Eighteenth Sunday of Trinity, 2019. Year C.
Readings: 2 Timothy 2:8-15 & Luke 17:11-19.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord.
Amen.
I was reading an article the other day, written by someone who was disabled, she didn’t say in what way, although it was obviously something that was apparent, as her experienced showed.
She was talking about the experience that she had had, of Christians coming up to her out of the blue and wanting to heal her. Not her asking to be healed or anything like that, but Christians so infused with the Holy Spirit and so keen to pour out that gift on the world, they would come up and ask to lay hands on her and pray for her. I think the politer ones at least asked beforehand.
Now from inside a charismatic church this would make perfect sense in many respects. People are given gifts from the Holy Spirit and there are biblical injunctions that tell them that these gifts should be used to bear witness to the truth of Jesus Christ in the world. And what is more potent than a spiritual healing? And as our Gospel reading this morning reminds us, healing people was one of Jesus’ most powerful signs to show that he was the Messiah. It is symbolic of the coming of the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed that around him there was no more sickness and death.
And yet, the person who had written this article was profoundly offended by this action. For her, her disability was part of what made her, her. Removing it would be to fundamentally alter her – it would compromise her personal identity. I’m sure her disability was inconvenient to her a lot of the time, but it also helped define her, I am sure both physically in how she looked, but also in her personality.
Now we can enter a minefield here about personal consent and mental capacity, and I’m not going to do that, you will be relieved, because I in no way feel myself qualified to talk on that subject.
I think we can probably all agree that there are probably some people who want to be healed of various things, and other people who don’t. It is a matter of personal choice, and no matter how empowered we might feel, we shouldn’t impose on others if they don’t want to be imposed on.
Or should we?
I am reminded at this point by a scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, where Brian encounters an ex-leper, played by Michael Palin, who spends five minutes complaining about how Jesus came up to him and healed him, “without so much as a by your leave. One minute, I’m a leper with a living,” he says, “the next I’m out of work.”
Like many scenes in the Life of Brian, you could see this as pretty blasphemous, but there is also a few quite pertinent questions in there, and I think faith is something that always benefits from being questioned.
How should we be bearing witness to our faith? Are we losing something of our biblical vitality if we start asking people’s permission to pray for them or tell them the good news? Are we diluting out faith, conforming to a secular, liberal world?
Certainly, as the letter to Timothy says, we should not be ashamed of our faith. If asked we should be ready to proclaim our faith, debate, argue, affirm. But should we be imposing salvation on others? Even if we know it is for their ultimate benefit?
Does Jesus ever heal anyone without their wanting to be healed?
I think it is pertinent in this situation to look at what healing meant in first century Palestine, or rather what being sick meant. Many of the people that Jesus heals are people who are afflicted with diseases that make them unclean. Judaism, like many cultures of the time, had a particular horror of anything that involved blood or skin diseases, possibly because they provided the easiest ways for diseases to spread.
So these people are not just ill, they are unclean and they are outcasts. No one will care for them; because to do so would be to make oneself unclean as well. And this ritual impurity will separate you from God. So what Jesus is doing when he heals is threefold.
Firstly he is removing the disease, and the pain and threat of death that that carries with it. That alone is an amazing gift.
But secondly he is also restoring them to society, bringing them back into their families and clans. Now that they are no longer unclean they can re-join society. That is why Jesus sends the cured lepers in our reading to the priests; so that they can be certified as being clean again.
And thirdly, he is showing that actually God can approach us, and we can approach God, when we are unclean. Whereas in the ‘old world’ uncleanliness is contagious – the clean is contaminated by contact with the unclean; in the kingdom of God, cleanliness is contagious – the unclean is purified by contact with the clean.
But I think it is also important that in many cases, Jesus makes it clear that he is just the enabling force for this process of cleansing and purification. How often does he say to people – your faith has healed you?
The act of healing in these cases is an act of free will on the part of those healed. Once again, God in his omnipotence, who can command anything of his creation, is commanding us to chose. To chose to be healed. To chose to give our lives to God.
And what else can we do if we chose to live our lives as if we are in the Kingdom of God?
Let us return to the second thing that Jesus does when he heals. He returns people to society. He reincludes them.
We can do this too.
Under the prescriptions of his day, Jesus had to physically heal people in order for other people to accept them.
We live under the Law as embodied in Jesus Christ, so we don’t need to regard people who are ill as spiritually unclean.
We don’t need to say that those who are physically imperfect are therefore unholy. Instead we can see beyond that to the original truth from the bible, that we are all created in God’s image and are all equally loved and valued by God.
We are all given the gift of the Holy Spirit as well, and that gift manifests itself in many different ways. You don’t need to be able to heal or speak in tongues to be a true Christian. Being able to endure or to listen well is just as great a gift of the Holy Spirit as well.
And a gift we can all exercise is to heal people, not by relieving their physical or mental symptoms, but by emulating Jesus, by including them back into society. Making them feel welcome and part of a community.
Coming back to our original story, our way to heal those who are disabled or infirm or mentally ill needs to be a gospel message of inclusion into our community. I’m not saying that physical healing isn’t important, but bringing people back into society is a form of spiritual healing and that is just as important, and something that we all can have a gift for.
That is how we can model the Kingdom of God here in Northwood.
That is how we can be like Christ.
Amen.