February 4, 2018 – Mark 1:29-39
Mark 1:29-39
If Jesus Healed Many, Why Not Me?
Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany – Lectionary 5 – February 4, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
We all love that Jesus heals.
In fact, healing ministry was likely the most important ministry in Jesus’ career.
The Gospels are filled with healing stories.
And we have one today that many of us know well.
Simon’s mother-in-law is ill – in fact, she has a fever.
Jesus comes, touches her by the hand – and lifts her up.
Literally it says, “he raises her up” –
the same word used when God “raises up” Jesus from the dead.
Jesus resurrects her!
He saves her from suffering and death and brings her to new life.
And then she is able to serve: she is able to do the thing she – and all of us – are created for.
She engages in diakonia – service.
She becomes a deacon, a server, and is able once again to offer food and hospitality.
It is the ministry of angels, as the angels also offer
the same service or diakonia to Jesus in the wilderness.
And, as Jesus will say later, the one who serves, who offers diakonia, is the greatest of all.
Through Jesus healing her, Simon’s mother in law is able to become great.
Well, that’s all well and good, Jesus.
And it is great for Simon’s mother-in-law.
People hear about it and, not surprisingly, by the end of that day,
the whole city comes to Simon’s house hoping for
a cure for themselves or their loved ones.
But here’s the thing: He only cured many, writes, Mark – not all.
While he does indeed cure many, he doesn’t – or is not able to – cure all.
We often talk about Jesus’ healing stories – and I am as guilty of this as anyone –
as if everywhere he went life happened and healing happened.
And while that is true, it is not wholly true.
There were some that day he didn’t or couldn’t cure.
Later, Jesus will go to Nazareth where he will only be able to heal a few.
I had a conversation with one of you recently where I heard a deeply honest admission.
If Jesus healed all these people in the Bible, why doesn’t he heal me?
Now that is an honest, and deeply painful, question.
As the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor once said, The problem with miracles is that it is hard to witness them without wanting one of your own. Every one of us knows someone who is suffering. Every one of us knows someone who could use a miracle, but miracles are hard to come by.
(quoted at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=1640)
Last week you wrote down on little slips of paper those things that are
impediments to your well-being, the unclean spirits that you wished Jesus would cast out
that are robbing you of abundant life.
And I invited you to give those to Jesus and offer them to him on the offering plate.
I looked at those responses and prayed over every single one of them.
And I am quite sure that every single one of you who wrote those down have prayed
hard about those things.
And still, many of them – if not all – remain this week.
My question this morning is: What do we do with that?
Sometimes we do less than helpful things.
We think and say less than helpful things.
This is part of God’s plan. God is testing you. God is using this sickness to build your character.
You need to have more faith.
Maybe there is some secret sin in your past that you haven’t confessed.
Maybe you’re not giving enough money to the church.
Maybe you’ve done something really really bad.
Maybe God is punishing you. (Thomas at ibid.)
All of which is pure rubbish.
Last fall I began working through a question that is proving very helpful for many of you.
The question was: maybe God is not all-powerful?
The way that question sounds this morning is like this:
What if God wants to heal everyone but can’t?
(Thomas J Oord at https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/february-4-epiphany-5b-mark-129-39)
For sure, as I have noted many times, physical cure is not the same as healing.
Someone can be physically cured but not healed in spirit, not be at peace.
And by the same token, some people are not able to be physically cured but still be healed,
still find meaning and purpose in their life and be at peace with God and others.
But still.
In perfect world, wouldn’t complete healing include physical cure?
We say we believe in the resurrection of the body –
that the body in all its physicality is important to God, supremely important.
So: what if God wants to heal everyone completely – but can’t?
Perhaps that God is not all-powerful.
Perhaps God is either not all-powerful or chooses not to be all-powerful.
I think this speaks to our experience.
When terrible things happen to innocent people we wonder why God does not intervene.
And when we wonder that, we wonder rightly.
But Jesus could only heal many, not all.
And Jesus died on a cross, a victim of injustice, whose power clearly was not power over,
But was the power to forgive.
God, maybe, is not all powerful, but God is all loving.
What if God desperately wants to heal everyone completely, but can’t?
Don’t you wish sometimes that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had included a few more stories?
Stories that maybe sounded like this:
Jesus visits a sick woman, takes her by the hand, offers only the comfort of his loving presence,
but no cure.
Or: Jesus visits a chronically ill person and says, “I can’t take away your pain,
but I can stay with you and journey with you through this”
Or: Jesus visits a deeply depressed person and just sits . . . with them.
Or: Jesus visits the beside of a dying person, and stays with them and their family and talks and
prays until the person slips away. (Thomas, ibid.)
I wish they had.
The thing is: a loving God doesn’t control our freedom.
So it’s not so hard to believe that God seems to have created the universe in such a way that
there are other things God doesn’t control.
Things biological, environmental, and social –
things at the quantum level that certainly exhibit a high degree of freedom. (Oord, ibid.)
Think about the freedom of DNA to mutate.
It’s great because it allows for the possibility of living things to change and adapt to
changing environments around them – and that leads to life.
But it’s not so great because the exact same process leads some cells to become cancerous,
leading your mother to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at 67 and
to die 4 months later – that is my experience.
Maybe God stands idly by and does nothing – but I don’t believe that either.
Because that wouldn’t account for the sense we have of God’s presence in our lives,
or our sense of the great beauty all around us, or the good that does happen
every moment every day if only we had the eyes to see it?
It wouldn’t account for the self-sacrifice and forgiveness we witness every day.
It wouldn’t account for love that blooms in the worst of situations.
It wouldn’t account for the good that can be wrested from the very very bad.
What if God does everything God can to cure but can’t?
I believe God does everything God can to heal.
God sends us friends and Christian brothers and sisters and people who care for us,
people who bring us joy and comfort and friendship.
God continues to send beauty and purpose.
God continues to lavish forgiveness and compassion.
The great promise is that all will be well – but all is not yet well.
An even greater promise is that God is working to bring all things to good.
And an even greater promise is that we can be agents of healing, and comfort,
accompaniment to one another and to all who are in need:
we can be artisans of the common good, we can be part of God’s mission to heal.
I am sure God is lovingly doing all that God can possibly do.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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