Proper 8b 2021
June 27, 2021
St. Paul's, Monroe [^1](http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp8_RCL.html)
Opening
I had occasion this past week to think of my father. Or rather to think about my relationship with my father. My earliest memories of him were that he was god-like. I was named after him. I accepted that I would be a physician just like him and his father before him.
And then it changed. Some of you may know the kind of thing I'm referring to. This is not the place to unpack all of that -- except for one thing. At a certain point in high school I knew that I was not going to be a physician.
From the beginning, the rationale I gave was that I didn't like biology in my sophomore year. I think I got an adequate grade, but it just didn't seem right. Only in more recent times have I realized that there was no doubt a lot more to it than that.
But I had made the decision that I would not be a physician. At some point after ordination I came to the realization that I had decided not to be that kind of healer but with God's help I had found my way to being a different kind of healer.
Today's scripture
In today’s gospel reading we hear Jesus engaged in the practice of healing. The gospel itself seems to tell us to look at healing, examine some of the dimensions, roll it around in our mind, ask questions.
The scene is poignant and vivid for me. Jesus is approached by an upstanding and important person in the community. He pleads with Jesus to drop what he's doing and come to heal his young daughter. I have daughters and they were young once. I can feel the anxiety and apprehension of that father. The need is very great. When my oldest child contracted a cold or something at about 6 months and he didn't wake up for his normal every 3 hours nursing, I was so anxious that I called my mother, an RN, who lived an hour and a half away. When we described the situation, she laughed, and told us to relax and get some extra sleep that we hadn't had in 6 months.
Sandwiched in the middle of that story is another. 30 years ago when this reading was added to the experimental "Common lectionary" it seemed almost shocking. It was a woman intruding on Jesus' space. There was blood. There was a kind of air about it, like, "Is this suitable for children to hear?" We've come a long ways in 30 years.
But there we are. A woman -- so convinced of Jesus' power to heal, that she just wanted to get near him. To touch his cloak. And then we get one of those exchanges with Jesus that I just love. It's so real. I can hear the voice.
Jesus calls out in a crowd, "Who touched me?" And his entourage responded, "What? Are you kidding?" But Jesus knew -- didn't he. And the woman knew. And she was healed.
I think of my father, the physician, one kind of healer. My mother,a nurse, --another kind of healer. And I promise you couldn't find two people more different. I wonder to myself how they could both be healers in their different ways.
Healing
Today I'm thinking about healing. How it takes on different forms and colors, different approaches and styles. Enough that I'm inclined to wonder what is healing, anyway? It's not the first time I've thought about this -- in fact in many ways I've been thinking about it most of my life.
My experiences with
My parents talked about my healing from sickness as far back as I can remember. It was said that I had pneumonia before I was 1 year old. My mother repeated -- so that I would remember it -- that my lungs were weakened because of that illness. Was penicillin the healer in that case? Was it the one who nursed me?
My second son had an inherited condition that required surgery when he was 2 weeks old for a condition called pyloric stenosis. The surgery is simple by today's standards but a century ago babies died from it. I guess it was surgeons who were the healers. Or was it his parents who badgered the pediatrician into testing for pyloric stenosis?
After seminary and while I was at Graduate school at Notre Dame, my family and I attended the Cathedral, which included members of a charismatic community. Among the things that the community was focused on was healing. As I was learning during that time, healing was an important part of communities throughout the charismatic movement. In no small measure that was because of the awareness of the importance of our following Jesus by doing what Jesus did.
There was then sponsored at the Cathedral a weekend of healing renewal. The weekend culminated in a healing service where people were invited to come forward for the laying on of hands for healing.
That particular weekend one of my dear friends was convinced that I was in need of healing. I didn't agree. I didn’t go forward. My friend was later if not angry then at least disappointed that I had not gone forward. What is the healing I needed at the time something to be found outside of myself? Or was it something that needed to occur within me?
As I was trying to sort out some of these issues, I initiated a conversation with my bishop at the time. He was a prominent figure in the Episcopal Charismatic Movement. I told him that I had perceived a number of thoughts and behaviors in the charismatic community that seemed, if not unchristian, at least not reflective of what a faithful follower of Jesus should be and do. He told me to think about hospitals. With a doctor and a nurse for parents I had some awareness of hospitals and I had been present for the birth of two children at that point, both of them in hospitals.
He said to me that hospitals are places filled with sick people, sick people in need of healing. That’s why they came to hospitals. For healing. He said churches are like that. Filled with people in need of healing.
Now a part of what is significant about that for me is the combination of two things. On the one hand I have never forgotten what he said and believe it to be true. At the same time I disagreed with much of what that bishop stood for.
Healing turns out did not need to be connected with whether you agree with someone, whether they are on your side or somebody else’s side, what you think about them.
Learnings
What are some of the things I believe I am learning about healing?
About 15 years ago I injured my shoulder, probably my rotator cuff. I was in pain and then the pain became a stiffness and I was losing mobility. It got bad enough that I went to my doctor. Sometimes I really have to be pushed. My doctor referred me to physical therapy.
I have counseled people for many years about the importance of physical therapy but I had never experienced it myself. I had told others that there was pain and frustration involved in therapy but I never encountered it quite so literally as I did for those months in physical therapy. My therapist repeated over and over again the phrase, no pain no gain. I learned then that one of the things physical therapists do is intentionally cause pain. But it is because they know that the path to healing is often through the pain.
Almost as a byproduct of that time for me was the discovery that this therapist who seemed so thoroughly Hawaiian to me -- and very much not like me -- had actually grown up with his aunt in the town where I grew up in Colorado. Moreover his aunt lived 3 1/2 blocks from where I lived and I had passed his house many times on my bicycle.
Healing it turns out brings with it many things we do not expect and a confirmation of my conviction that God is in the business of surprising us.
I have experienced much healing in my own life through counselors and spiritual directors. What I am referring to when I describe someone as a spiritual Director is something that is called in the Celtic tradition a soul friend.
I first learned about that tradition from a visiting theologian in seminary. His name was Kenneth Leech. 1 I remember sitting at his feet with about 15 or 20 of us soaking up every word he said. His words seemed mysterious and yet accessible to us. He seemed a little like a wizard or poet. But he also was someone who was willing to fight and sacrifice for social justice.
Spiritual direction requires an abundance of trust, and a commitment to seeking ever greater levels of honesty, first with another human being and then with oneself.
I keep learning over and over again that healing has to do with humility and the willingness to share the journey of life with others. Healing has to do with knowing and being known. Many would call that a description of love. Others have found in it a description of the mission of the church that claims Jesus as his head.
One thing in particular stands out in my own experience of healing. Not only is it the case that it is possible to experience healing from people with whom I disagree and perhaps dislike, I have experienced healing most often from those who I at first resist.
I believe deeply that we need a community made up of people who are not like us, who don’t look like us, who don’t think like us, and even who don’t pray like us.
Closing
In many ways I have concluded over all these years that it is the human condition to seek healing. We crave a relief from pain and from insoluble as well solvable problems. We long for resolution in a world filled with conflict that seems utterly intractable.
We seek and long for healing, but most of the time we avoid the very people that have the capacity to offer healing. Women were considered sources of uncleanness at the time of Jesus, but Jesus embraced them.
Healing requires honesty and we are more inclined to rest on the surface than to risk and trust in going deep or high. Healing can be dangerous even as it promises peace.
Doctors are healers -- at least many are. But even more important are the nurses, both professional and otherwise. Therapists can be healers but so can the neighbor who at first sight grates on us. Healers come in all shapes and sizes, but I am convinced that in most cases our most important healer looks like us because the healer is within us.
The journey of healing is a wonder-filled journey that looks out just beyond the horizon. We can look back with some understanding, but the journey takes us forward into the unknown.
In words that speak to me of healing and grace, Thomas Merton put it this way:
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” ― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Leech↩
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