“On Healing and Hope”
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
There will be no beating around the bush this morning—because it’s hard to preach a sermon about healing and wholeness when your heart is breaking for the several church members and their dear ones currently dealing with serious illness, chronic illness, and debilitating and progressive conditions.
There will be no positive thinking or simplistic faith talk this morning—because it’s hard to hear a sermon about healing and wholeness when you’ve been praying for years for physical wellness that hasn’t come, when you’re stuck in the web of one specialist appointment after another in the hopes of finally getting a clear diagnosis, when you’re exhausted from caring for a beloved who’s only getting worse, when it feels like aging is taking away the best of you, when even the hope of healing feels like a cruel tease.
And I know that more than a few of us find ourselves in one of those places this morning.
Well.
Let us remember that Jesus came to call not the righteous, but sinners. Jesus came to bless not the rich, but the poor. Jesus came to proclaim life abundant not for the mainstream, normative, fully accepted and powerful, but for the marginalized, outcast, rejected and dejected, the least, the last, and the lost. And, yes, Jesus came to heal not the robust and healthy, but the sick and disabled, the suffering and the chronically ill.
In the same way, good news is meant for those who need to hear it, however hard it may be to understand and believe.
So, surely this morning’s stories about healing and wholeness are meant for us. Surely, even we can take heart and find some glimmer of hope.
Because healing is not the same thing as a cure, and wholeness does not necessarily equal able-bodied, hearing, cancer-free, or of sound mind. We can pursue and experience recovery without our traumas being erased or our childhood wounds suddenly disappeared. Our emotions, hearts, and spirits can be healed without our diseases being cured. Our lives can be made whole even as our bodies and minds continue to weaken and decline.
And then there’s that business about faith. Who among us has not believed and prayed with all our heart, only to see our own illness or that of a dear one get worse and worse? A former professor of mine, an ordained minister and biblical scholar, tells the story of how, when his three-year-old daughter died of leukemia, his clergy colleagues told him she would have lived if only he had prayed more fervently and faithfully.
That, my friends, is a lie—and that kind of thinking only creates more wounds in need of healing. Unlike the people of Jesus’ time, who didn’t know from science and believed illness or disability was a sign of God’s judgment, we know we are not responsible for our genetics. We need to remember, especially when we’re sick for otherwise-abled, that our physical condition is no reflection on our character or value.
And still we can facilitate and participate in our emotional, spiritual, and, sometimes, even physical recovery and healing—by boldly asking for and humbly accepting help.
Our scriptures suggest that Jesus, like God, “is most interested in people who need help.” And in our text for this morning we see three of the ways that God—through Jesus, through the church, through others, and through us—promotes our healing and wholeness.
First, God longs to heal our divisions. In our text, Jesus does this by outreach and inclusion.
Second, God longs to heal the marginalization, loneliness, isolation that often result from our illnesses, disabilities, and wounds. Jesus accomplishes this by being available, approachable, and affirming.
And third, God longs to restore us to the fullness of life. Jesus does this by ignoring all indications of death, giving death no foothold, and instead taking us by the hand and leading us to life.
Consider, if you will, the three different parts of Jesus’ very busy day in our text. What looks at first like another call story—Jesus calling Matthew to be his twelfth disciple—is also a story of disruption and healing by inclusion. Matthew, you see, was a tax collector, which is to say a collaborator with Rome, and most likely corrupt. Tax collectors were despised by the Jewish people. While our gospel passage focuses on Jesus’ habit of eating with tax collectors and sinners and how it offended religious people, it is quite likely that the most deeply offended people in this situation were Jesus’ other disciples. Jesus has brought into their small circle someone they might have considered an enemy or, at the very least, an oppressor.
Jesus seems to want his disciples to know that the ministry of healing is also about addressing social divisions, and that healing those divides is sometimes an inside job. If they are to bring God’s mercy and forgiveness to others, first they will have to move past their own grievances and forgive, accept, and affirm each other.
Perhaps there’s something in that situation that could help heal the divisions among us.
Then, as if to illustrate the many overlapping facets and layers of needed healing, while Jesus is still explaining why he socializes with religious and cultural outcasts he is approached by a community leader. Because the leader is dealing with his own pain and has his own needs, he looks right past the social and religious awkwardness and goes straight to Jesus.
Perhaps there is something in the leader’s example that could help heal us of our tendencies to try to do everything all at once and, instead, seek God’s help in doing the most important thing.
Speaking of everything all at once, no sooner has Jesus set out to tend to the man’s supposedly dead daughter than he is buttonholed by yet another social pariah, a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years. Because she is bleeding, she is considered unclean by the religious authorities, but because she is desperate, bold, and believing, she reaches out and touches Jesus’ cloak. Her touch has, according to custom, made Jesus unclean, but instead of reprimanding her, Jesus sees her, tenderly addresses her with a term of intimacy and inclusion—daughter!—and praises her faith.
Perhaps there is something in her behavior that could help heal us of our reluctance to ask for what we need and our tendency to let others define us.
Finally, Jesus arrives at the leader’s house and tells the mourners that the girl is not dead. With insight, authority, and an utter rejection of death’s power, he takes the girl’s hand—again ignoring all customs about what is unclean—and leads her to life.
Perhaps there is something in the girl’s revival that could help heal our despair of ever finding wholeness, life, or love.
Friends, if these stories offer us any sense of how healing happens, it seems to me that a willingness to ignore or outright violate social customs and barriers, including our own sense of what is comfortable or acceptable, is key. So important is our healing and wholeness, so holy and urgent is the work of building community across divisions, that we must not let social proprieties, religious rigidity, or personal inhibitions get in the way.
Jesus sees us this morning, and tenderly offers us a hand up. Jesus sees us, and encourages us to ask for what we need. Jesus sees us, and promises to walk with us through our dis-ease, fear, and pain. Jesus sees us, and calls us by name into the great heart of Love.
Let’s go.
