Sunday, February 05, 2006

Sun, February 5, 2006 - Healing and the Kingdom of God

Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39

I spent a lot of time in medical facilities this week - visiting a congregation member in the hospital, waiting in a doctor's office, visiting a physiotherapist - and as I did, it struck me just how much sickness is a part of our lives. I would guess that everybody sitting here knows at least one person right now who isn't well - a friend or a family member, or even you yourself, someone who is physically ill, or mentally or emotionally, or even spiritually ill. I don't even have to guess to know that every one of us here has, at some point in our lives, been sick - whether from something minor like a cold or the flu, or from something major like cancer or a heart condition.

In any case, while I was noticing all this sickness that touches our lives, I got to thinking about what it would take for disease and illness to be completely eradicated from our world. It's pretty astonishing, really, what would have to change for sickness to become a thing of the past, mostly because you'd have to address the root causes of illness. To get rid of all the things that make people unwell, we'd have to get rid of malnutrition - a major cause of all kinds of disease. We'd have to do away with poverty and homelessness, two more major factors that contribute to people getting and staying sick. We'd obviously have to take environmental factors into consideration - polluted air and water cause all kinds of diseases. Naturally we'd have to end wars and all kinds of abuse - things that can lead to mental and emotional diseases, not to mention the physical consequences of violent conflict. In short, for people to be well and whole their whole lives, the world would have to become a place where everybody was cared for, fed, protected, and at peace. The world would have to become, well, heaven. Or, as our Gospel writer would say, the world would have to become the kingdom of God.

Now, it might be a bit of a leap for me to say that getting rid of sickness - healing the world - is connected to the kingdom of God. But in our Gospel stories for the past two weeks, taken from the Gospel of Mark, we see that those two things - healing and God's kingdom - are intimately connected. In Mark, Jesus bursts onto the scene in Galilee with the proclamation, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near." And then, immediately after that, after calling some disciples, Jesus begins to demonstrate just how near the kingdom has come by healing people. First he casts out the demon of a man with an unclean spirit, and then, as we heard today, he heals Simon Peter's mother-in-law of a fever, and then that same evening he cures "many who were sick with various diseases." And the next morning, Jesus and his disciples go off to neighbouring towns "proclaiming the message... and casting out demons." In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus' proclamation that the kingdom of God has come near is always closely followed by his healing one person or another. Throughout his ministry, Jesus is healing sick women, casting out demons, and eliminating sickness as often as he can, bringing God's kingdom to as many people as he can.

But it's not just in the Gospels that we see that God's presence among us results in healing. In a general, cosmic sense, God has been healing the world from the beginning, bringing God's creative and life-giving Spirit wherever there is sickness and illness. In our reading from Isaiah, we hear about how great and cosmic God is, having spread the stars throughout the sky, encompassing the whole world in a glance, being "great in strength and mighty in power," while at the same time we hear that God is concerned with the weak and "gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless." We have so many psalms that speak of God's healing of the world and of individuals, and today, we read [past tense] Psalm 147, where we proclaimed that God "heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds" and that "the Lord lifts up the downtrodden." From the beginning of creation, through the prophets, into the time of Jesus and even beyond into the Acts of the Apostles, we see that God brings healing to the world, and in doing so, brings God's kingdom ever closer to the world.

But my bet is that when it comes to sickness and healing, most of you aren't all that concerned with the general, cosmic overview of God's healing. My bet is that when it comes to sickness and healing, you want to talk in specifics - about specific people and about specific illnesses. In fact, my bet is that the question you're asking - because it's something I ask, too - is what about God's healing in my particular situation? Whether that situation concerns an illness that we're going through ourselves, or whether we're thinking about someone else that we care about very much who is sick, we want to know - what is God going to do in this case? Simon Peter saw Jesus heal the man in the synagogue and no doubt thought immediately of his own particular situation - of his sick mother-in-law. The people of Capernaum heard about the man in the synagogue and thought not of how the world was changing for the better with this one healing, but of how Jesus could heal their family members and neighbours. They wanted specifics, not generalities. When we think of sickness and healing and God's presence in the midst of that, we want to know when will God heal, how will God heal, and sometimes even, why hasn't God healed yet? We read books on how prayer can heal and watch healing ministry shows on television hoping for some clue that will tell us when God is going to address our own problem. We wouldn't usually put it this way, but we want to know: when is the kingdom of God going to come to me, personally?

Well, having raised those questions, I'm not sure I have a very good answer for you. Because the truth is that we have no way of knowing when or why God moves from generalities to specifics. We don't know why Jesus chose to heal the man in the synagogue, or Simon Peter's mother-in-law. We don't know why he didn't go around healing every single sick person in Israel. We don't know why some people who pray for healing get better, while others do not. We don't know why it seems like the kingdom of God seems to come sooner for some, but not for others. And the tough pill to swallow is that when it comes to these questions, we will never know.

Which sucks, I know. Things are bad enough when we or someone we love is sick - not only is the pain tough to deal with, but so is the uncertainty over the future - when recovery will happen, if it's even possible, what will happen if it's not. But then to hear on top of that that even God's involvement in the healing process is uncertain - well, that can seem like too much.

But before you tune out and wonder why I brought all this up in the first place if I haven't got an answer for you, let me tell you that there is a difference between being uncertain and falling into despair - being without any hope whatsoever. Because although we may be uncertain when it comes to God's actions, we are not without hope. We may not know how or when God is going to act, when the kingdom of God is going to come to us, but that doesn't mean that it's not coming at all. That doesn't mean that healing is an impossibility, it doesn't mean that continued sickness is permanent. In fact, what we do know, and what we base our hope on, is that as Isaiah says, the Lord, the everlasting God, "does not faint or grow weary" in the task of healing either the world or individuals. From the beginning of creation - and that's a long time ago no matter how you figure it - God has been healing on both a macro- and a micro- scale - counting the stars in the heavens and feeding the small birds in the skies.

We also know that when it comes to bringing about that world where sickness doesn't exist - when it comes to bringing to fulfilment the kingdom of God - that although we are far from certain about when that might happen, we are given every reason to hope, by Jesus Christ himself, that it will happen, and is happening even as we speak. "The kingdom of God has come near," Jesus said often and in various ways, and demonstrated it over and over again in healings and feedings of thousands and indeed, proving it definitively when he was raised from the dead. And indeed, those rare moments of healing that we do experience, those brief instances when everything seems to be going perfectly in the world, when heaven touches earth, those moments are given to encourage us to keep up our hope, as signs that the kingdom of God has come and is coming near.

I cannot say when God will bring healing and the kingdom of God to your particular situation. But I can say, without hesitation, that you and all those who need healing are a vital part of the vast cosmos that God is committed to healing. To paraphrase Isaiah, do not say that your way is hidden from the Lord, and your right is disregarded by your God. "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.. . . Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." The kingdom of God has come near to the world. When it will be fully here, I couldn't say, but it continues to come and you will be a part of that and all will experience the healing of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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