Emmanuel Episcopal Church
February 7, 2021
5 Epiphany, B
Isaiah 40:21-31
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39
If It Is of Healing, It Is of Jesus
Have you ever met people who were basically kinda miserable, at least they seemed miserable. Overall fairly depressed, kind of a chip on their shoulder, a bit of a me against the world kind of an outlook. Then you hear them say something to the effect that they have been saved by Jesus, that unlike most people, they won’t be going to hell. Thanks to Jesus, they get to go to heaven after they die. Praise Jesus, they’ve been saved.
Ok, but what about this life? This is the only life we know, and God thought this life was important enough to become a human with us and live a human life here on Earth as Jesus, the carpenter-preacher-healer guy from Nazareth. See, my question for the seemingly miserable folks who say, “Praise Jesus I’ve been saved,” is not, have such people been saved from a dubious notion of hell? My question is, have such people been saved from misery in this life? Have such people been healed? My notion is that theologies which say believing in Jesus means not going to hell when you die have not really saved anyone, nor have they healed anyone; such theologies have, instead, harmed people.
Did Jesus run around saying, “All of you people are going to hell after you die, but if you believe in me, then I’ll give you a get out of hell free card!” No. Jesus healed people. Jesus proclaimed the good news that God’s kingdom had come near, and he healed people and offered them good news of God’s kingdom here in this world and this life.
How important is this life to Jesus that when he lived this life with us, he healed peoples’ bodies, had dinner parties with folks, and taught about God’s Kingdom here on earth? Our bodies and our lives are sacred, created in God’s own image, as God’s own children, and so Jesus took great care with our bodies and our lives, offering physical and spiritual healing to those he encountered.
Now, I should point out that not all who sought healing from Jesus were healed. Some didn’t want the healing he offered. There was the man who wanted to inherit the Kingdom of God, but he wanted all of his stuff more. He loved his things which couldn’t love him back, and he seemed to love a notion of the Kingdom of God, but not one in which people mattered more than things.
Some want the kingdom in this life, but they are not willing to give up their way and follow Jesus’ way. Holding onto their anger and resentment, staying justified in their hurt, and looking forward primarily to life after death, they end up not really healed. There are folks, like people I described in the beginning of this sermon, who believe they’ve been saved by Jesus, but the Jesus and the gospel they heard was a perversion and a heresy of the Gospel of Jesus.
Think of it as having cake which is this life here on Earth. Then we’ve got life lived according to the ways of God, loving one another, healing each other, a life with an abiding awareness and love of God and people. Well, that’s icing on top of the cake. Then, we’ve got the promise through Jesus’ resurrection of life continuing on after death, a life lived fully in the presence of God and all of humanity together. Well, that’s ice cream on top of the icing on the cake. We’ve got a lot of theologies, however, which throw out the cake and the icing entirely, so we’re left with only the ice cream, and then we find out that we’re lactose intolerant.
Let’s look forward to the ice cream, to life continuing on after death, but let’s save it till the next life, when the lactose thing will no longer be a problem. We look forward to the ice cream, but for now, in this life, we enjoy the cake and the icing (gluten free if you need it, nothing like taking an analogy too far). We enjoy the cake and the icing in this life. We enjoy life and life with God, loving people and loving God. We enjoy the healing of Jesus. We enjoy the healing of Jesus’ way. We enjoy the healing of Jesus’ Kingdom: loving, forgiving, and seeking to heal one another.
As we saw in our Gospel today, if it is of healing, it is of Jesus. For some, the belief in Jesus and following his ways is enough. They are healed through that. For some, debilitating depression plagues them, and belief and practice work to a point, but they still need medicine to carry on. Well, that medicine sounds like healing, so it sounds like Jesus.
For some, healing means physical healing from disease. For some, healing means peace in accepting disease and death, being grateful for the life they had and looking forward with joy to the continued life to come after death. Both of those sound like healing, so both of those sound like Jesus.
For some, healing means an end to economic insecurity. Healing means an end to constantly worrying about being evicted, to constantly not having enough food, to never being able to pay medical bills. For some, healing is an individual or small group affair. For some, true healing comes from societies and nations changing their ways so that whole groups of people are no longer oppressed, sidelined, or told, “Work harder, get more, and then you will matter. Work harder, get more, and then you can be healed.”
That wasn’t the way of Jesus; “Work harder, get more, and then you can be healed.” That’s heresy. The Rev. Dr. William Barber talked about this heresy when he talked about the term “evangelical” being misapplied by many. He said in an interview on the New Yorker Radio Hour with David Remnick,
The term [evangelical] was hijacked, because in the Bible, theologically, there is no such thing as an evangelical that does not begin with a critique of systems of economic injustice. When Jesus, the ultimate evangelical, that brown-skinned Palestinian Jew, that was born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, the ghetto; his first sermon said, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news (evangel) to the poor.’ If your attention is not on dealing with the issues that hurt the poor, the brokenhearted, the sick, the left out, the least of these, the stranger, and all of those who are made to feel unacceptable, you don’t have…evangelicalism, you have heresy…You have theological malpractice. It doesn’t fit orthodox Christianity.”
Our faith in God, our life with God was embodied in Jesus, and any faith or belief in Jesus that does not deeply and richly involve our bodies in this life is a heretical faith and belief in Jesus.
After healing people all night, Jesus got up early the next morning to go pray, and when his disciples found him, he said, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” The message he proclaimed in their synagogues included healing people and casting out demons.
If we want to evangelize, if we want to proclaim our faith, then our ministry will include and even be defined by a ministry of healing. Jesus’ ministry is a ministry of physical healing. Jesus’ ministry is societal healing. Jesus’ ministry is working for justice. Jesus’ ministry is “dealing with the issues that hurt the poor, the brokenhearted, the sick, the left out, the least of these, the stranger, and all of those who are made to feel unacceptable,” for if it is of healing, it is of Jesus.
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