Being Ill and Getting Better

Texts: Lamentations 3:22-33; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43 Last week we thought about the mystery of God in relation to natural disasters.  If God is the Creator of all things, and has sovereignty over all things, must it not follow that God is responsible – that God causes – natural disasters that often result in hundreds and even thousands of deaths?  Or is God, as it were, continuing to bring order out of chaos, but that creative work has not yet been completed?  Does chaos still erupt from time to time and will it continue to do so, until God's creative work has been completed?  And we noted how both of those views are to be found in Scripture, at least in the Old Testament if not the New. This week we have a similar issue to grapple with – that of illness and premature death.  What are we to make of these?  Are they God's doing in some way – does God cause illness – or is it something that happens and against which God is actively working?  Again, if we look to Scripture, we seem to find that the answer to these questions is Yes and Yes! As I was beginning to think about this sermon I received the latest all-points bulletin from our archbishops concerning the practices of Communion in the world of H1N1 influenza.  We seem to have gone up a notch in our need for security – the danger level has gone from yellow to orange.  What was helpful advice has now become a directive – at least in intent, although we Anglicans are notoriously averse to taking directions from bishops or even archbishops.  But the archbishops now say that the advice from their medical advisers is that we must not allow intinction – that is, the dipping of the wafer in the wine.  We now have only two options: we may receive the wafer without the wine, or we may drink from the chalice, but we must not dip our wafer in the wine.  This time our Bishop endorses the archbishops' view so it is now a matter of discipline in this diocese.  Just how much force the chalice bearer is entitled to use to stop you dipping your wafer has not been made clear! But all this is a useful way into today's theme and our readings; because it highlights for us some of the issues that our Jewish forbears in the faith had to struggle with.  We might turn up our superior noses at the old Jewish idea of being "unclean", but in some sense that's what this issue surrounding Communion, and particularly, the common cup, is all about.  We can say it is simply a commonsense approach to public health.  It is in the interests of all of us to stop the spread of this new virus if we can.  It is sensible – and considerate – to keep it to ourselves if we have it or are suspected of having it.  Staying home – quarantine – whatever we want to call it – makes good sense; and we can readily agree that a Christian concern for our neighbour should lead us to take such steps voluntarily if there is a risk that we have it and could pass it on to others. But if we get past the voluntary stage – as our archbishops seem to want us to do in relation to the chalice – are we guilty of excluding people to protect ourselves?  Are we acting, not out of loving concern for others, but selfish concern for ourselves?  Are we succumbing to fear – are we in danger of looking upon others as "unclean" and excluding them from worship? As we reflect on this new virus and our response to it, let us try for a moment to see if we can better understand what the Torah was on about in classifying people in certain circumstances as unclean, such as this woman in the gospel story today who had been bleeding for years, was certainly thereby rendered unclean in Jewish law.  When she appeared in public in the crowd surrounding Jesus she was breaking Jewish Law, and could have been stoned to death if her condition had been known to the crowd.  When she touched Jesus, she rendered him 'unclean', come to that, so he should have withdrawn, too.  We might shake our heads at this, but are we not faced with the same sort of dilemma today, and every time there is an outbreak of an infectious disease?  Think back a few years to the discrimination experienced by those known to have the HIV virus, let alone AIDS. So illness is always associated, to a greater or lesser extent, with fear, and often surrounded with taboos.  Think of the difficulty people sometimes have in pronouncing the word 'cancer': the word itself is too scary so we won't use it if we can avoid it.  We either use a euphemism – 'the Big C' – or so-and-so died 'after a long illness' – or, like the great dramatist Dennis Potter we even give it a witty nickname (he called his tumour Rupert after Rupert Murdoch whom he disliked!)  And often our first response is to push the sick away, which is not far from punishing them, but is usually motivated by a desire to protect ourselves.  Asylums and sanatoriums are part of our recent history. What we don't usually do is blame God for illness, unless, of course, it is a sexual disease we're talking about and we hold a particular brand of theology that says that God will use such illnesses to punish those who are sexually promiscuous.  If we are not of that persuasion – if we are horrified by such a theology – then we ought to be made to feel at least a little uncomfortable by our first lesson this morning.  The Book of Lamentations was written at the time of the siege and eventual destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians; and some of its descriptions of the suffering at that time certainly needs a warning about readers' discretion.  Here's just one snippet from chapter 2, referring to the time of the siege: Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cared for?  Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? The author's questions are, of course, addressed to God; but his complaint is not that God should have intervened on Judah's behalf and driven the Babylonians away.  His complaint is far more shocking that that.  He claims that God himself is the cause of the suffering, and he spells it out in ever more graphic images in chapter 3, from which our lesson is taken this morning.  Here is a small example from earlier in this chapter: he dragged me from the path and mangled me... Here's another: He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust.  It's all God's doing!  That's the logic that follows if we believe that everything that happens in this world comes from God – or, at the very least, is permitted by God.  But is that the sort of God revealed in Jesus Christ? Our immediate response to that question is surely to say an emphatic No!  And at one level our gospel reading gives us two stunning reasons for saying that.  A young girl is dying.  Her father comes to Jesus and begs him to save her.  Seemingly too late, because before they can get to her, she dies.  Ah, well, we might be about to say, at least Jesus wanted to help – he would have helped if he had got there in time.  But, wait, there's more!  Jesus gets there and raises the dead girl back to life!  Jesus overcomes illness and even death.  He, like his Father in heaven, brings the order of life out of the chaos of illness and death. But wait, there's more!  On the way to the young girl's deathbed, a woman touches the hem of his garment and is immediately healed of a debilitating illness that has baffled her doctors for years.  What could be plainer than that?  Jesus, the full and perfect revelation of God, fights against illness and premature death, and prevails.  In these two cases, and in a number of others documented in the Scriptures. But not always, eh?  And there's the mystery.  As I've said in the notes, at one level these two healing stories can be understood as illustrating two types of prayer.  The father intercedes for his daughter; the woman seeks healing for herself.  In each case their request is granted, and Jesus links it with their faith.  When the father is told his daughter has died, Jesus says to him, "Don't be afraid; just believe."  And when the woman is healed, he says to her "your faith has healed you".  And therein lies the danger of these stories. All too often, people whose prayers have not been answered have been told they have insufficient faith.  Or that God is punishing them for some un-confessed sin; or the sin of one of their forebears "to the fourth generation" – a sort of family curse.  The tragic case of the "family exorcism" shows us all too graphically where that sort of theology can lead. How much better to say in such cases, we do not know.  We do not know why some are healed and some are not; we do not know why some prayers are answered and some are not.  How much better to stand with the author of the Book of Lamentations, who, in the face of terrible suffering, found he was able to say:  Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.  Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning... That may not be what we think of as healing.  But it is real hope, real faith, and real love.  And according to St Paul, when everything else is gone, those three things remain.  They do not depend on the outcome of a particular illness; they are the gifts of God who (says the author of Lamentations) "does not willingly bring affliction or grief to any human being"...  Amen.