Mark 7:24-37
Proper 18 / Year B
School is back in session and with it
comes… as every student will tell you… homework. Years ago one of the first assignments given
to my older daughter was to interview me.
I recall how, after a series introductory questions, she started to
probe the topic of religion. “Do you believe
God has the power to heal people?” she asked.
“Yes, I do.” “Well then, why do
you think God doesn’t do it all the time?”
“That,” I remember answering, “is a very good question.”
It is a good question. I have to admit it crosses my mind every time
I prepare a sermon on one of the healing stories in the Gospels. If Jesus had the ability to restore hearing
and to remove speech impediments, as our reading this morning asserts, and if
Jesus had the power to perform all other sorts of healings, then why is there
suffering? Why is there sickness? Why is there disease? Why is Covid lingering? Why is there death? These are the questions I want to help us
think through this morning.
Most people, whether or not they believe in
God, have an idea of God which tends to center on power: God is omnipotent…
all-powerful; God is in charge of everything; God is like a king or a
domineering father or the Lord of all.
This is how most people tend to think of God. And if this is who God is then our dismay at
God’s unwillingness to use this power for our benefit and well-being is all the
more justified.
The Christian Gospel starts its
understanding of God at a very different place than this. To read the biblical narratives is to
encounter a God who is first and foremost characterized by love. And love involves not power, but a willingness
to risk because when you reach out in love the other’s response is not
guaranteed. Love offered may be met,
matched, returned, and cherished. It can
also be rejected, abused, betrayed, and taken for granted. To risk love is to be vulnerable… even to the
point of suffering. The suffering may
come from rejection or it may take the form of witnessing the pain of
another. To love is to be vulnerable,
not powerful.
Because God is love, God must allow for
freedom. If the person who loves can
compel the object of love to love in return, then the response is not true
love. A response that is coerced or
compelled is not love. So each one of us
is free to respond to God’s love however we see fit. One theologian describes God as being “weak
in power but strong in love” because God is willing to be vulnerable to pain in
the freedom of love. Allowing for
freedom limits power and implies even greater vulnerability.
What does all of this say to us about
Jesus? To be sure, Jesus heals and
performs other signs of power, but he silences those he has healed, almost as
if the act were one of shame. But
why? A professional wonder worker should
know how to milk the dramatic moment, but Jesus seems to keep undercutting the
impact of his actions.
How basic is this to Jesus’ ministry? Well, the Gospel writer Mark never even uses
the Greek word for “miracle” to describe even one of these events. In fact he often portrays these episodes as
doing more harm than good to Jesus’ mission.
They prohibit his ability to move freely throughout a town. They raise the ire of the authorities. They motivate people to focus only on
satisfying their physical needs while ignoring their spiritual hunger. And perhaps most important, if God is indeed
primarily love offering relationship, then the miracles distort the true nature
of God by focusing people’s attention on God’s power rather than on God’s love.
It is as if Jesus is trying to get us to
shift our focus on these stories from what they say about his power to what
they reveal about his love. It is
tempting to try to frame this love in nice, comforting, benign images… such as
Jesus tending to the dainty needs of his wounded sheep. But the narratives paint for us a very
different picture. Jesus does not heal
from a distance, but in the most intimate ways imaginable. He touches lepers and spits on the tongue of
a deaf man. In the eyes of his
contemporaries, the very forms these healings take are both ritually polluting
and physically disgusting.
When an important leader of a synagogue
begs Jesus to heal his daughter, Jesus delays in order to tend to a nameless
women suffering from menstrual hemorrhaging; thereby transgressing important
cultural and religious taboos related to gender and status. If the miracles are intended to show off
power, it would have been better to emphasize raising from the dead the
daughter of a local dignitary. But since
they are demonstrations of love, the healing of the anonymous woman provides an
even more accurate rendering of God’s nature.
Perhaps the healing stories confuse us
because we focus on the outcome and lose sight of the risk, the vulnerability,
and the love evidenced in and through them.
These stories point not to power, but to compassion. The Greek word for compassion is used just 12
times in the Gospels and refers exclusively either to God or Jesus. The root part of the word compassion is the
same word used to describe the part of our anatomy we refer to as our “guts”…
the place where we feel most intensely the physical symptoms of emotion. One theologian says this:
…the Hebrew word
for compassion… refers to the womb of Yahweh.
Indeed, compassion is such a deep, central, and powerful emotion in
Jesus that it can only be described as a movement in the womb of God… When Jesus
was moved to compassion, the source of all life trembled, the ground of all
love burst open, and the abyss of God’s immense, inexhaustible, and unfathomable
tenderness revealed itself.
My experience, both as a person and through
my pastoral ministry, has been when a person comes before God demanding a cure,
the outcome is uncertain. A cure… the
complete restoration of health… may happen or it may not. When it happens the person may give credit to
God… but somehow is never moved closer to God through it all. But when a person opens him/herself to the
immense, unfathomable love God risks to offer, some kind of healing always
happens. Keep in mind a healing is not
always the same thing as a cure. But to
know God’s love for you is to be healed.
This I believe is the point of the healing stories. They are invitations not so much to turn to
God when we are in need of a physical cure, but to seek God in all times in
order to be in a relationship of love.
