Lately I have spent a
lot of time reading the Gospels (currently Mark) and there is one thing standing
out at the moment: all them healings! People flock to Jesus in droves knowing
that he can heal their infirmities and while there are clearly times when he is
happy to do it, there are also times he seems reluctant and worried that they
are missing the point of his being there (Mk 1:32-38) Nevertheless, Jesus faithfully responds to
faith and heals.
It
is in light of this that I inevitably hear the question, “if God can heal, then
why doesn’t he heal everyone?” Note that
I am not trying to debate whether faith healing is real or whether God still
heals. I am going to throw you all a “Pentecostal-bone” and let it stand as a
glaring assumption. With that said, we
do not have to look far to see that many are left sick, disabled, addicted and
so forth.
For
me, getting the answer to this is secondary to another question, “why did God
even heal at all?” Like my title says,
everyone Jesus delivered, healed and raised from the dead died later on. The healing aspect of his ministry was
clearly not the resolution to creation’s bigger problem, so why do it?
It
first needs to be understood that there is always a close link in Scripture
between sin and sickness. Now this is not the same as deplorably telling someone
that their (or their family member’s) terminal illness is because of the sin in
their lives (if I am wrong then there has been a lot of murderous tyrants
throughout history that pestilence missed the mark on). No, in actuality, that kind of finger
pointing mostly comes from those refusing to accept the burden of caring for
those that will not be cured. But, sin
does seem to be the root cause in the undoing of order in all its forms, hence
the reason Jesus calls himself a physician instead of a judge. Sin itself was ultimately sickness unto death
with God being the one and only cure.
So,
I would suggest that Jesus as the living icon of God is an important feature to
remember. Jesus heals and does signs to
tell the part of God’s story that words cannot bear. It begins with his
entering into and experiencing all its brokenness, but then he reveals himself
as its solution; the cross-shaped tree whose leaves will heal all nations (Rev.
22:1-4). Consider the idea that all that
needs to be said by God cannot be spoken or written with fleeting words, but
can only begin to be understood through mystery and symbol within Jesus’ life. It is not a far leap from there to see that
our lives in praxis, sacrament, suffering and joy are in fact living symbols
too, and ones that echo our participation in God’s story.
The
enemy to such a proclamation can only be the very thing Jesus was revolting
against which was an empire built on privilege and exclusion. Look at how the
Jewish leaders in Jesus day had epitomized this aspect. They were married to
their purity laws for fear of contamination, it was tribalism run amuck with
ideas that say “we are special” and “your sickness and brokenness can only
bring us down” (Mt. 15:1-14; Mk 3:1-6). However,
Jesus not only seems unworried about contamination, but heals/cleanses and
brings them back into the community they live expelled from. If this doesn’t
tell the story of God bringing creation back from exile, I don’t know what
does.
Jean
Vanier helped bring this into focus for me when he said, “Between all of us
fragile human beings stand walls built on loneliness and the absence of God,
walls built on fear—fear that becomes depression or a compulsion that we are special.”[1] Walls reveal a fundamental lack of risk and
trust and I promise you no healing can come from that. But we were given a Messiah that is the very
presence of God and made a point of tearing walls down; now we should too. So, while it is not the solution itself, such
symbolic rhythms in our lives point to a mysterious but actualized hope that
restores all of creation and reintegrates all that was lost, even when it has
yet to be fully revealed.
Now,
if you are left with more questions than you have answers, then I did my job, but I would recommend starting here when asking unanswerable
questions like why doesn’t God heal everybody?
[1] Stanley Hauerwas & Jean Vanier. Living Gently in a Violent World (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 26.
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