ONLY BELIEVE
Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:2324 Psalm 30 2 Cor. 8:7-15 Mark 5:21-43
Healing—one of the great mysteries of both medicine and
theology. In recent decades, scientists have taken increasing
interest in the mind-body-spirit connection. Some evidence, for
example, suggests that one factor which may contribute to longevity is
belonging to and participating in a faith community.
Yet probe as researchers may, there remain few answers to such
questions as “Why does one person recover from a given condition and
another does not?” and “Why does this person’s wound heal faster
than that one’s?” How we crave to know what brings about healing
and how we can make it happen in our own lives and the lives of those
we love.
In the stories in Mark’s gospel today, Jesus says to the hemorrhaging
woman, “Daughter, your faith has made you well: go in peace, and be
healed of your disease”; and to Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, he
says, “Do not fear, only believe.”
For those who would latch onto these directives as some sort of magic
formula, Jesus’s words can lead to false thinking. On the
surface, we are tempted to interpret them by saying, “If I only pray
long enough and hard enough, if only I have faith and concentrate on
believing, then I will be made well.” This may work, or it may
not. And, if not, what then?
We are programmed to expect solutions to problems, to assume that if we
just find the correct dose of the right medicine, we will be released
from our distress. There must be a way, we reason, for us to gain
control over whatever issues—health, finances, relationships—are in
need of healing.
Episcopal priest James Liggett, however, points out the dangers of too
facile an interpretation of this Gospel reading and others like it,
which, he maintains, “. . . have been used as ways of saying that
life is really a type of contest, where everything depends on you, on
whether you have enough faith, or the right sort of faith, to win the
prize of Jesus doing something good for you and yours.” Liggett
suggests that there is compelling egocentricity in believing that we
have somehow by intention or omission been the cause of the bad things
that happen. “If only I had, or hadn’t . . . ” Fill in the
blank.
Somehow, I don’t think the God we worship is in the bean-counting
business. So many prayers offered by so many people in exchange
for healing here, but not there. Such a deity doesn’t seem
likely, or even desirable. The truth is we do not control God,
nor begin to have the remotest clue as to His ultimate purpose.
And in no way can we foresee what manner of healing He has in store for
us.
This is not to say that God doesn’t care about the specific situations
for which we pray; nor is it to suggest prayers don’t have an
effect. They do. But how God answers prayer may be at times
far more concerned with changing us than with altering our
circumstances in the way we deem best.
None of us is spared the anguish of the human condition. And it
can be ugly, full of unspeakable sorrow, pain, alienation and
violence. Like terrified children, we cry in the night for a
miracle and desperately seek fixes. And we await healing.
So what, then, is the role of faith in such healing?
First of all, faith is not an element that can be quantified or
measured out upon demand. Nor do we somehow magically “get”
it. It grows slowly until it is so rooted in us that it becomes
both a way of life and the basis for our relationship to God and to
others.
We can learn much about faith from the examples of the hemorrhaging
woman and the father whose beloved daughter lies at death’s door.
We are told the bleeding woman had tried everything, going from
physician to physician until she exhausted her financial resources, and
to what end? Only the worsening of her condition. But so
desperate was she that she undertook enormous risk to approach
Jesus. A hemorrhaging woman would have been considered ritually
unclean in the culture of the time. Anyone she touched could be
defiled. It is nearly miraculous that she got so close to Jesus
at all—she could have been forcibly removed from the crowd, even beaten.
But there was some energy that drew her to Jesus—perhaps a combination
of his aura and her intuitive sense that he was the healer she had been
seeking. And so despite the danger, she reached out to touch his
garment, surrendering her will to whatever would happen.
Then we observe Jairus, the influential leader of the synagogue,
frantic to save his young daughter, falling at Jesus’s feet, imploring
him to help. Ordinarily someone of Jairus’s stature in the
community would never kneel before an itinerant preacher and
healer. But he, too, dared something by lowering himself in
humility before Jesus—he risked his exalted standing among his
peers. Like the hemorrhaging woman, he did not question Jesus’s
ability. He didn’t say, for instance, “Come and lay your hands on
my daughter so that maybe you can do some good.” Quite the
contrary. He said, “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she
may be made well and live.” A clear request made in confidence
that such a healing was within Jesus’s power.
Both Jairus and the bleeding woman demonstrated at least three of the
qualities of faith. First, the willingness to risk whatever
consequences might ensue from following their instinct to approach
Jesus. Then both were able to surrender their own need to control
the situation—to, in essence, throw themselves on Jesus’s mercy and
compassion without conditions. And finally, they demonstrated
innate confidence that Jesus could, in some way, heal.
These and other Bible stories about healing are rather like parables
for us to consider as we deal with the challenges in our own
lives. By living lives of faith, we often have the benefit of
hindsight. How often in examining our own histories do we find
that God was at work healing and answering prayer even though at the
time it seemed unlikely and the answers came in unexpected ways.
Philip Yancey, writer and pastor, has a wonderful line: “Faith is believing in advance what only makes sense in reverse.”
We have the perfect example of the truth of that statement when we
examine the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord. What did
not seem to make sense at the time later was revealed as a
manifestation of God’s plan. While he walked the earth, Jesus was
tempted, reviled, and mocked, even by his own family. He hungered
and thirsted. He was enraged by abuses in the temple and wearied
by thrusting, demanding crowds.
Then came the horrifying events of Holy Week. Betrayal.
Judgment. Abandonment. Followed by whippings that flayed
his flesh, by the unbearable weight of the cross crushing him to the
ground, and then by the most agonizing death ever
devised—crucifixion!
In his humanity, Jesus, as we may sometimes do, cried out to his father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
It was only after the empty tomb and the appearances of the risen Lord
to his disciples, that any of it made sense looking “in reverse.”
Our Lord knew pain and suffering firsthand; he walked with us and among
us. But in God’s great plan, Jesus arose, overcoming death.
It is the promise of this triumph that is foreshadowed by the healing
of Jairus’s daughter.
It is short-sighted of us to demand healing on our own terms. How
I would’ve liked my mother to cast off her walker and speak without
aphasia. Or to have witnessed my mentally ill brother restored to
sanity and fullness of life. If only I could have lifted the
burden of caregiving from my father. At the time, I often
questioned where God was in the Job-like existence my family was
living.
It is with the gift of hindsight that I now see the wonderful thread of
unquestioning faith that ran through their lives and improved their
reactions—it was that faith, I believe, that kept them going and made
the situation tolerable, even healing, in ways that alteration in their
physical or mental state might not have. And through all my
prayers for them at the time, I now see in retrospect that something
unexpected happened. To me. In me. I received a
blessing of peace I had never asked for.
Who are we to know what God’s great plan entails? Who are we to
limit that plan or try to control what is not ours to control?
Psalm 30, appointed for today, speaks of the restoration of
health. In her paraphrasing of this psalm, Nan Merrill in her
book Psalms for Praying recasts the first three verses in this way:
I will praise You, O my Beloved,
for You have raised me up,
and have not let my fears
overwhelm me.
O compassionate One, I cried
for help, and You
comforted me.
You, Love, released my soul
from despair,
restored me to life from among
those who live in fear.
Imagine what it would feel like to be restored—healed—by
being released from among those who live in fear. That is what
faith is all about—living in confident surrender, unburdened by fear,
letting God be God.
Jesus said, “Do not fear, only believe.”
AMEN.
Laura Shoffner
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
St. James’ Episcopal Church
Eureka Springs, AR
28 JUNE 2009