Most of Jesus’ ministry takes place in the region of Galilee. In the gospel accounts, the stories of Jesus’ healings and exorcisms dominate. In Matthew, Mark and Luke’s gospels, commonly called the Synoptic gospels, there are thirteen stories of particular healings and in total 72 accounts - among them the healing of fever, leprosy, paralysis, a withered hand, a bent back, hemorrhage, blindness, deafness & dumbness, a severed ear, possession of evil spirits or demons, and sickness near death.
The way in which Jesus brought healing to folks varied. Sometimes he healed with a few words. To a man with a withered hand, Jesus said, "Stretch out your hand." and the hand was healed. According to the first healing story we read today from Luke’s gospel, Jesus healed the man with demons by simply commanding them to leave him.
Often touching was involved in healing as was the case in the case of the woman with the hemorrhage and the daughter of Jairus.
Sometimes Jesus was able to heal at a distance. When a Roman centurion comes to Jesus asking him to heal his slave who is near death in his house, Jesus is able to heal the man without actually being physically near him.
Sometimes the faith of the individual appears to be a factor in the healing process. Jesus tells the woman with the hemorrhage that "your faith has made you well." But at other times, it would seem that the faith of the individual is not a factor - it doesn’t seem to be the case with the man from the Gerasenes nor with the case of Jarius’ daughter.
With very few exceptions, all of the healing stories of Jesus take place in a public venue with many bystanders nearby to witness the event. This is an important cue to us, a reminder that Jesus’ acts of healing not only had an impact on individuals; they also had an impact on the surrounding community.
So before we go any further today, I think it would help to understand the way in which disabilities, disease and chronic health conditions were understood among Jewish communities in first century Palestine.
The society in which Jesus lived was marked by very strict social boundaries. Racial divides were huge. Jews, Samaritans, Greeks, Syrophoenicians, and Romans treated one another with disdain. To be a good Jew meant to stay within the Jewish community. The less contact with the Gentile world (that is with anyone who wasn’t Jewish), the greater was your hope of leading a life of faithfulness and purity.
Now before we judge this attitude too harshly, we need to remember that at this time to be a Jew was to be vulnerable and without much power in the world as it was then. Not only that, with the domination first of the Greeks and then the Romans, other gods and religious traditions were infiltrating Palestine, threatening to erode the Jewish faith and identity. And so in an effort to try to preserve their identity and the core values of their faith, the Jewish community closed ranks in order to keep out the threat of foreign influence.
So in our readings today, when Jesus heals the man from the Gerasenes, he dares to step outside of these strict boundaries to heal a Gentile man. When Jesus heals the Syrophenician woman or the slave of a Roman centurion, when he heals anyone outside of the Jewish faith, the gospel message is proclaimed loud and clear - that the healing power of God, manifest in Jesus is not just for the Jews but for all God’s people.
But there were other social boundaries in the Jewish community that were not based on religious or racial differences. In Jesus’ time there were clear dividing lines between the clean and unclean, between the shamed and the honourable.
To be in social contact - to touch, to eat with and often even to converse with a person who was shamed and unclean would mean that you too became tainted by their shame and uncleanness - in effect shame and uncleanness were viewed as contagious!
Those who were tainted by shame included tax-collectors, street people, beggars, prostitutes, thieves. In the gospel stories they are often called sinners and outcasts. They were not the people a good Jew would associate with. When we look at the topic of Jesus as a revolutionary, we will talk more about his association with this group of people.
To be unclean or lacking in purity was a bit more complex. Uncleanness was not necessarily a permanent state; each and every average Jew became unclean from time to time in the regular course of living. Touching and caring for the sick made a person unclean. Preparing the dead for burial made a person unclean. Menstruation and childbirth made women unclean. Anyone with a bodily discharge like weeping or bleeding sores and anyone with a deformity was also unclean. And of course to be in contact with anyone who was unclean made you unclean too.
However, by following the prescribed religious procedures on a certain number of days, such as taking a ritual bath, going to the priest and offering the appropriate sacrifices, anyone who was unclean could return to a state of purity. If you want to know more about these practices purification then the book of Leviticus is a good place to start.
It is important to note that a person could only remain in a state of purity if they were free from disease, deformity, and bodily discharge.
Of course, this meant that those with chronic illnesses and those with a permanent disability suffered not only from the physical effects of their condition, they also suffered from the stigma of being permanently unclean. As such they lived an isolated life, shunned by others, unwelcome and unable to take part in any social or community activities.
Incase we are quick to judge the behaviour of this society; we only need to look back at the last 50 years or so of our own society. It isn’t so long ago that those with mental health or developmental challenges were kept apart from the rest of us housed in institutions or hidden away quietly in their homes. And unfortunately the stigma of mental illness or developmental challenges is still a source of pain and isolation to many individuals and their families.
And it is just about four years ago that Toronto and by association much of Ontario and even Canada was shunned by travelers because of the SARS outbreak. I remember well the impact it had on our community. Our practices of passing the peace and the celebration of communion were affected. Visitors in hospitals and other institutions faced a gantlet of questions with regard to health and were forced to comply with a strict hand-washing procedure. I am sure that this affected the frequency of visits. Fear of contamination wasn’t very far beneath the surface, and the Toronto Entertainment and Tourism industry suffered huge losses because people simply stayed away.
And although the initial fears and myths of about HIV/AIDS have been overcome, I don’t think that many of the judgments upon those who are affected have disappeared.
So, when we call Jesus a healer, we need to understand that his healing work was much, much more than the curing of an individual with a disease. As he reached out to touch, to eat with and to talk with those who were considered unclean, Jesus radically redefined the boundaries in Jewish society. By his actions, he proclaimed that God’s love included and welcomed the very people that they had excluded and ostracized.
Through Jesus’ healing words and touch, those who were nobodies, became somebodies! Those who had no community suddenly had a place in the community.
Today’s healing stories are dramatic examples of Jesus’ desire to restore communities to embrace and reflect the inclusive love of God.
The first healing story we read today would have been one of the most extreme examples. The country of the Gerasenes is Gentile territory - automatically making it an unclean place. Jesus deliberately travels to this unclean location, and then heightens the drama by going visit a man who lives among the dead - another unclean place. The man lives in agony, so victimized by the demons that torment him that he is chained and bound. We might not use the word demons in our day to describe this man’s condition, but regardless of the psychiatric term we might prefer, the agony and torment experienced by this man would remain unchanged. The healing action of Jesus is an act of liberation, freeing the man not only from the torment of his mental and spiritual anguish, but also from the fear and rejection of his own community. Jesus’ actions are also a strong message to people then as now, that God’s work of love and healing is not restricted to anyone nation or tradition, it is for the liberation of all peoples in the world.
I can’t emphasize enough how much Jesus’ healing ministry is as much about the health and healing of a community as it is about the health and healing of an individual.
It’s the same message when Jesus heals the woman with the hemorrhage. Not only is she freed from her own physical affliction, she is also freed from the restrictions placed upon her by the community. And interwoven into her story is the story of Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, one who should be a perfect example of one who follows the purity laws of the day. But Jairus does not hesitate to ask Jesus, who has returned from Gentile lands and has touched an unclean man, to heal is daughter.
Once again the gospel writer shows us that those who have the eyes of faith can see beyond the conventional laws of the day and perceive that God’s compassion is not limited to traditional boundaries of purity and cleanliness.
For when Jesus shows no hesitation or fear in touching those who are labeled unclean, his actions underscore his teachings that impurity comes not from the outside but from inside. Purity for Jesus is a matter of the state of one’s heart, not a matter of externals.
As we reach the end of our time with this topic today, I realize that there are many questions on our hearts and minds that are still unanswered. Questions like: Did Jesus really restore people to life? Did he really bring sight to the blind or cure lepers or mend an arthritic back or a withered hand? And if he did such acts of healing then, can we not depend upon him to perform such acts today?
I wish I had definitive answers to give, but I must admit that I find all of this to be a mystery too. But this is what I do believe.
I believe that we need to look at illness and disease more holistically. We need to perceive that health and healing involve the whole person, body, mind and spirit, and embrace a ministry of healing that includes prayer and other spiritual practices as much as medicines and surgery and other physical therapies. And we need to understand that our own personal health and healing is intimately tied up with the health and healing of the communities and indeed the world that we live in. We are deceiving ourselves if we think that we can be healthy and whole independent of the communities we live in and independent of the air, the water, the creatures and the land where we live.
And I believe that as we live with a greater awareness and commitment to the health and healing of communities and of the world we live in, we will begin to understand and experience much more profoundly the healing work of Christ among us.
For we are a part of the healing work of Jesus Christ, as we pray for one another, as we build up neighbourhoods where those with special needs are cared for and included, where the dignity of food, housing and education is available to all, where diverse racial cultural and religious groups seek to live in peace, where we live with respect in creation, and where we celebrate God’s grace, the source of our health and the source of all life. Amen.
