“Did Jesus’ Healing Have A Purpose?”

Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – September 6, 2015

Centenary United Methodist Church

Psalm 125:1-4; Mark 7:24-37

 

    This morning our Gospel lesson from Mark discusses several healings that Jesus performed when he and his disciples were experiencing a vacation.   Have you ever wondered what significance Jesus' healing ministry had in changing the lives of people?  Let us consider the two healings in our lesson for today.

    Jesus first encountered a Phoenician woman whose daughter was gravely ill.  She begged Jesus to heal her daughter.  Jesus initially told her that his personal priorities were about healing his own people before anyone else.  Her response was so impressive that he told her, "When you go home, you will find your daughter well."

    If anything else happened to this woman and her family other than the daughter's healing, the Scriptures are silent about it.  The woman came to Jesus because she knew he was a healer and he honored her request.  The woman and her daughter are never mentioned again.  

    The second healing took place near the beautiful cities of Tyre and Sidon located on the west coast along the Mediterranean Sea.  This was a perfect location for Jesus and his group of disciples to experience a little rest and relaxation.

    People recognized Jesus and his disciples.  They brought a man to him who was deaf and unable to speak clearly.  Jesus took the man away from his friends so they could be alone and he healed him. Upon returning to the others, the man was able to hear as well as speak clearly.

    The last verses of our lesson say, "The witnesses to this were so amazed, they said among themselves, 'How well he does everything.  He even heals the deaf and restores their power to speak clearly.'"  Seeing their response, he asked them not to tell anyone what had taken place.  After all, he was on vacation and he had the right to some privacy.  The last thing Jesus needed was an excited crowd bringing more relatives and friends needing his healing touch.

    We might wonder if anything of spiritual significance happened to any of the people Jesus healed.  There are not many references in the Gospels that provide an answer.  There was one example of a healed man that wanted to follow Jesus wherever he went.  Jesus told him to return to his village and tell others what God had done for him.  (Luke 8:38f)

    There was also the episode of the ten lepers where only one returned to express his gratitude.  Jesus realized that nine of the lepers simply went on with their lives.  Perhaps all healing, both today and during the time of Jesus, has the same purpose.

    Jesus once told his listeners, "The things that you have seen me do, I tell you this . . . greater things than these will you be able to do once I leave this world."  (John 14:12)  Throughout our lives we have learned of miracles that are every bit as profound as those Jesus performed during his ministry. Some of them are exactly as Jesus predicted.  They were greater than the ones he could do.

    In March, 2012, Richard Norris, from the state of Virginia, had a horribly disfigured face because of a shotgun accident.  Richard received a donated face from a couple whose son died in a car accident.  A surgical team removed Richard's face and attached the new one. Some time later, after the man had healed, a woman approached Richard and asked permission to touch his face. She was the donor's sister.  As she was touching his face, she said, "I grew up with your face. You look exactly like my brother before he died."     

    Just recently, we learned that a raging infection caused Zion Harvey's hands to be amputated when he was two years old.  On July 30 of this year, Zion, who is now eight years old, became the first person in medical history to receive two new human hands donated by another child.  The surgery was performed by Dr. L. Scott Levin and his surgical team.  These healings are exactly what Jesus predicted would happen.

    There was a time in my life when pain reminded me every day that I needed to have a hip replaced.  Had I lived in Jesus' day, my life would have been dominated by severe pain that would one day rob me of my ability to walk.  However, my surgeon, Marc Brassard, performed a miracle by giving me a new titanium ball and socket replacing my decayed left hip.  Two years later he performed another miracle and replaced my right hip.  

    When pain was removed and I could walk again normally, I was no longer controlled by pain.  Healing comes with a built-in purpose. Jesus' healing set people free from the handicapping conditions caused by physical ailments.  People's lives were liberated as they are by today's healers.  People can do whatever they wish with their lives without pain.

    Healing for Jesus had the same purpose as his teaching and preaching.  When he healed or gave a lesson about living in The Kingdom of God, he also gave up control of how his listeners would respond. Jesus understood that many people did not change the direction of their lives.  Others changed considerably and yet fell back into old patterns of behavior. Others changed permanently because they recognized that Jesus possessed a strange, mysterious ability that deeply transformed them.

    Zacchaeus was a member of this last group.  He made substantial changes to his life after having lunch with Jesus.  Noticing these various responses from his listeners, Jesus' imagination used what he saw in the parable of the farmer who sowed seeds that landed on various qualities of soil.  (Matthew 13:3f)

    The point is that healing, whether by the touch of the Master or the skill of a surgeon, quite often has little to do with the spiritual direction of a person's life.  When Jesus invited us to go into the world and sow our seeds, he told us to sow freely as he did.  He never once suggested that we should first determine how our love and gifts are being used by those who receive them.  He never suggested that we should sow our seeds with a suspicious spirit by giving only to those whom we felt were deserving and worthy. 

    Jesus was wise enough to know that a number of people are like a river.  They tend to follow the path of least resistance.  There are plenty of examples everywhere of people that do nothing but take when goodness comes into their lives.  Taking from others appears to put to sleep any initiation or motivation that would inspire them to celebrate their spiritual liberation. They somehow content themselves by remaining dependent like an infant to its mother.  Jesus never condemned people who chose this path.  He told his followers only to give because that is the nature of God.

    In the United States, Wal-Mart, McDonalds and other companies experienced bad publicity and faced intense pressure to raise their minimum wage of a number of their employees.  Even though these starter-jobs were never intended to support a family, that is not what has been happening in these recessionary times. These and other companies agreed to raise the minimum wage from $7.00 an hour to, in some cases, $12.00.

    In the minds of the politicians and other stakeholders, this represented a tremendous victory for employees locked in a low wage category. However, a number of these people quickly learned the result of earning a lot more money.  They immediately petitioned management to cut their hours.

    After gaining what so many employees were picketing industries to do, why would any employee want to work fewer hours?  As soon as some employees realized that their salaries had almost doubled, they would lose their eligibility for receiving subsidies from several Federal Government programs like low cost medical insurance and food stamps.

    The point here is that nothing coming from the physical world, including the healing by Jesus, by a surgical team, or a financial windfall has the ability to inspire the maturity of what is happening inside of people.  Growth comes only from a desire to use a newly acquired spiritual freedom to move beyond where they have been for years.  Everything about life blossoms when we face challenges with an inner resolve to celebrate our spiritual freedom.  

I know that every day your spirit has been controlled by blindness, deafness, your inability to stop bleeding, your epilepsy, your mental illness and your inability to walk. I am giving your spirit freedom by taking your frailties away from you.

    Any vacuum that is created when some controlling influence is removed from our lives will be filled with something else.  When we fill that vacuum with kindness, generosity and gratitude for what our spiritual freedom has given to us, we can sail on and on to live more meaningful, fruitful lives.  

    All healing has this as its undeclared purpose.  When we use our healing whether physical, emotional or psychological, to advance our creativity in life, we are moving away from what was holding our spirits as a prisoner. Experiencing and using this freedom is to be more fully alive.