About twenty-five years ago,
while watching a news program, I was shocked and saddened to learn of a car
accident on a Connecticut Interstate. The tragedy resulted in the death of a
colleague and his two-year-old child; his pregnant wife Paula survived and six
months later gave birth to a healthy baby. Along with a new mother’s joy
and love, Paula grieved profoundly. I can only imagine her painful time of
loss, emptiness, disillusionment, rage, loneliness, hopelessness, bitterness,
helplessness and confusion as she journeyed on her unchosen, dark road.
I’m sure that many of us
gathered here this morning have at one time or another experienced acute grief
caused by circumstances beyond our control. Possibly someone dear to you has
died and left a gnawing void in your life; perhaps you have been betrayed by
someone trusted and loved; maybe an irresponsible daughter, son or parent has
rejected your affection; possibly you have been unjustly fired from a job or
forced into an unwanted retirement; perhaps you have received alarming medical
information; maybe you have been subjected to continuous oppression or
ridicule. Frightening intrusions and losses visit and wound many of us! We
respond frequently, as did Paula, with mixed and awful emotions that paralyze
our lives.
During an early 1990s
conversation with Paula (video recorded for a biomedical ethics course I was
teaching), I asked whether she recalled an event when her life again seemed to
have possibilities other than an overwhelming sense of embittered gloom. Listen
to her own words from that interview:
“It was kind of a small
moment. I had moved back with my parents (because they told me to), and in the
initial stages it didn’t occur to me to refute that or to make a different
decision; whatever anyone told me to do, I did. I came back to Connecticut for
a visit and went to my gynecologist; he checked me because I was still in the
middle of a pregnancy. He said to me, when I requested that he take all my
files and send them to my doctor in Massachusetts, ‘Why don’t I just
send copies and then if you choose to come back, I’11 have your records
still here.’ It was that one small comment that I turned over in my mind
all that evening; he just had given me the suggestion ‘IF I CHOOSE,’
and that’s when it occurred to me that it would be up to me. Then I
started to read stories and to really get into the lives of people who had
overcome any kind of tragedy (it didn’t have to be a death), and I saw a
common theme in them: it was never that they had overcome the circumstances per
se; it was themselves that they had had the victory over. They had believed
that they could rise above it, and it was a will to do it that was the common
victory, and I started to really feed on that… One comment I read was that
‘life breaks everybody at some point, but that some can become strong at
the broken places.’ That one insight led me to really look at a lot of
lives, not only lives that had an obvious tragedy, and to realize that life
does break everybody at some point . .... Still and all, like others, I’d
made the decision to heal - which I feel is always a choice; it
doesn’t happen to people; you decide to heal ....”
Reports on healings of the
spirit and cures of the body are found in both the Bible and elsewhere.
Paula’s healing is about a mending of the spirit; in today’s reading
from Mark’s Gospel we hear a transformation of the body. You and I readily
accept Paula’s present-day account as factual. But what of the story from
Mark? Nearly two thousand years old, this story – like most that old
– is less sure. We can say, rightly I think, that the historical literary
form of most biblical healings and cures indicate that they are intended to be
read as factual. Different literary forms suggest parables, allegories,
poems, etc. Nonetheless, for many contemporaries the notion of unexplained
restorations of health is problematic, though we hear of them today from the
medical world itself. Harvard’s great preacher Peter Gomes advises us with
these words: “The question, ‘Is it true?, while natural, is quite the
wrong question to put, for miracles are not arguments or propositions to which
there are yes or no answers. The question to be put about a miracle? is not
‘Is it true?’ or even ‘How can this be?’ but rather,
‘What does this say?’ At its essence a miracle is a message – an
illustration or a demonstration of a message that God chooses to communicate to
us.” [Gomes, Sermons (1998), pp. 139 f.] Our focus with both Paula
and Mark is precisely this, what do such accounts mean for us? What does the
Creator say to us through such testimonials?
At this point, a word of
caution is in order. As we consider healings and cures, we must be sure that
individual circumstances are truly in need of help. For example, do you know
the origin of the word sinister? It is from Latin meaning on the left
side. Not only in folklore, but in Christian history left-handedness was
regarded as an ill omen. There are many stories of teachers who tried to force
left-handed youngsters to use their right hands – even by tying the left
hand behind students’ backs! One adult reports, “When entering the
first grade in a Catholic school we began to write. I picked up the pencil and
began to copy from the black board. I can to this day hear the nun and her
words in my head. In front of the whole class she called me ‘spawn of the
devil.’” Although I don’t know the specifics, for quite some
time left-handed men could not be ordained. It was believed that they were
spiritually and morally defective, tainted with evil, and could not possibly
serve as wholesome examples. One wonders how often left-handed people were
prayed for and received the laying-on-of hands, perhaps even exorcism attempts,
to rectify their supposed illness! I’m sure that there are other examples
of misguided diagnoses, but enough said for now. Let’s return to Mark!
In this morning’s Gospel
reading we hear about the restoration of the deaf man’s hearing. As to its
meaning for us: how many of the ills of our world are brought about by the
willing deafness of those who will not hear new information, cries of injustice
- indeed, the Word of God itself. The spiritually deaf cling to half truths and
ignorant notions; they deafen themselves to unfairness suffered by others; they
tune out others; they fashion a religion that may have the forms of
Christianity, but little of its substance. In today’s Gospel the
man was also cured of an impediment in his speech. Spiritual speech impediments
allow the afflicted to be silent, to not allow God’s Word to flow through
them clearly. Selfishly preoccupied, they choose to be God’s mutes -
silenced by cowardice, caution, and prejudice. Cured, the man’s heart was
softened, his mind was opened, and his tongue released to speak plainly. Is
this not what God wants of you and of me – for us to hear, speak, and be
doers of the Word?
Back to Paula: her chosen road
to healing began in the small moment of a physician’s suggestion. She
could have decided to focus on her pain and remain entombed indefinitely.
Instead, she chose to respond to a “small moment” provided by a
graceful healer and then walk from darkness toward the light of Resurrection.
You and I will have our
sorrows, afflictions, anguishes, heartaches, and tragedies. At such times we
might seem to travel roads of sadness, apparently going nowhere; life will
appear dark and imprisoning, and our vision will be clouded. However, we are
assured that there will be perceptible, small moments providing us with
graceful opportunities to choose, not merely to endure, but to move toward
healing. Advice from a doctor, a meal with a beloved friend, something read, a
chance conversation, something heard anew such as “Come unto me all ye
that travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you” - all familiar
occasions perceived in new ways.
Moreover, we might find
ourselves, similar to Paula’s doctor, unknowingly ministering with healing
insight, or like Christ, offering the possibility of restored abilities to
those spiritually deaf and mute.
At this very hour in this
church all is not well with everyone present. Some of us carry varying degrees
of grief in response to unwelcome circumstances beyond our control. Some of us
may find it difficult to be open in heart and mind. Some of us may be reluctant
to be doers, to speak up when we encounter true sinfulness. However, this
Eucharistic Breaking of the Bread can be one of those perceptible, small
moments wherein we discover strength and vision to choose not merely to survive
the day, but to heal however slowly, however scarred we might remain.
Additionally, our very individual presence, perhaps in a word or a smile, with
a hand or a hug, even our sharing of bread and wine in the name of Christ,
might be an occasion of ministry, such that some may choose to begin, or
continue the journey toward, their own resurrected spirit, more hopeful, with a
clearer vision of what might yet be, and just a bit stronger at their broken
places.