Christ Church + Washington Parish
Mark 1:29-39
February 5, 2006                                                                            Judith Davis, Rector©

 + “O Christ, the healer, we have come to pray for health, to plead for friends. How can we fail to be restored, when reached by love that never ends?” (“O Christ, the healer,” in Wonder, Love, and Praise, 1997, # 772).

 Healing is an important topic. It is more than an academic or theological question for us. We know people who have recently been diagnosed with an illness or told that there is no cure for the one they have. Yesterday I attended the funeral of one of my colleagues, The Rev. Meg Graham, Rector of St. John’s, Georgetown, who died after two months of intractable pneumonia. She was just a little older than I am. We have been praying for her for two months. She was not cured, according to our definitions of curing, but perhaps she was healed. The Gospel accounts are filled with healing stories of Jesus’ ministry.

 In today’s account, Jesus is summoned to Simon Peter’s house to see his sick mother-in-law. It is the Sabbath. Jesus has just finished teaching in a nearby synagogue. He comes immediately to the house. Goes to the woman’s bedroom, touches her and the fever, which had gripped her, is broken. She gets up and immediately begins to serve those who had come to see her, for she was the senior woman of the household and she began to show hospitality, her role.

 Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was cured of her fever. But her healing come from the knowledge of how much Jesus cared for her: enough to come to her home, enough to come to her bedside, enough to touch her, enough to do all of this on a day that was very risky for him—the Sabbath—a day when nothing, not even healing should be done. Jesus took a huge risk. She was after all untouchable: a woman and a sick woman. Jesus demonstrates that healing is about coming close, about intimacy, that healing is about inclusion and that healing means no one is untouchable. No one is outside Jesus’ healing embrace, not even those possessed by demons.

 Today we begin a four week series on healing.  Healing is an important part of the Church’s ministry, but sadly, much of what we know about healing in the modern church has been colored with the stories of faith healing in the evangelical tradition. During the adult forum, I plan to go into more detail about the history of healing in the church and the difference between healing and curing.  This morning I also want to touch on mental health and healing.   

 I want to give two definitions and tell you a story this morning. The two definitions are for the words “heal” and “cure”. The English word health or healing is derived from Old English *hál* meaning whole or hale.  The word cure or curing is derived from the Latin curo and it meals to heal or make well. ([curavit=curo - [to care for, pay attention to, trouble about.] We use the words cure and heal interchangeably but in talking about spiritual healing and curing, we might differentiate between them.  And what we might remember is that healing is not always curing. 

 Probably the most common ailment healed by Jesus was mental illness, generally described in the Gospels as demon possession.  This kind of illness is described in Matthew 8:28-32, in the story of Jesus sending the demons into a herd of swine, in Matthew 15:22-28, when Jesus cures the Canaanite woman’s daughter of a demon, in Mark 1:23-27, when the unclean spirit comes out of the man and convulses, and in Luke 8:2, when we hear that some women who had been cured of evil spirits accompanied Jesus.  One case of “demon possession” appears to have been epilepsy.  This was the boy whom the disciples could not cure, described in Mark 9:17-27. Other physical disabilities appeared to those present as clear expressions of demon possession, as the result of psychological causes rather than physical. For examples, there are cases of hysterical blindness or muteness (Matthew 9:32 and 12:33).  So, healing from mental illness was a great part of the ministry of Jesus.

 Sometimes we shy away from people with mental illness, partly because we do not know how to engage those persons and because we’re afraid.  We’re afraid we’re not equipped to handle them and we run away because engaging is too hard.  Anyone who has worked in the field of mental health can attest to the great rewards of working in the mental health field and to the challenges.  Mostly people who suffer from mental illness, like those who suffer from physical illness, need to be cared for, and the words “cared for” are from the word cure.  In the healing rites of the church, we have the “unction of the sick.” The Outline of the Faith or the Catechism says that in this rite, “the sick person is anointed with oil or with the laying on of hands, by which God’s grace is given for the healing of spirit, mind, and body.” (BCP, p. 861).  You’ll notice that first God’s grace is given for the healing of the spirit, second for the mind, and last, for the body.  This reminds us that most of the healings of Jesus dealt with mental health.  God wants wholeness of body, mind and spirit for all of us, but sometimes that wholeness does not happen in this life, but in the life to come. 

 So, now the story:  I had two cousins with mental health issues or illnesses of the brain. One, on my mother’s side, had epilepsy and another, on my father’s side, schizophrenia.  My cousin Walter spent most of his life in mental hospitals heavily drugged with his epilepsy. He never worked or went to much school and lived a sad life, his mother little able to care for him, his abusive father causing him even more suffering.  We saw him once or twice a year and the older he got, the more he was ill, mostly from all the medication and from living in mental hospitals until the laws changed and then went going from group home to group home until he died, even untimely, when he was in his 40’s.  We didn’t talk about Walter’s condition much; we didn’t even talk about Walter.  I expect we avoided him mostly because we didn’t know what to do.  I expect what Walter needed most of all was to be loved and to be cared for and to be in a community of faith and acceptance.  We let him down. His brother Harold is now 70 and he is my father’s main support.  He loves my father and visits him twice a week. He’s caring for Daddy’s dog Buster and cat Snowball and, ironically, he is showing my father greater love than Daddy was able to show to Walter, or that any of us were, I guess.

 My other cousin Rob, who is about 55 I think, became schizophrenic at 14.  He was brilliant and talented and smarter than his older and younger brothers, who are pretty bright and talented themselves.  As my cousin Jim, his younger brother says, “we lost Rob at 14.” Rob has lived his life since 14 in hospitals, group homes and with his parents.  He is a brilliant musician and never got to attend college, have a girlfriend, or a life.  The difference I think is that Rob is loved and embraced by his family in a way that we weren’t as able to love and embrace Walter.  What has sustained Rob these 40 years is the support and love of his family.  On the other hand, neither of these cousins has been a part of a faith community of support and love and care.  How much I wish that had been so.  Rob is glad I’m a minister now, but he has been pretty turned off of church for a long time, partly due to my free will Baptist uncle trying to save him, partly because of the guilt of being a lapsed Catholic, his father’s religious tradition, and partly because God has not cured him.

 God has called us to care for all our brothers and sisters. Jesus has commanded his disciples to go out into the world and heal the sick.  God calls us, too, to go and embrace those different from us, go and heal and pray and care.  While we don’t know how to cure mental illness for the most part, we do know that those who are mentally ill can be healed and made whole in a way that we cannot understand, but in the way that God does.  God has called us to care for them and to bring them into the fold of God’s people and to love them, most of all.

 Healing is about becoming awake to the fact that we are loved. Loved by God and called to be loved by our brothers and sisters in Christ. Healing is about being made whole in God’s healing embrace even if we are not cured. Jesus promised to be with us always.  Jesus did not promise to fix everything we encounter in this mortal life, but he said to his disciples, “And remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

 So, go with us on this journey.  Come for prayers for healing for yourself or someone you love. Come to the Adult Forum on Sundays. Study about healing. Come to the Public Service of Healing next Sunday evening. Believe in the power of God’s healing love for yourself and for those you love.

 Let us pray this prayer for those who are mentally ill: “Blessed Jesus, in the comfort of your love, we lay before you the memories that haunt those who are mentally ill, the despair that frightens them and their frustration at their inability to think clearly. Help them to discover your forgiveness in their memories and know your peace in their distress. Touch them, O Lord, and fill them with your light and your hope. Amen.” (Enriching Our Worship 2: Ministry with the Sick or Dying, Burial of a Child, Church Publishing, 2000, p. 67).