“Diving into Murky Waters”

February 15, 2009

II Kings 5:1-15

Mark 2:1-12

“Naaman’s flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”

“The paralyzed man rose, and immediately took up the pallet and went out before them all.”

Throughout the Bible we encounter stories of healing. When people meet Jesus, the lame walk, the blind gain sight, and the sick are cured. What are we to make of all this?

There is so much that I don’t understand about the healing power of God.

But then, there is so much I don’t understand in general.

Consider my computer . . .

When I open up the word processing program, a “Tip of the Day” is displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Now, these tips are usually rather mundane and practical, such as the recent one that told me: “To close all open documents, press SHIFT and then click Close All on the File Menu.” O.K. That’s straightforward enough and might even be helpful on some occasion.

There are some tips, however, that make me stop and think, like the one that read: “To undo most actions, click the undo button.” What am I to make of that? I’m pretty sure it refers only to word processing actions. How often in other parts of my life have I wished that things were that easy! Where is that “undo” button when I’ve just locked my keys in the car? Where is that “undo” button when my temper flares?

Then there are the, well, the strange tips—the ones that make me think there really is something to this whole concept of “artificial intelligence.” One morning I started the word processing program, and the tip of the day told me—and I am not making this up: “Do not wear plaids and stripes together.” Sound advice, but how did my computer know I needed it?

Then there is the tip that has been on my mind this past week as I’ve mulled over those scripture lessons that we heard today. One morning the tip was: “Never dive into murky waters.”

This is sound advice for anyone who plans to swim in a lake. Who knows what rocks or other dangers might be down there? It might also be a good general principle for living—because what we don’t know can hurt us.

Never dive into murky waters. It certainly comes as a good warning for anyone who would try to preach about the healing power of God.

And yet, we must dive into those murky waters of healing, because they are the waters of our lives. These murky waters are the places where we pray for the healing and wholeness of others and ourselves; they are the places where we experience new health and new life; and they are the places where we still encounter brokenness, decay, and death.

We long for healing. We pray for healing.

We’re good people. We’re respectable, church‑going people. Some of us have power, some have money. Yet when we take a good look at our lives we see a sickness, a “dis-ease.” And we worry that there's something “incurable” about our situation too.

We are not whole people. We're broken. We're ill.

Our world shows signs of illness as well. We've got ozone in our air; toxins in our water; guns in our schools; drugs in our streets—all in all an unhealthy situation. No one seems to have the remedies for our personal or social ills.

And all that's just on the surface.

Let’s dive deeper into these murky waters.

Each person here is probably aware of brokenness within, a “sickness of spirit.” We don’t like to face it. But go ahead and admit it.  You’re not alone. Your neighbor feels the same way. Within us there are wounds.

A classic prayer of confession admits before God, “There is no health within us.” It speaks to our situation.

We know our broken places. Like Naaman, whose story we heard this morning, we want to be healed.

And like Naaman, I’m skeptical about the whole enterprise.

Maybe I’m simply a product of my times and my education.

I was raised in North American mainline Protestantism during the second half of the last century. And during most of that time, there was one thing that most Protestants knew: healing came through scientific advances in medicine, through the skill of physicians and nurses and medical technicians, and through taking good care of ourselves. People who spoke of a connection between faith and prayer and healing were regarded as on the fringe of polite religious society.

Morton Kelsey wrote a wonderful book titled Healing and Christianity. He dives right into the murky waters of the place of faith in healing by examining the history of healing in the church. Near the beginning of the book he writes: “Most Christian thinking, both Catholic and Protestant, has been swept clean of any idea of Christian healing. On one hand the successes of medicine have made it unnecessary, and on the other, modern theology has made any belief in it untenable.”

This was perhaps best illustrated in the old M*A*S*H episode when a desperate Hawkeye called Father Mulcahy to pray for a soldier who was dying. Father Mucahy assessed the situation and said, “O.K., but I’m afraid it won’t do much good.” Then he took the soldier’s hand and prayed for him to recover.

The soldier revived.

Hawkeye asks, “What’s that you said about it not doing any good?”

And Father Mulcahy, looking puzzled and disconcerted, said, “It’s not supposed to work that way!”[i]

You see, especially over the last century, most people—even people of faith—haven’t put much stock in the God’s healing power. It has seemed far more rational, far easier, to trust in our own human power. So a minister who speaks of faith and healing runs the risk of appearing, well, goofy at best.

And yet . . . (always, there is an “and yet . . .)

Kelsey concludes his sweeping survey of healing and the Christian faith by stating: “Healing is one of the experiences that can give people a knowledge of God, a needed relation to God. The fact that healings do occur is also one of the best evidences that a relation to God is possible and needed, and that this view of the world is reasonable.”[ii]

There are those times when I have witnessed healing in others that can only be attributed to prayer, to the very healing action of God.

It’s not that medical care and doctors and nurses aren’t necessary. In recent years, however, the medical profession has been telling people in the churches what we should have been telling them: faith makes a difference in healing. Prayer makes a difference in healing.

We are a little like Naaman after he was told that if he were simply to go and wash himself in the Jordan River a few times he would be restored to health. Certainly, he thought, there must be more to it than this.

If washing were all that God requires, certainly the rivers of Damascus would be more suitable than the waters of Israel. And, anyway, shouldn’t healing require something more difficult                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Naaman struggles with his preconceptions about the way in which God heals. So, too, do we.

I’ve been reading a book called It Was a Miracle: Stories of Ordinary People and Extraordinary Healing, by an Episcopal priest named Kamila Blessing—yes that’s her real name. She says that when we have dived into those murky waters of healing, we are inclined to ask: “Why does healing sometimes occur when we pray for it and sometimes it does not?” Good question.

Blessing suggests, however, that this is the wrong question—or at least the wrong first question. It assumes that God has not healed and that you will know healing when you see it or will receive the healing in the way and at the time you desire. Human imagination is limited, and we should not presume that we know all of the ways in which God can heal.[iii]

Or as it has been said elsewhere: “If God doesn’t seem to be giving you what you ask, maybe God’s giving you something else.”[iv]

Naaman eventually discovers that healing comes, not as he might expect, but in an easy way. So, too, with Jesus, there is a sense of ease about healing.

As if  . . .

As if health were normal¸ natural, as easy as falling off a log.

As if God’s desire was for our health.

As if our own openness to healing did make a difference.

In his book Letter to a Man in the Fire, the novelist Reynolds Price tells of his struggle with spinal cancer that was expected to kill him within eighteen months. He writes:

In the first weeks of my return from radical surgery and ensuing depression, I experienced what I can only call a vision. It came on a morning just before my five weeks of radiation began, and it took the shape of an utterly real dawn encounter with Jesus on the shore of the Lake of Galilee and then waist-deep in its water. As his disciples lay sleeping around us on the shore, Jesus silently beckoned me into the lake and, with handfuls of water, washed my ugly spinal wound and said, “Your sins are forgiven.” My own immediate silent response was characteristic of my managerial impatience—“Forgiveness is the last thing I need.”

Since I was so obviously in the hands of a known miracle worker, I wanted my ten inch tumor out of me and gone. So I dared to push past forgiveness and to ask Jesus if I were healed—“Am I also cured?” Plainly it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder why the Son of God would have chosen to wash my particular wound in a teeming world of dire sickness. But after a pause that signaled reluctance, Jesus said, “That too” and walked away from me as the encounter ended.[v]

“Which is easier to say?” Jesus asks. “Your sins are forgiven, or rise, take up your bed, and walk.” Maybe there is a connection between the two that we need to continue to explore.

Maybe, too, there is a connection between our heath and our relationships with other people. After all, Naaman needed the encouragement of both that little girl and another servant before he would do the one thing necessary for healing. And that story from Mark (one of my favorites) tells of four men who were willing to tear a roof off in order to help their paralyzed friend.

So where do we go from here? Keep diving. Keep looking for those places where God’s healing power is apparent or not so apparent. It is the Spirit of God who dives with us, helping us to recognize God with us even in murky waters.

I read somewhere—and I can’t remember where—that in the coming years, church members will be saying to their ministers: “Don’t tell us what you know. Speak to us out of what you don’t know.” That is, speak of the mystery of God, of those aspects of the life that leave us in wonder and awe.

And this morning I have done just that.

I am convinced that God is a healing power who desires and seeks the health and wholeness of all God’s creation. I know that healing has occurred—in people, in relationships, in institutions. I know that we are called to bring God’s healing into the world by the lives we live.

And yet the how, the when, and the why of healing remain a mystery.

Let us continue to dive into that mystery, however murky.

Let us explore the forgiveness and the relationships that bring health.

Let us seek the great healing that God offers and share it with others.