Healing and Anionting: Numbers 21: 4-9; Mark 3: 1-6
I have long believed that churches should be agents of healing. However, I’m not sure we are always good at that. Let me give you an example. I have a friend who went through a very bitter and difficult divorce. It was quite a battle between her and her husband, no kids—thankfully, but a lot of property to divide up and hurt feelings in abundance. The process dragged on for over three years. During that time she attended church regularly, sought counseling from her pastor, and devoted herself to being in close contact with God.
During that time, as well, however her pastor preached a sermon series on “God’s Biblical Marriage Guide.” There were two whole Sundays devoted to covenants and divorces. She said, “My husband cheated, I had every scriptural right to get a divorce, but my pastor made me feel so small, so sinful in those sermons, knowing what I was going through and suffering, looking at me repeatedly during the sermons, that I just quit going.” First and foremost, our churches should be agents of saving and healing, and that is a call from Christ.
I hear that a lot from folks in church. People fit right into the their church and church family until…the divorce, the diagnosis, the miscarriage, the depression, the struggle to manage a mental illness, someone asks a question, or some uncomfortable truth is spoken out loud. Theologian Henri Nouwen says, “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” We are not necessarily given the tools to cure every ill in the world, but we are capable of bringing healing, and the two are very different.
We see the struggle in Jesus’ lesson for us in Mark. Jesus meets a man with a deformed hand, which I’m sure was painful, ugly, and a horrific burden on the man. But there was a conundrum for Jesus: violate the Sabbath laws to heal this man, or send him away only to be hurt both in his hand and in his spirit as well. In times past, Jesus usually could catch the religious leaders with a tough question they were unable to answer. He tries it again here, “Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath or is a day for doing evil? Is it a day to save life or destroy it?” But this time, they were not shocked by Jesus’ teaching, they were angry, hardened, and murderously ready to pounce on whatever good Jesus did to make it appear evil.
Jesus saw their hard hearts, their angry faces, the evil deep in their souls that they were so tied to their stupid rules, they couldn’t even spare a bit of love and healing for this suffering man. So Jesus showed him mercy and kindness, cured his deformity and healed his deeper wounds. And because Jesus did the right thing, once again, they decided to kill him. Sometimes I’ve found that the best religious leaders are also the best at plots to kill in our places of worship.
So how do we live as agents of healing instead of destruction? First we must realize that we are to heal, not necessarily cure. When people bring their pain, doubt, or uncomfortable truths to church, they often find someone immediately grabs it out of their hands to try and fix it, to try and make it go away. Bible verses get quoted, assurances given, With good intentions mixed into fear, Christians scour their inventory for a cure. God has not yet revealed to me how to lay hands on someone and cure their ruptured appendix. But yet, I can sit with someone after surgery, pray with them, look after them and heal them.
I think sometimes we are afraid, like the religious leaders, of looking like there are any imperfections in our lives. We often believe that since the world is watching, we have to be on our best behavior and hide our mess, rolling out beautiful photos and appearances of smiles, happiness, and ridding any semblance of dirt, disease, or struggle. But, as Rachel Held Evans writes, “if the world is watching, we might was well tell the truth. And that truth is that the church doesn’t offer a cure. It doesn’t offer a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation. The church offers grace.”
I’ll never forget the story told by a seminarian at Lexington Theological with me. She was very new to pastoring and somewhat shy and unsure of herself. She got a call late one night that one of the biggest families in the church (one that was not particularly fond of her) had experienced a tragedy. Their teenage son had been in a car accident and was not expected to make it. She rushed to the hospital at the late hour, and found dozens of family members waiting anxiously for the news. As the hours dragged on, she rotated between sitting nearby, and holding the hand of the boy’s mother while she waited and others prayed. Finally, after news came that he had died, she hugged them all closely and went home.
The whole time she was unable to find any words to say, had no Bible verses to quote, and was positive she had blown it and would be drummed out of the church. Instead she received a note saying they could never express their thanks enough for her being there. Her mere presence to be there for them was more than they could ever have expected. And she realized, she couldn’t cure their son from his injuries, couldn’t fix their pain, couldn’t make everything alright with a smile and a good word. But healing, real healing, starts with the willingness simply to show up and be there.
We worry a lot, about what to say, how to help, and what if someone dies even when we pray, even when we work to heal? What if the church itself begins to die and dry up? What if we, in our struggles get swallowed up?” GK Chesterton says, “Christianity has died many times and risen again, for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”
There’s a quote that goes around in different circles, and I’ve heard it in different contexts, One is from Ralph Abernathy, “I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future.” But there’s also a song which says it this way, “I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds tomorrow.” As Christians we are called to be agents of healing in this world. Does that mean curing diseases and casting out demons? I don’t know. I’m not really sure we have the tools to cure all ailments, but I know we have the power to heal whether or not the cure ever comes. And it starts by our willingness to set out on a journey, a tough road to be present with someone in their difficulty, and to find a way towards saying, “Yes, indeed, it is well with my soul.”