of Mark is intended to reach out to every person and every spiritual, physical, emotional, or relational condition with the promise of God’s healing love.
Like the rest of the New Testament, Mark’s Gospel was meant to be read by communities and not just solitary individuals. Mark is clear that the realm of God, the embodiment of God’s values in everyday life, requires communities devoted to healing and wholeness; it also calls forth healing communities dedicated to transformed relationships at every level of life – individual, marital, familial, relational, congregational, communal, and planetary. We are to replicate in our congregations and relationships the healing circle that Jesus created to bring healing to Jairus’ daughter or the courageous faith of four friends who tore open a roof to seek healing for their friend. Communities need to hear and believe that they can experience good news, be transformed, and then transform the world. We need to hear Jesus’ loving words to Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” as an inspiration to reflection, confession, and bold petition for the healing of ourselves and our loved ones.
Although my focus is primarily the meaning of Mark’s healing gospel for people today, I also call upon the wisdom of John’s Gospel. The last of the four gospels to be written, probably near 100 C.E., John’s Gospel complements the starkness and straightforwardness of Mark: John is philosophical, Mark is concrete; John is global, Mark is local; John’s Jesus is a philosophical teacher, Mark’s Jesus is a hands-on practitioner. John describes the heavens and the resurrected life, while Mark points to resurrection emerging in our daily lives, as we are astounded by wonder of personal transformation and overwhelmed by an empty tomb and an absent body. In that spirit, I will focus on John 5 and John 9, the healings of the man at the pool and a sight-impaired man, to address the profoundly personal as well as theological issues of sickness and suffering. Amid their apparent contrasts in approach, method, and attitude toward healing (John has the fewest healing stories), both Gospels share the belief that those who truly encounter Jesus Christ are radically changed and renewed: energized by God’s healing presence, they shall mount up with wings of eagles, running without weariness, and walking with strength (Isaiah 40:31).
Theology and Healing. The healings of Jesus challenge us to join faith and knowledge in order to be responsible interpreters of the texts. As a theologian, who reflects on questions of God, suffering, meaning, prayer, revelation, and virtually everything human, one of my tasks is to explore what healing and wholeness mean in the twenty-first century.
We live in a very different world than the first Christians: our names for diseases differ as do our diagnostic and treatment protocols. Maladies attributed in the first century to demon possession, while not ruled out by modern theology or science, are now primarily understood in terms of physiological or psychological causes, and treated with medication, counseling, and psychotherapy. Modern understandings do not necessarily challenge the gospel healing stories but frame them in light of our time, place, and technology. The healing stories don’t stand still, but come alive in new and creative ways from generation to generation.
Theologians ask hard questions of scripture, spiritual healers, and scientists to fathom the complexities and impact of personal and intercessory prayer, positive thinking, community support, personal choices, and God’s presence in health and illness. I regularly challenge liberals, evangelicals, new agers, and Pentecostals alike in my explorations of faith, healing touch, prayer, and spiritual energy. I believe that peoples’ lives are transformed by the interplay of call and response, reflected in the dynamic interplay of God’s presence and our own religious practices. I still must ask the same hard questions that surfaced in my own childhood, though with the recognition that theologians, like physicians, must follow the principle, “first do no harm.”
As a believer in God’s healing presence in our lives, who regularly participates in liturgical healing services, reiki healing touch sessions, and prayers of intercession and petition, I am compelled to ask questions such as: Where is God in this situation? Why did God cure one person but not the other? Is God responsible for the pain and grief we experience? How do we judge some of the dramatic healing claims – restoration of the dead and growing of new limbs - made by both Pentecostals and new agers? How do we explain failure in ways that do not blame the victim or her or his family? How shall we understand these healing events in light of our contemporary understandings of medicine and medical treatment?
A theologian must ask challenging questions to insure that our religious explanations heal rather than harm. In many healing contexts, persons with illness and their parents are still blamed for their illness or their failure to improve. In other cases, people are told that God gave them unendurable pain or debilitation to strengthen their character, test their faith, teach them a lesson, or punish them for sins. Along with everyday believers, theologians challenge explanations that lack adequate moral, spiritual, scientific, or intellectual stature and gravitas.
Theology begins with the question of suffering and the profound distance between our hopes and dreams and the stark realities of moral imperfection, sickness, oppression, injustice, and death. Theology can add to the suffering of the world through superficial or harmful explanations of peoples’ conditions. But, it can also be a healing force, enabling people to open to powers within and beyond themselves and to balance the realism of their current prognosis with the deeper realism of God’s loving presence coursing through our cells as well as our souls. My questions – and yours as well – are not the result of faithlessness but a testimony to our desire to be faithful to God’s wisdom and spiritually sensitive to vulnerable and suffering people. As you reflect on Mark’s healing gospel, bring your whole self to the text, in the spirit of a loving father who confessed, “I believe; help my unbelief.”[12]
My Approach to Mark’s Healing Gospel. Good theological reflection involves the interplay of vision, promise, and practice. It also involves embodiment and emotion. Our words must take flesh in acts of justice, love, and healing. Accordingly, my approach to Jesus’ healings involves heart, mind, and hands. I see the healing stories as an invitation to our own personal healing and wholeness. I don’t assume that we should take these stories literally without questions, doubts, and second thoughts, nor should we assume that we can replicate them exactly in our time. We live in what singer-songwriter Paul Simon describes as an age of miracle and wonder technologically in which we join prayer and Prozac, contemplation and chemotherapy, and intercession and intravenous drips. We have tools for treatment and palliation that no one in Jesus’ time could imagine.
Still, we deal with the realities of sickness and mortality. These realities shape our quest for healing and our hopes for divine assistance when our own efforts no longer avail. I believe that God is at work in the world in the cells of our bodies and in our spiritual adventures. I write as a believing scholar, who seeks to practice what I preach and experience the words I write in the dramatic and undramatic moments of everyday life. Like my father and mother before me, I have a prayer list of persons in crisis for which I intercede every day. I daily visualize people surrounded by God’s healing light and transmit healing energy through reiki healing touch. I regularly lead and participate in healing worship services. Still, I struggle to understand the meaning of healing and God’s role in healing and illness. I take time to pray throughout the day, yet I live with unanswered prayers on a daily basis. I will share my experiences with healing and illness in the course of this book and invite you to reflect on your own encounters with God during life’s most vulnerable moments.
In the course of conceiving, researching, and writing this text, two of my closest friends have died of cancer, one whose life was interwoven with mine for over forty years, the other a fellow parent and next door neighbor whose son was one of my son’s best friends. I prayed whole-heartedly for them, bringing my intercessions to what my Baptist parents called “the throne of God” in quest of a cure. Right now, three other close friends are facing diagnoses of incurable cancer. One has just refused further medical interventions beyond palliation, entered hospice care, and prayerfully waits for her death, trusting in God’s promises. The other, my dearest friend and spiritual
