or cook or care for the flocks and herds. They had become a
liability. Given the economic realities of the time, many of them, as this
person at the Beautiful Gate did, became beggars in order to contribute
something. And yet, of course, they had
families who loved them—this was their daughter, their brother, their cousin,
their nephew. And so of course they wanted healing for them. It wasn’t an
economic decision—it was a yearning of the heart.
And so Jesus healed; and so did Peter and
John, following his example.
So here’s a question I’ve always had—and it
popped up again when I started thinking about this reading for today. Why
didn’t Jesus heal all the people? There were a lot of people coming to him for
help, but we don’t hear that he healed all of them. And I’m sure Peter and John
passed other beggars in the gate—it’s a natural place for beggars to gather,
anywhere people have to slow down, where traffic slows down and people gather.
You see it today, at the on-ramps and off-ramps to freeways and the big
intersections in the city. There were many people, but not all were healed.
Why?
For a long time, I thought it was because
not all of them were worthy—the ones who weren’t healed didn’t have enough
faith, or hadn’t asked, or were too afraid. But the more I thought about it,
the less I liked that answer. Why would Jesus pick and choose? If all those
people came to him for healing, why would he heal only some of them?
A couple of things changed my thinking. One
was understanding the difference between curing and healing. Curing something
means it is gone, no more, bye-bye. A person can be cured of very few things—a
minor cold or a scratch, maybe. But anything else—well, it leaves a mark on you
and is with you always, in some form or another, and may always affect your
life, sometimes in major ways. A person cannot be healed from diabetes, for
example; nor cystic fibrosis or substance abuse or cancer. Even a broken bone
leaves the bone weakened, and something like cancer leaves a person's body
permanently weakened and scarred. The effects of these illnesses are always
with them, and they are always in recovery from them—they are healing or
healed, but never cured.
So Jesus—and John and Peter--carried out
healing, not cures. The bodily manifestations of the individual’s illness--the
skin disease or the mental illness or the lameness-- may have been gone, as
with the person at the gate to the Temple, who was able to dance when he could
barely stand before. But the effects of the illness are still there, if not
physically then emotionally and spiritually. Many cancer survivors will tell
you they gained an attitude during treatment they didn't have before. It's
partly a new sense of what's important--and it's not usually what was important
before their diagnosis--and partly a new sense of skepticism about what "authorities"
say, since for most of us, we were eating well or at least reasonably, we had no real risk factors, and yet there we
were in a cancer clinic wait room...
Not cured, but healed.
Something else I noticed. These were mostly
folks who were already following Jesus. Certainly that's true in Mark's Gospel.
The person at the gate in Acts was not prevented from entering the Temple--he
couldn't serve, if he had been asked, since those serving in the temple had to
be clear of any bodily defect. They were not healed so they could worship; and
they didn't worship as the price of their healing; they worshiped and they were
healed. The only connection the two have to each other is the the healing was
celebrated in worship. There's nothing in either reading to suggest that the
ones who were healed didn't already worship.
The healing showed the power of God through
Christ to restore people to a place in community. Without the healing, they
were marginalized, less than; not actually cast out, like lepers and murders
and so on were; but they were on the very edges of community. Whatever
happened--and remember, the Bible is a book of why, not how--the individuals
who needed healing received it, and provided a sign of God's coming realm. They
had reason to celebrate! Not only were they healed--in and of itself a great
thing--but they had a foretaste of the perfect realm of God's love.
So what does this all mean to us? We are
unlikely to meet Jesus on the front steps of church, although I would guess
that all of us have something we would like to be healed from. We can meet
Jesus in two places--our own hearts, and in each other.
Take time this week to be with Jesus--in
prayer, in conversation as you move through your day, in quiet times of
meditation--what ever works best for you. I am willing to bet that when you do
that, you will see Jesus more often in others as well--the driver ahead of you
in the Timmy's drive through who paid for your coffee; the co-worker who
normally is so hard to deal with, but today confesses her concern for her mother's
health; the man who holds up traffic so that a duck and her ducklings can cross
the road. And you will find him within your self, too--those fruits of the
spirit: kindness, patience, strength, love, and wisdom.
Go, my friends, to be healed, and to heal.
In all God's names. Amen.
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