[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #648, Epiphany 6, 2/15/09

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Epiphany 6 – February 15, 2009

2 Kings 5:1 14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9:24 27
Mark 1:40 45


Getting Well and Being Healed

Getting well is an acquisition like getting a husband or getting a permanent.  Being healed is a relationship.  Naaman came to Israel to get something the way a conquering general would.  Elisha cut through his presupposition by not even showing up for this great man.  Instead he directed Naaman into a humble relationship with the healer, the God of Israel.  The Psalmist remembers a time when he related to his prosperity as if he had gotten it with his own hand:  "As for me, I said in my prosperity, 'I shall never be moved.'"  (Psalm 30:6)  When life humbled him he found a new relationship with God the healer.  Paul is focused on his own body not because of a physical illness but because of the perception that his body tempts him away from Christ.  The great preacher of the Gospel humbly admits that salvation might escape him if he doesn't attend to his personal relationship with Christ.  A leper learns that Jesus can be moved to respond to his suffering, not just moved by his suffering but by his faith:  "If you choose, you can make me clean," the leper says.  (Mark 1:40)

Could the obverse of the leper's statement also be true,  "If you don't choose, you can make me stay unclean?"  Do people stay sick because God doesn't choose to heal th
em?  What happens to their relationship with God if they don't get well?  If they don't get what they came after?  Do they storm off in a rage the way Naaman did?  Is there anyone to offer a proud, sick man the counsel of a servant?  If our illness brings us into a humble relationship with God, have we not received a blessing?  Jesus didn't heal everyone.  Does that mean Jesus didn't have compassion for everyone.  Healing was one way that Jesus showed the love and power of God, but healing was not his mission.  "Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.'"  (Mark 1:14-15)

Nothing reinforces the notion that wellness is something we get, something we purchase, more than the cost of health care and the demand for it.  Some people talk as if health were an entitlement, a human right.  Turning health care into something we buy, something we demand, changes our relationship with both the healer and the healing.  When was the last time we heard Jesus say, "I do choose," when we got well?  Or did we say instead, "That anti-biotic really worked!" The issue is not whether anti-biotics really work.  The issue is our relationship with God in the healing process.  My relationship with an anti-biotic is limited in scope and has a limited future.  Ultimately I am dependent on God to heal me of my constitutional illness, sin and death.  Neither an anti-b
iotic nor the entire health care system can cure me of sin and death.  So, I will treat each illness between now and death as an issue between God and me for the deepening of that relationship which heals not just the body that I am but the person that I am.


May these thoughts strengthen you. 
 
An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors 
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor 
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