Title: “Different kinds of Healing”
Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14, Mark 1:40-45
2/12/06 Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Yr. B
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
On Monday I read the scripture readings for the coming Sunday and was obviously prompted to think about what it means to be healed.
“Healing is a huge topic” I thought to myself, but then by Tuesday afternoon two conversations I had with different people was each about healing. (Funny how that works.)
The first one was a conversation I had with a colleague of mine from Spokane whose name is Deb. A few years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer which of course turned her world upside down. She realized that her particular pastoral ministry was, as she put it, making her sick. After surgery and months of chemo she was worn out. During that time she remembers vividly a “conversation” she had with God and her inner self as she lay in her bed and wondered if she would ever have energy again. She asked herself - “Are you spending your precious life doing what you love?” She promised herself and God that if she ever got her energy back that she would live her life differently.
She did get her energy back. In fact she is this small ball of whimsical energy. And she remembered the promised she made to herself and to God.
She quit her pastoral position and did a few pastoral interims' to make ends meet while she explored where her new commitment might take her.
Not long after that her parents died just a month a part. They had been married for over 70 years and had lived quite frugally. Much to her and her sisters' surprise, they left them a sizeable inheritance.
This allowed her to truly follow her “bliss” - and now she is living on 2 acres of land in a small house and doing fabric art and loving it.
She considers herself HEALED, not only from cancer but from other dis-eases as well.
Arthur W. Frank, a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary in Canada and author of a variety of books on healing and storytelling was reflecting on some of the things he has learned since putting his life back together after a virally induced heart attack, a diagnosis of cancer and the death of his mother-in-law. He believes “we must distinguish what medicine calls cure from what you need to experience as healing.” He believes that medicine cured him but did nothing to heal him from what he calls the “multitude dislocations of illness”.
“Deep illness”, he writes, “disrupts life in all its facets - in sense of self, in personal relationships, and in how a person feels related to the cosmos, whether that means God, fate, or the quantum universe.”
Arthur Frank continues, “Healing requires finding a new balance, a new sense of who you are in relation to the forces and people around you. Healing requires telling a new story about your life.”
I hear him saying that after a deep illness or major life change (death of a loved one, unemployment etc.) occurs that we can never go back to who or what we were, that we must create what I have called “a new normal”.
The second conversation I had was in a phone call with some folk that run a Caregiving organization for people that need in-home assistance. I was affirming the important work that they do and he said to me, “We are trying to make things better for vulnerable people.”
Some realities of life are not “curable” and so we look for healing in different ways such as being a HEALING PRESENCE.
Jesus did not only heal people of their physical ailments, the true miracle was that he reached out to people that had been rejected by society and brought them back into the community. He was a healing presence that loved people during vulnerable times, he affirmed their value and their experience. (You could even say that Jesus helped people find a “new normal”)
Some of you in this congregation work professionally as a healing presence. It is your vocation. You have worked hard to learn how to develop the skills to work with children, teens, the elderly or differently-abled. Our society does not reward special people like you with large salaries - your reward is in the satisfaction of knowing you are a healing presence in the lives of your clients. You do not always know that your clients and their families appreciate you either - the demands can be overwhelming and words of thanks can be small. (You know who you are - pls. Stand so we can show you our appreciation today.)
Others of you in this congregation are a healing presence, not because it is your professional work, but because it is just a natural part of who you are or because you have intentionally chosen to reach out to others who are in a vulnerable place.
I continue to be deeply moved by the stories I hear time after time of people in this congregation who have given rides to doctors, sat with someone who is down, reached out to hold a hand of someone crying, made a prayer shawl, written a note, visited someone in the hospital, babysat kids on behalf of parents who need a break, taken someone to the store or the food bank or even taken someone under your wing who is in financial straits and needs extra support.
As a congregation - YOU ARE A HEALING PRESENCE - Christ is made known through your spirit and your actions.
We often discount what we can do because we are unable to “fix” a particular situation.
My friends, do not discount how beautiful and significant your healing presence is.
Remember the story Staci dramatized for us this morning from 2 Kings about the young slave girl and the rich and powerful soldier Naaman who had leprosy?
The chain reaction that eventually got Naaman to the river Jordan for healing would not have happened if it not for the young, nameless girl who spoke up out of concern for her master.
Healing takes place on many levels just as disease usually occurs because of a multiplicity of causes.
Deep and true healing takes time, AND it requires a community of people -----and willingness on our part to let help in when we need it. Not just the medical doctors, but others too, God and God's vessels of healing.
A wonderful example of the importance of community in the healing process is the Loaves and Fishes Project we started a few years ago. For visitors who are with us today, our congregation provides financial support for two schools in Port Elizabeth, South Africa to have a lunch program for their neediest children. The healing goes both ways - we are assisting them in their healing, and there is inner healing for us in being able to do something to heal the generations of pain caused by racism. Just today we received a gift of thanksgiving from one of the schools we assist. Let me read the letter to you and then show you the gift - (a beautiful painted bust of a South African woman on burlap).
Let us pray…