February 27, 2005
"God the Great Healer"

There are all kinds of trouble in the world:

—In Connecticut, a man driving a stolen car inadvertently stopped a police officer to ask for directions out of the city.

—A man in England, who sneezed several hundred times each day for 35 years, was told by health officials that he was allergic to himself. He was cured after another doctor discovered that he simply had a reaction to the oatmeal he’d been eating for breakfast since childhood.

—And, in Thailand, an elephant ate 110 pounds of dried rice and then drank 65 gallons of water and, within a half hour, exploded.

In our New Testament passage for today, James starts out by asking a question: “Is any one of you in trouble?” While none of us have ever eaten that much rice or been sneezing for 35 years, most of us have had more than one bad day in our life. In fact, some of you are right in the middle of some pretty tough stuff right now. There is a lot of need for healing, right here in this room, to say nothing of the outer community. Thank God, we’ve come to the right place.

  When we talk about the aspects of God, as we are throughout Lent, one of the most important that we need to consider is the infinite divine capacity for healing. People are broken, people are wounded and bleeding in all kinds of ways, and they are in a lot of trouble. The shadow of death is always very near. But God’s capacity for healing brokenness, for binding up wounds and stopping the bleeding, is infinite.

We know that God wants us to be healed in body and in spirit.  We know all about what it means to be healed in body, but to be healed in our spirit is to be healed in our relationship with God. That’s what our reading from Isaiah is all about—God wants us to be at peace with him, so he sent his son to reconcile the two sides. But that doesn’t mean we still don’t boil over at God sometimes. Have you ever been angry at God?  I don’t mind telling you that when I got the call about Rodd Durbin’s fatal car crash, I was furious at God.

And then God wants us to be healed in all our relationships and this is often the hardest to heal.  Haven’t you heard of stories of fathers not talking to sons or daughters for years?   That kind of wound is tragic for the whole family and affects every other relationship in the family.  But God wants to heal those relationships and wants to bring closeness and affection to our families. God wants to heal us in every way possible, but he needs us to approach him with confidence and simply ask for the healing we need. Which brings us to today’s Gospel lesson, a two-in-one story about the great healer.

    As Matthew’s story begins, Jesus, the great physician, is on his way to make an emergency house call. There was a little girl who was in a grave state and her father implored Jesus to come.

   We are told that a large crowd of the curious followed Jesus. Some were hoping he would succeed, others that he would fail; most probably got caught up in the excitement of the parade.

    In this throng was one woman who was there for quite a different reason. We are told that for twelve years she had been suffering from a bleeding hemorrhage. Some modern scholars have theorized that this was a bleeding cancer. If this were the case she was, of course, beyond all medical help.

   She had already been to all of the doctors and she had only gotten worse, and beside that they had taken all her money.

   How could she get the attention of Jesus? Her problem was of a very personal nature and she did not want to discuss the issue publicly. According to Levitic Law, a woman who was bleeding was unclean and under law could touch no one. She did not want to have to go through the disciples to see Jesus. She wanted the doctor and not the nurse.

    She thus devised a plan. Having heard the stories of Jesus' power, she declared: If I but touch the hem of his garment I will be healed." We smile at that and say: How innocent, how naive.

    She reached out from the crowd and touched the garment of Jesus. Immediately he stopped, bolted upright, and asked: "Who touched me?" The disciples were taken aback. Was this some kind of rhetorical question? Who touched you? Why master, look around, everyone is touching you. The New English version quotes their words as being: "What is the purpose in asking?"

    Jesus replied with one of the most mysterious lines in the Bible. He said: "I felt power flow from me." For years I have been fascinated with that verse. What exactly happened in that moment? Did the lady drain his battery? It sounds as though he is almost describing a power surge. "I felt power flow from me." Whatever happened the important matter of course is that in the midst of the crowd, Christ felt the touch of a single person. Don't ever say that in the enormity of the cosmos God cannot care about my concerns and me. Not only does God care, he actually solicits our concerns "Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you peace."

     Daughter, said Jesus (and I might add, that is the only recorded time in scripture that Jesus used that term) daughter, your faith has made you well. And, we are told, she was immediately healed. The desperation of her faith thus became the channel that led to her healing.

One commentator said that this woman started out as nobody, became somebody, as in “Somebody touched me,” and in the mercy of Jesus wound up as “everybody.” Jesus, always full of compassion, never too busy to heal, stopped what he was doing and dealt with her as if she were the only person in the world. But that’s how he deals with every single person who comes to him. He said to her, “courage, daughter,” and that’s what he says to us, no matter how poor our faith is. He honors everybody’s first steps towards him.

   The story is saying there are two kinds of touch, the first being physical touch. So often when Jesus wanted to transmit his power of love, he physically touched people--the man born blind and the children in Jerusalem being two examples. An embrace, a kiss, an arm on the shoulder, a pat on the back--all of these are ways of expressing a love which goes beyond words. I have often marveled at the idea that Jesus longed through the ages for the time to be right to come to earth, to become a human being, just so he could touch people and in that touch turn off a lot of pain.

But there is a second kind of touch, a spiritual touch, that heals, too. Jesus did both in our Gospel story. He rewarded and reinforced faith. He assured people that they were not alone in the world.

Healing comes to those who feel like there are others on their side, but people despair when they think they’re alone. They give up, they quit, they die. That’s why I make such a point of reminding us in my prayers that we’re not alone, we’re not abandoned, there is someone in our corner.

In California, the giant redwood trees make a remarkable story of survival against all odds. These trees are some of the largest living things on earth, 300 feet tall and more. But their root structure is extremely shallow, spread out a few inches under the ground searching for moisture. Any storm with strong wind would easily topple these trees, except for one saving grace: as their roots spread, they intertwine with roots of other trees, and the interlocking effect protects all the trees from the storm.

I told you how angry I was with God about Rodd’s death. Each time we lose somebody in the church, and we’ve done that a lot lately, it’s very hard on me, for I have come to love you all as my church family, so that when one dies it’s as if I’ve lost someone out of my own family. But my roots are entwined with yours, and just as I implore you to believe that God heals the broken-hearted, I implore myself as well. Together, nurtured by Christ through these intertwined roots, we get through the storms of life.

And even the storm of death. So it was with  the daughter of the synagogue leader. She had died, but her father refused to give up hope. "Come," he begged, "Come, Jesus, and lay your hands on her and she will live." It was an audacious request. The mourners had already gathered. The burial was only hours away. For Jesus to go there was one thing but for him to touch the dead was another. To do so would make him unclean. It would taint him. He would not--according to the law--be able to go into the temple or synagogue or share in the life of the community.

You may recall that is why in the story of the Good Samaritan the priest and the Levite avoided the man who had been attacked. If they went to his aid and found that he was already dead they would be tainted, unable to serve in the worshipping community. But Jesus did not care.

 He went to the girl’s home, ordered the mourners away, took her dead hand and raised her to life. He made her whole.

While the Pharisees were busy keeping those in need at arm’s length, while they refused to associate with the wrong crowd for fear they would taint them, Jesus plunged right in, knowing that he and the Gospel he proclaimed could forgive the sinful, heal the sick, and raise the dead. Like a fearless physician, Jesus went among those most in need so that they could be cured.

    What does this tell us about Christ? That he healed people out of love. He healed because He cared. He was not merely a medical professional, a "health care provider" going about his daily work. He grieved with these people; He shared their pain. Have you ever been treated by a doctor whom you sensed cared little or nothing about you as a person? [You’re not a name, just "the appendix in room 318"]. How did that make you feel? Jesus was not like that.

   Only those who have gone through a traumatic experience are able to identify with others who are hurting, unless gifted with compassion.  Compassion is more than sympathy or consolation.  It is feeling the pain, sharing the burden and reaching out to do something about the situation. 

   Compassion is finding an answer, bringing about a solution and easing the hurt. That’s what Jesus is all about. And healing us of our fears.

   Since Sept 11, 2001, many people are living on the edge, "waiting for the other shoe to fall."  Uncertainty can often cause anxiety, worry and fear to rise up within an individual.  

   Believers in Christ, however, must not allow those negative powers to overtake us, because the Holy Bible says, "Greater is He that is in you, than he (the devil and his evil forces) that is in the world." (1 John 4:6) St. Paul foretold these events: "This know also that perilous times shall come." (2 Tim. 3:1).

    Jesus warned, "And there shall be upon the earth distress of nations, and perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing there for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth; for the powers of the heaven shall be shaken." The word perplexity means there is 'no way out' of the problem or situation.  And that's how it is in our world today.  Without divine help, there is no way out.

   You have to ask Jesus for help. What did the bleeding woman and the ruler of the synagogue have in common? They sought help, even at the risk of ridicule and scorn. The woman was an outcast, broken and broken, someone no doctor had been able to help. But she came to Jesus for help. The ruler’s daughter was already dead. Everybody knew it. But he came to Jesus for help. There were lots of taboos in the ancient world, but don’t we still have some today?

 Isn’t it still hard for people to ask for help? In our relationship with God, we’ve somehow cooked up the idea that have to clean yourself up, or somehow become worthy, before you come to Jesus.

But Jesus himself asks us, begs us to come to him just as we are, come in rags, come dirty and broken and bleeding, but come. It’s his touch that makes us whole, no matter what the problem is. You don’t have to heal yourself first, because you can’t. Just come, with all your doubts, all your fears, all your weakness. God can’t heal you unless you ask for it. You can’t just sit there.

One of the stranger stories of recent years was that of Larry, a man in southern California who strapped himself into a lawn chair attached to a number of helium filled balloons. He took along a six pack of beer, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a BB gun. He figured the balloons would lift him up maybe 100 feet off the ground, and when he was ready to come back down he would shoot out the balloons. But by the time he got to 11,000 feet he figured something was wrong.

He was now in the flight paths of Los Angeles Airport, which had to shut down its runways for hours.

Larry was too scared to shoot out any balloons, so the cops had to do it for him to get him back on the ground.

There the inevitable crowd of reporters asked him, “Why did you do it? What caused you to do something so weird, so reckless that tied up air traffic around half the country?” You know what he said? “You can’t just sit there.”

My friends, lots of people know they’re hurting, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, but they just sit there. They know they’re in trouble, but they won’t go to the Great Physician for help.

I wonder, What’s troubling you today? Is there something physical on your mind, something aching in your body? Take it to the Great Physician. Is it your heart that’s causing you pain? Has someone hurt you, let you down, betrayed a trust? Have you lost a loved one and you’re wondering when the grief will ever ease up? Take it to the Great Physician.

Are you afraid of the future? Worried about a family member? Do you just feel like God is a million miles away and you’re out there on the ledge by yourself, alone, or down in the pit of depression? Don’t just sit there. There’s a healing for all of life’s problems in the Great Physician’s medicine chest.