Sermon Notes Is. 4):21-31, Mark 1:29-39

St Blaise Day was February the third. As a child, the priest would place two candles and bless our throats. He was the patron saint for ailments of the throat as legend had it that he saved a boy who was choking on a fish bone. I am too quick to turn healing accounts into spiritual healing. Physical healing is important. Still, stories of healing are also always gateways to the spiritual, I think. Nothing brings out a desperate prayer more than healing of sickness. With all of the wonders of medical science, our prayers grow more desperate because what drives us to our needs are of its few areas of uncertainty or inability.

Of course, when we are sick, it has a real impact on our emotional and spiritual state. If healing can be seen as a move toward wholeness, then it includes all facets of our well-being. The image of God and healing requires some thought. If God is a benevolent dictator, then why is illness not just banished, or healing more certain. In my struggles with the issue of God and human suffering, theodicy, I sometimes find some comfort in the assertion that creation is complex, and our struggles with illness, let alone mortality, are part of its structure. In other words, creation is under constant assault from natural evils, often held at bay, but they do spill over routinely.

Jesus is making a reputation as a teacher and a healer.When Jesus encounters suffering, he does not blame its victims. he doesn’t tell them to look on the bright side, or to compare their plight with others worse off. Jesus heals them. Deborah Krause of Eden Seminary notes that women may mutter under their breath as they realize that Peter’s mother-in-law is healed just in time for supper. The word for serving here is being a deacon, however. (I do note that the mother-in-law appears right after an incident with demons).

I spent time considering radiation treatments since my prostate cancer was lurking in what the physicians call the margin of the gland. A number of people have written me saying that I should trust the Great Physician and forgo treatment. They imply that my faith is weak if I continue with the prescribed treatment program. I have faith in healing prayer, but I also have faith that God works in many directions, including human technology and ingenuity.

Isaiah gives voice to our frustrated complaints that God seems out of reach and seems to disregard our need. While warning us not to fall into the trap of thinking that we can grasp the enormity of God fully, the prophet sees God as lifting up those in need. When people don;t know if they can lift one foot after another during chemotherapy, may they hear the words echo within Is. 40:31. (quote here) I read this as a helping hand from above. I also read it as lifting us from within. I recall a pastor in Indiana who faced down cancer a number of times, and how he felt prayers lift him out of bed in the morning when he felt no power left to do so on his own.

Jesus needed to recover his balance and energies too it seems, to get some time to pray, to recharge, to reconnect to his source of healing. Jesus Christ needed some sabbath time, some time to commune with God. His newly minted disciples track him down. We too need to pray for the strength to go through another day. We need to have our need to be in charge healed. Maybe we need to learn to receive as well as give as love of self to be connected to love of neighbor.