2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45
Year B
I.N.I. (In the name of Jesus)
About seven years ago there was a gathering of pastors from the New England Synod.
Kari and I, being a clergy couple with very young children, had Bethany and Gabriel
in tow. There was childcare during the day's sessions, and we would fetch our kids
for each mealtime and bed them down for the night. On the second night of this convocation,
we had the kids with us for an evening worship service in the cavernous chapel at a
retreat center in Western Massachusetts. One of the hymns during communion was "There
is a Balm in Gilead." This is the refrain:
There is a balm in Gilead/to make the wounded whole/there is a balm in Gilead/to heal the sick soul.
Our two children,
particularly our four-year old boy, were belting out the words, because they knew
the song as a bedtime lullaby. In the pew where Kari and I were sitting, and the pews
behind and in front of us, smiles and a few tears were visible on our colleagues' faces.
It's the last verse that always trips me up:
Don't ever be discouraged/'cause Jesus is your friend/and if you lack for knowledge/he'll ne'er refuse to lend.
That gathering of pastors seven years ago provided for me and for others a healing
space. Singing then and at other times, and regularly each week brings me to a healing
space. And when I cannot sing, when I'm sick and there is no voice, when I'm down so
low that I cannot bear to squeak out a note, it is the community of faith that carries
me along as if Jesus himself is extending his hand to my leprosy. "There is a balm…."
Healing stories are scattered about the scriptures. We are loading up on them in
this Time of Epiphany. We who live as a community of resurrection, who profess to be
the church for mission in the world, who use language and images of cleansing and being
saved and changing our lives around, as we take notice of Jesus' proclivity to heal, can
stake out our own territory as a significant player and contributor to the art of healing
in our day.
Notice today's story about the leper, estranged from his family and his community with
a disease that by its very diagnosis meant hands-off, banishment from job and home, meant
a judgment that declared the leper to be unclean and no longer welcome in circles of social
interaction, of religious ritual, of family. The leper and others like him were ex-communicated,
out of the community,
out of luck.
Notice his desire to be made well. Scratch the surface of any living being, and you
will discover deep-seeded yearnings to recover mobility, to resolve the long-standing
hostility with a brother, to find a new space after years of abuse, mental, physical,
and sexual. The desperate soul in the Gospel came to the rabbi with a growing reputation
to heal.
Notice Jesus' reaction. It reads "moved with pity," but some footnotes suggest that
it was an even stronger emotion, like anger, that stirred him up. Beware the sentiments
offered by well-intentioned friends that someone's illness or someone's death is God's
will. Rather, like much in life, so too in illness and in death there is this mystery
that bumps against what we would expect or know or understand. And God, who is the author
of existence, who brings the world into being and pronounces it good, whose inclination is
to gather up the broken pieces of a shattered community, I would venture to say, always wills
health and wholeness. Finding health, even perfect health in God's promised future is
participating in the searching and the struggle with faith.
I've known many able-bodies people who are really sick.
I've known many disabled people who are really whole.
Camille Ellingsen was one of the most beautiful persons I've ever met. She had long thick
grey-hair pulled up in the back, and a soothing voice that welcomed me into her home, on a street
lined with elm trees in a Chicago suburb. Her wrinkled-lined face revealed elegant lines in her
bone structure, and though small in stature she had a presence that to me was always greater than
met the eye. Camille was homebound, arthritic and blind in her elder years. She would greet me
at her door saying "Come in, Pastor", and then due to a curvature of the spine would grunt with
each deliberate step and grope the furniture as she made her way to her chair. Her physical condition
was a mess. She had more wrong with her than right. But she knew healing! She would profess
gratitude for the one son she had, because by rights she did not have the best equipment and almost
died giving birth. She adored her late husband and missed him terribly, but was grateful to still
be able to get around in their home. She volunteered in a program where she phoned a group of people
every day just to make sure they were all right. She memorized most of the numbers. She kept
in touch with the world by constantly listening to the radio, and local elected officials knew
Camille, because she would call them to express her opinion on pending legislation or a social
issue. To me, Camille demonstrated grace and the power of Jesus over debilitating illness,
even in her last days flat out on a bed in a nursing home.
Camille was a willing participant in the saving ways of Jesus, and showed me, a young pastor,
a way to know how someone by first glance might be said to be outside of the community,
excommunicated, but by encounter and experience, and when sharing Christ's body and blood in
bread and wine really and truly joined her with the community of saints, past, present, and
future. Camille was one of the most beautiful persons I've ever met.
The word for healing and the word for saving are very closely related. Knowing healing
brings someone to a place where they are safe. Being saved brings someone to a place where
they know healing.
How are you a participant in Jesus' will and way for wholeness? How can we as the church
declare God's ways to mend a broken world through our welcoming those outside our circles into
communion with Christ? How can we provide a healing space in our daily encounters and our weekly
rituals?
If we know healing, as the leper in the gospel discovered healing, despite Jesus' admonition
to say nothing, we might just be compelled to proclaim and spread this way with God in our lives
as nothing other than saving good news.
If we seek healing,
Or we might put it this way:
There is a balm in Gilead/to make the wounded whole/there is a balm in Gilead/to heal the sick soul.
I.N.I.
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
