The Healing Power of Christ

IV Epiphany B

During my doctoral training I met a woman from Iowa, named Patty. We bonded over the next five years while we underwent the rigors of courses, preliminary exams, and dissertation writing, and of the five people who entered our program we were the only ones who graduated with our PhD. She was a somewhat radical activist who worked in women’s health care. She had worked in women’s health centers in Iowa before coming for her degree and did her dissertation on women’s access to prevention, especially the lack of access to care for poor women.

Some years after we both graduated, Patty was working for the federal government doing this same kind of work using the huge national data bases from Medicaid patients. Then one day I got a call from her saying she was diagnosed as having herself, a rare form of cancer in women that in most cases is caught by early prevention and care, which she herself had not received. It was quite ironic.

Well in those days I was in Washington for meetings several times a year, and on my next visit, I went to see her and we talked a lot about the fact that she had refused getting care for her cancer because it would reduce her quality of life and the doctor had given her a low probability of its effectiveness.

She asked me to go with her to the healing service at the National Cathedral in Washington on Sunday night, and I agreed to go with her. I also told her that I would pray for her at my home parish of St. Michaels in Lexington at the weekly healing service we had there.

So the next three months, I prayed every week as I promised, mentioning her name during the prayers for healing and some times going up to be anointed by the priest on her behalf. I think I was believing that if I prayed hard enough, her cancer would be cured and Patty would be with us for a good long time.

Patty’s health continued to deteriorate, and the next time I saw her, she was becoming bedridden. She was being cared for by visiting nurses and hospice and her own daughter, who was a family practice physician in training, had come home to be with her. A few weeks after that visit, I called to talk to her, and her daughter told me she could no longer speak on the phone. And then her daughter called me a few days later to say that Patty had died.

The death of my friend Patty was a hard time for me and God. I thought that if I prayed long and hard enough, she would be healed. I mentioned this to friends who were parishioners at St Michaels. They helped me realize that Patty’s healing may have come in many different forms: spiritual healing, emotional healing, or mental healing, if not the healing of her body from this particular disease.

I was glad to hear that, and it comforted me to know that I had prayed for Patty’s healing, even if I had expected a different outcome. That God had perhaps another outcome in mind—-one between Patty and God that I was not privy to.

When I later was a chaplain at the hospice, I was able to use this new understanding of healing with patients who asked why they were not being healed in a way they were praying for. One man in particular was very focused on passages in the bible that said if you had faith enough, God could do anything for you. He worried a lot that his faith was not strong enough, because he was now dying.

So he and I talked about the inscrutability of God’s ways, and the different ways we can be healed. I tried to help him see where God might be giving him healing in his life. I anointed him for healing every visit I made to him. We talked about God’s gift of life and how it was a gift to me to have met him. We shared a lot of love during our visits.

That we are given the gift of life is a miracle. That we are given people around us who love us and with whom we can share a caring relationship is a gift of God’s great love for us. But at times of suffering and death, we may have questions—why is this happening? Why my loved one, or why me?

To ask these questions of God is not lack of faith, it is wanting to know God better. It is honest that we ask God hard questions, and as you know from all your relationships, honesty is a key to building trust and a deeper understanding of each other. God wants the same relationship you would have with any friend with whom you can share all your secrets. Every Sunday we pray to God for "whom all hearts are open and from whom no secrets are hid." If we have questions, God knows them, and it is best not to try to be someone who denies that they do not question God when we are confronted by hard times and loss.

In our gospel today, we see the healing love of Christ. His first two ministries in the gospel of Mark are healing ministries. These healings involve his touch. We know how important touch is in healing. There are studies done of primates who are deprived of their mother and given a wooden substitute with a milk bottle attached. These primates suffer terrible deprivation and are never really able to recover from not having been touched as babies.

We see the healing properties of massage and healing baths. There are many studies showing that people in nursing homes who are touched do better.

Healing comes in all kinds of ways. Jesus’s words were healing—he called Lazarus out of the grave and he lived. One of my favorite national leaders who was known for his healing words in Abraham Lincoln, whose 200th birthday we celebrate this week. His words especially at Gettysburg and at his second inauguration helped to heal a nation whose wounds of war ran deep. He believed that forgiveness was a key to healing a nation that had just pitted brother against brother in battles that had sustained terrible numbers of casualties. “With malice towards none, with charity for all," he asked the nation to finish the work of freeing a people in slavery and binding the nation back together.

Words and touch are the ways Jesus has taught us that heal. They heal not only our bodies but our very souls. When Patty and I went to the healing service that night, I watched as she was prayed over and touched. I know the healing words I have received in times that have challenged me, and the balm of being touched by loving hands. I have also questioned God when I was hurting, or saw a loved one in suffering and pain, wondering where the healing was. God’s power of healing is beyond us many times, but it is always there. God will always be present in our loss, our grief, our depression, whatever challenges us, whether in the words of healing or the touch of someone who loves us. And we too can be the means of healing for those around us.

Jesus begins his ministry in the world to begin the healing of the world. Let him speak to you. Let him touch you.