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ОглавлениеCHAPTER ONE
An Invitation To Healing
My Journey to Healing. The healings of Jesus have always been a part of my life. As a young child growing up in the Salinas Valley of California, I often sat with my mother on Sunday afternoons, watching television and enthralled by the sensual voice and diaphanous gowns of Kathryn Kuhlman as she purred, “I believe in miracles.” I was often startled by Oral Roberts as he slapped people on the forehead and shouted “Be healed.” From these early television healers, I heard testimonies of bodies healed and lives transformed. I learned that God was concerned with healing, and that God was most powerful when we were most vulnerable.
In an era before HIPAA regulations regarding patient privacy, I often accompanied my father, the local Baptist minister in our small town, on his pastoral calls and hospital visits. I was my “father’s boy” and in the course of our pastoral visits or in sitting in hospital waiting rooms, I overheard stories of pain and anguish and listened to my father praying for God’s healing presence to be made manifest in the lives of vulnerable people. Sometimes those prayers were answered and his congregants returned to their previous lives with vigor and purpose; but other times it appeared that God had turned a deaf ear to our pleas or, as we often rationalized, had better things in mind for us. After all, we believed that this life was the front porch to eternity and death was the doorway to everlasting life. But, such explanations didn’t make sense, even to a child, when people survived serious illness and the “better things” involved paralysis, pain, senility, and death. Even as a young child, I wondered how God could be so powerful, and let bad things happen to people I loved.
As a preacher’s kid, I lived in world of celebration and desolation. Looking back at over thirty years of ministry, I now realize how much death and illness defined my father’s pastoral work and how often as a pastor and friend I have sat at the bedside with people facing surgeries and incurable illnesses. In my childhood church and home, we rejoiced in the birth of children and mourned at the sudden death of a young parent, a fatality from an automobile accident on Highway 101, or a cancer diagnosis that meant only one thing in those days – a slow and painful death.
When I was eight years old, my mother began to suffer from depression and what later would be called obsessive compulsive behavior and obsessional ideation. She sought medical treatment, received electro-shock treatments, was hospitalized on two occasions, and struggled bravely, personally and professionally, for the next three decades. Although mental health issues were in the closet in those days, I heard my mother cry out to God in her emotional pain and vulnerability. I still hear echoes of her plaintive cries for a miracle that others – at least on television – seemed to regularly receive with very little effort on their part. I suspect that as the years went by, my mother saw her delicate mental health as being similar to the apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” and like Paul, she soldiered on, returning to college to update her degree and then elementary school teaching for twenty years before retirement. I believe that my mother received a healing – the ability to go on despite her fears and anxiety – although she never experienced a cure or respite from the inner conflicts and phobias that shaped her – and my – day-to-day life. Maybe with Paul, she came to realize that in our weakness we can experience God’s sustaining companionship and strength (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). I know now that only by prayer and trust in God did my mother get up each morning to face the voices of unruly children and her own inner chaos. Though I didn’t realize it at the time – and few children do – my mother was a hero of faithful persistence, fighting her “demons” by the grace of God with all the courage she could muster one moment at a time.
I heard of miraculous cures – described as dramatic and supernatural – from the testimonies televised on Sunday afternoon religious programs. My father even claimed to have taken the diagnosis of a second hernia to God’s “mercy seat,” prayerfully asking God to deliver him from pain and hospitalization. Although he didn’t publicly claim a cure, my dad revealed to me that the pain ceased and the hernia was healed. He gave thanks to God when his physician pronounced that there was no longer any need for the surgery that would devastate our family’s finances and, in those days, debilitate him for several weeks.
As I said earlier, the life of a pastor’s family and pastoral ministry in general is punctuated by occurrences of illness, debilitation, and death. As a young boy, already inclined toward theological reflection and mystical experiences, I pondered in my own naïve way the perennial questions of faith: “What did it mean to say that Mr. Clemons was living on ‘borrowed time?’ Why did the rifle go off just as my classmate Billy Thompson was pulling it out of his father’s car after a day of hunting? Why did the school custodian recover from surgery while a neighbor lady died ‘under the knife?’ Why were our prayers answered in one case, but apparently rejected in another?” I was not content with the typical answers I heard from adults – “it was God’s will” or “God answers our prayers with ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘maybe’.” They seemed either evasive or insensitive to my young theologian’s mind. Still, I prayed and continued to be intrigued by the antics and miraculous claims of the Sunday afternoon healers.
In the wonderfully direct way of children, I prayed about everything and often my prayers led to tests of faith, especially as I prayed for concrete events such as retrieving lost baseballs in my backyard, my team’s victory in the World Series, a Sunday school teacher’s recovery from surgery, and for my Mom to feel better. My prayers in those days were simple and without guile, “God help the Pittsburgh Pirates win” or “God help Arnold Palmer make the winning putt,” “Let Mom be happy,” or “Make Mrs. Beebe get well.”
While I never tabulated the results of my prayers, I remember that I was disappointed on a regular basis when my prayers weren’t immediately answered. I hadn’t yet learned to be patient with prayer and to recognize that our prayers are seldom answered in a linear cause and effect manner, but fit into a larger context of what scientists call “quantum entanglement” and ecologists call the “interdependence of life.” Nevertheless, I kept on praying. I couldn’t avoid thinking about prayer, because prominently affixed to our refrigerator door was the motto, “Prayer changes things.” Every time I searched for a snack, I was encouraged to consider the power of prayer! Even to a young child, the kitchen motto begged the question: does prayer have any power at all to transform human life in its painful complexity?
I suspect my experiences mirror those of many other Baby Boomers raised in evangelical and Pentecostal environments. Our lives were saturated with prayer and images of Jesus’ healings. We sang songs like “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,” “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” “Amazing Grace,” “Just as I Am,” and later “He Touched Me.” Even when we rebelled and left the faith of our childhoods, as many of us did to follow the pathways of Asian religions, countercultural lifestyles, and political protest, we still had a fascination with mysticism, prayer, and paranormal experiences. You might say that my interest in healing was bred to the bone in that Baptist parsonage, and that regardless of how far I wondered from my childhood faith, I was still a God-believing Baptist child at heart. Although my personal and professional desire to understand Jesus’ healings would evolve in the context of learning spiritual practices related to traditional Chinese medicine, yoga, Transcendental Meditation, alternative and complementary medicine, and reiki healing touch, every step in my global healing adventure led me closer to claiming as an adult the importance of Jesus’ healing ministry and the power of the New Testament healing stories to transform peoples’ lives.
As I entered graduate school and prepared for the ministerial and teaching professions, I no longer viewed the healings of Jesus from the perspective of televangelists like Oral Roberts and Kathryn Kuhlman or their successors Benny Hinn and Richard Roberts. While I began to doubt the integrity and veracity of many of the televangelists and their accounts of miraculous cures, I knew that some of the vulnerable and simple people in their healing lines experienced temporary, if not long term changes, in their overall well-being. In contrast to the spectacular claims and gaudy sets of the televangelists, I rediscovered the importance of Jesus’ healing ministry in simple acts of compassion, prayer, and healing touch. The healing stories of Jesus’ ministry came alive to me not as supernatural violations of the cause and effect processes of nature or as magical changes we could instantly call upon by our prayers or force of will, but as images of hope that inspired me day after day to seek wholeness and healing for myself, those whom I loved, strangers, and world events. I saw – and still see – most healing as gradual and subtle in nature. I discovered that love was the key to healing, even when a physical cure is unlikely.
The point of this preamble is both confessional and affirmative. As an adult I reclaimed the healing stories of the Bible. Like the words of the Corn Flakes commercial, I wrestled with these stories “again – for the first time.” This time, however, my perspective was far more global than my Baptist upbringing. Although that evangelical child still lives within me, shaping my relationship with Jesus as companion and friend, I reclaimed the healings of Jesus through my encounters with Christian mysticism, complementary and technological medicine, process theology, quantum physics, Biblical scholarship, and reiki healing touch, a form of hands on healing that promotes well-being by balancing and intensifying the healing energy of the universe.[1] I found that Jesus’ healings are part of much larger movement toward healing, reflecting God’s quest for abundant life for people of every continent, faith, and ethnicity. My experiences have shaped my vision of first and twenty-first century healing. I also rediscovered Jesus the healer – and still am journeying on this healing frontier – in the midst of my own need for healing and transformation, chronic and life-threatening illnesses of friends and family, my son’s diagnosis and recovery from cancer, and my responsibilities as a pastor and spiritual leader, called to pray with people in crisis, vulnerability, infirmity, grief, and despair.
I’ve experienced Jesus’ healing touch in hospital rooms, healing services, energy work, spiritual conversations, and simple heart-felt prayer. Healing will always remain essential to my faith, but the quest for healing will always be challenging to me, personally, theologically, and spiritually. I suspect that healing is mysterious and challenging to you as well even if you consider yourself a person of faith who believes in the power of prayer to change bodies, minds, spirits, and relationships.
Rediscovering Jesus the Healer in the Modern and Postmodern Worlds. Interest in healing has peaked in recent years. Until the last few decades of the nineteenth century, Jesus’ healing ministry was consigned to fringes of Christianity. As Morton Kelsey insightfully recounts in Healing and Christianity, the healings of Jesus were marginalized within a few centuries after Jesus’ ministry as the church, facing the realities of persecution and plague, focused peoples’ attention on the afterlife.[2] This world was viewed as the testing ground in the grand conflict between God and Satan for eternal possession of the souls of humankind. What did a few healthy years matter when your life is suspended by a thread above the flames of hell? Further, the unambiguous message of God’s love proclaimed by Jesus was eclipsed by church teachings that identified sickness with divine punishment, correction, and decision-making. The great Christian teachers – Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli– saw Jesus’ healings as peripheral to the message of God’s graceful forgiveness of sinners that opened the floodgates of salvation to undeserving humanity. Radically different in tone and overall message from the Reformation gospel, the proponents of philosophical deism, the belief that the divine clockmaker created the world and then let it move forward on its own accord without intervening, continued the marginalization of Jesus’ healing ministry and the healing ministry of the church. Deism attracted many intellectuals and influenced how orthodox Christians viewed God’s relationship to the world. Deism consigned divine activity to the margins of human life, leaving the important temporal decisions to us. Any intervention by God would have to be from the outside rather than from within the predictable world of cause and effect. Among believers of all theological persuasions, the image of a deistic God encouraged the belief that God acted supernaturally from the outside, answering prayers or intervening to prevent tragedies or harm our enemies without consideration to the regular patterns of cause and effect that govern our lives. Despite the contrast between the Living God of scripture and the Spectator God of deism, popular Christianity began to see God as a “personal being,” or “individual” standing beyond the world of change who could only come into our lives from the outside supernaturally in law-defying ways. This led to a further separation of mind and body and faith and medicine in responding to issues of health and well-being.
It is just a small step from deism to the belief, widely held among more liberal theologians and clergy for last two centuries, that the healings of Jesus were entirely metaphorical or moral in nature. The healing stories were intended to be invitations to spiritual transformation and acts of hospitality, changing people’s status from unclean and unwanted to clean and accepted in the social order. In either case, God’s business was primarily with spiritual lives and ethical conduct of persons and not the physical world of sickness and health. Whereas liberals exorcised the healings of Jesus from their understandings of faith, believing that issues of health and illness should be left to medicine and not the church, many fundamentalist Christians saw healing as essential to the spread of the first century gospel but no longer relevant to the church’s mission of saving souls. They believed that God’s focus in this historical dispensation, or period of history, is soul winning, not physical or political transformation.
Still, Christ can never be pinned down by our worldviews or theologies. People in need seek wholeness and in the process discover surprising healing energies that can’t be explained by theologies that restrict God’s actions solely to bygone eras, spiritual well-being, and occasional supernatural events. Interest in Christian healing reemerged in the late nineteenth century, first, among followers of Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science movement and the “mind cure” philosophies that influenced her understanding that health and illness are direct reflections of our spiritual condition without any relationship to our illusory bodies.[3] Eddy believed that God has given us a “science” to promote healing. Correct thinking and optimism lead to good health; negative thinking is manifest in illness. Cures can only occur at the spiritual level, since ultimately our perception and affirmation of the reality of the physical world is the result of turning from divine perfection. If you focus on the eternal truths of Divine Mind, immersing yourself in the propositions of Eddy’s Science and Health and the guidance of a Christian Science practitioner, the illusory ills of embodiment will fade away. Today, many contemporary new age approaches to healing, such as those found in the writings of Louise Hay, A Course in Miracles, and the best-selling Secret, reflect Eddy’s belief that health and prosperity are entirely a matter of our mental and spiritual state.[4] Spiritual truth alone is necessary for well-being: change your thoughts and your body and financial situation immediately will change for the better. Conversely, all illness is self-caused, a result of fear, alienation, and negativity.
Shorty after Eddy’s discovery of Christian Science, revival fires broke out on Azuza Street in Los Angeles, California, and then across the North America and the world as groups of Christians affirmed that the church was on the verge of a second Pentecost, characterized by the Holy Spirit’s movements through speaking in tongues, healing, paranormal experiences, and miraculous acts of power and prophesy. Rather than focusing on the mind as the source of healing and spiritual transformation, Pentecostals affirmed the lively presence of God’s miracle-working Spirit coursing through all things, and providing spiritual, financial, and physical deliverance for people in need. Faith no larger than a mustard seed could open the pathways of divine healing that Jesus’ first followers experienced. Experiential in nature, the Pentecostal movement justified its affirmation of Jesus’ healing ministry by pointing to peoples’ life-changing encounters with the Holy Spirit. The healing ministries of Oral Roberts, Kathryn Kuhlman, and later Benny Hinn as well as the prosperity gospel and “name and claim it” movements carried the Pentecostal message of miracle and healing to the wider world of television, radio, and “big tent” and auditorium ministries.[5] While different in philosophy from Christian Science, the new age movement, and Science of Mind, many Pentecostal healers also connected spiritual states, often in a direct and unilateral way, with issues of health and sickness, and prosperity and poverty. In extreme forms, “faith healing” placed the burden of health entirely on vulnerable people many of whom could not, even by force of will, conjure up the mustard seed faith prerequisite to God’s supernatural interventions.
Healing ministry reached mainstream Christianity through the ministries of Agnes Sanford, Olga Worrall, and Morton Kelsey. These mainstream pioneers recognized God’s presence in the Pentecostal experience, first described in Acts of the Apostles, and located that experience in the context of the rational, theologically-reflective, and organized worship styles of moderate Christians. Today, virtually every denomination has, at least, some marginal interest in healing ministry, mostly in the context of spiritual formation and medical ministries. Almost every denominational worship book or supplementary resource contains healing liturgies for individual and communal worship. While avoiding supernatural explanations for healing, many mainstream and evangelical Christians see God as the source of healing who desires our well-being, and invites us to be part of a healing process that includes prayer, medicine, and community support.
Healing Movements in the Twenty-first Century. Interest in the healings of Jesus gained momentum as a result of the rise of complementary and alternative medicine, the transformation of Western medicine to embrace the role of spirituality in health and illness, growing scientific evidence of the role of religious practices in promoting overall well-being, and the changing face of Christianity and the growth of Pentecostal spiritualities in the Southern hemisphere. In the next few paragraphs, I will briefly describe the current spiritual context that shapes our understanding of Christian healing and invites us to explore and embody the healings of Jesus with renewed vigor.
First, complementary and alternative medicine has become mainstream in many North American hospital settings. As a result of the impact of global medical and spiritual practices, many major hospitals have courses and practitioners in Tai Chi and Qigong, Reiki healing touch, massage and still touch, mindfulness meditation, visualization, stress reduction, and yoga. In my own work as a medical school professor, the growing interest in complementary medicine has amazed me: in the 1980’s when I showed videos on Chinese medicine, my first year medical students were skeptical; a decade later, they wanted referrals to acupuncturists and energy workers. I was even given the opportunity to teach courses on spirituality and religious pluralism to medical residents in psychiatry, typically the most agnostic of the medical specialties. I found that these young psychiatrists recognized the role of faith in psychological health and pathology, regardless of their own personal beliefs.
What is unique about complementary medicine is that, in contrast to much Western medicine, which until recently separated issues of mind and body and spirituality and health, complementary medicine affirms the importance of spiritual practices, mental attitude, and relationships to our well-being and the ultimate energetic realities of the universe. For many people, their first encounter with spiritual practices occurs in the hospital or at medical appointment and not at church. The rise of complementary medicine and its emphasis on the role of spirituality in health and illness creates a bridge between twenty-first century medical treatment and Jesus’ healing ministry. Jesus is no longer viewed as an ancient magician, employing folk remedies and drawing upon peoples’ superstitions. In fact, Jesus’ approach to healing is seen by many complementary health practitioners as employing some of the same practices that are emphasized in complementary medicine and the growing integration of East and West in medical treatment: prayer and meditation, healing touch, faith, positive psychology, acceptance, hospitality, psychological techniques, and the transfer of healing energy from healer to patient. In recent years, when I’ve advised a stressed out congregant to begin a spiritual practice, such as centering prayer or quiet contemplation, he or she often responds with the comment, “I recently received the same advice from my doctor.”
Second, medicine is embracing the spiritual as well as physical in diagnosis and treatment. Once characterized by mind-body dualism and its focus solely on the body, Western medicine has come to accept the importance of spirituality in health and illness. Physicians have always recognized the mysterious “will to live” as a significant factor in recovery from illness. Today, many doctors also recognize the importance of responding to the whole person, not merely in terms of her or his body, but also in prevention, treatment, and ongoing care. For example, stress has been found to be an important factor in a variety of diseases from hypertension and heart disease to acne and cancer. Personal experience and medical research suggests that the stresses of life are as much a reflection of our attitude, perspective, and faith as the impact of work, family life, and economics. Scientists have discovered the wisdom of Jesus, who invited his followers to “consider the lilies” and trust that God would care for their deepest needs. Spiritual practices such as meditation, mindfulness training, and transformed attitudes toward time, work, and success have been integrated into medical treatment plans.
This creative synthesis of high tech and high touch opens the door to recognizing the importance of spirituality in promoting well-being, whether at home or in the hospital setting. The gospels depict Jesus taking time for prayer and retreat (Mark 1:35-39; 6:30-46). Paul reminds his congregations to seek spiritual and mental transformation and focus on virtues rather vices, in other words, affirmative faith or positive thinking (Romans 12:2; Philippians 4:8-9). The emergence of the “faith factor” in health and illness testifies that the wisdom and power revealed in Jesus’ ministry can transform the spiritual, emotional, and physical lives of twenty-first century persons. Indeed, many physicians make it a practice to ask their patients if they would like a prayer prior to surgery or during an office visit.
Third, science is studying the sacred and has discovered God in our cells as well as our souls! While once objective medicine focused on the body alone and discouraged religious practices in the hospital setting, except in terms of pastoral care of patients’ nebulous “spiritual needs,” today scientific studies indicate that practices such as prayer and meditation promote physical as well as spiritual well-being. Moreover, religious commitment, measured in terms of church involvement and personal values, has been identified with a variety of positive health outcomes ranging from reduced hypertension, lower rates of substance abuse, greater longevity and quality of life, and more rapid recovery from surgery.[6] Virtually no one contests that value of the relaxation response, most often elicited by forms of prayer and meditation, in reducing stress and anxiety and their impact on physical and emotional well-being.[7]
While more controversial, a variety of medical studies have identified intercessory prayer, that is, praying for others, as promoting better recoveries and a reduced need for medication following heart surgery. The impact of prayer on plants, grasses, and other non-human organisms has been studied to eliminate the impact of the placebo effect – the influence of faith and expectation – associated with human subjects. Presumably, plants, grasses, and mice don’t have the faith that can interfere with more linear medical research! In the majority of these cases, prayer has been identified as a factor in the healing of wounds in mice and the growth of grasses. These ground-breaking studies have led to the emergence of a new medical mottos to go along with the new medical models, emphasizing the interconnectedness of mind, body, spirit, and relationships: the faith factor (Dale Matthews), prayer is good medicine (Larry Dossey), religion is good for your health (Harold Koenig), and the molecules of emotion (Candace Pert).[8] The growing evidence and practice of whole person, or holistic, mind, body, spirit, medicine creates a bridge between the first and twenty-first centuries. The One who proclaimed “your faith has made you well” may well have been referring to physiology as well as spirituality!
Fourth, the changing face of Christianity in the twenty-first century opens the door to recognizing that faith involves mysticism and Pentecostal experience as well as rationalism.[9] European and North American Christianity – and in this geographical category I also include Australia and New Zealand – has lived with the ambiguous influence of the modern world view and its skepticism about anything remotely mystical, non-rational, or supernatural. Influenced by Enlightenment rationalism and the scientific method and their emphasis on naturalistic, observable, and this-worldly causes, mainstream biblical scholars and seminary-trained ministers have often sought solely naturalistic and scientific explanations for the healing stories of the New Testament. From this perspective, Jesus’ healings were described as the products of superstition or myths with no bearing in reality as we understand it, products of the placebo effect, or made up stories to give credence to Jesus’ unique relationship to God, which itself was questionable in a one-dimensional, tightly deterministic cause and effect world in which miracle and magic alike are incomprehensible. Courses on healing and spirituality were seldom found in mainstream seminary curricula, despite the anecdotal evidence of congregants, pastors, and seminary students who experienced answers to prayer and surprising health improvements as a result of prayer or laying on of hands. Among many mainstream pastors in the last half of the twentieth century, it was assumed prayer might reduce tension or provide spiritual comfort, but it surely had no impact on our physical conditions. Many of these pastors implicitly lived by renowned biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann’s critique of the healing stories of the gospels: anyone who turns on an electric light must see the miracles of Jesus as superstitious vestiges of a bygone era.
Narrow understandings of the relationship between prayer, health, and divine power are being questioned, in part due to the growing theological and spiritual liberation of Southern hemisphere Christianity from the rationalistic bias of the Northern hemisphere. While healthy faith involves both rationalism and mysticism, what the great theologians of the church described as “faith seeking understanding,” a truly holistic and life-transforming faith embraces the growing Pentecostalism of the Southern hemisphere and the mysticism of Quaker and Celtic spiritualities along with the creative agnosticism and rationalism of Northern hemisphere religion and the scientific method. The fastest growing Christian communities are below the equator, and these communities take healing, spiritual gifts, answers to prayer, and mysticism seriously. As more and more people move from south to north, along with the growing Latino/a population in the United States, the face of European and North American Christianity is changing not only in complexion, ethnicity, and language but also in worship style, spiritual practices, and openness to miraculous events. This growing shift in Christianity is an invitation to a creative synthesis involving theological reflection, spiritual practices, and Pentecostal and mystical experiences in our emerging understanding of Jesus’ healing ministry. This synthesis joins the insights and practices of Pentecostal Christians, Western-trained physicians, complementary health care givers, scientists and researchers, and mystically-oriented mainline, emerging, and progressive Christians. Today, we can affirm in light of science and medicine that the dynamic healing powers described in the Gospel of Mark and the New Testament witness can be factors in bringing wholeness to vulnerable humankind.
Mark’s Healing Gospel. Written sometime between 65-75 C.E., Mark is the earliest of the written gospels. In many ways, Mark’s simplicity and directness define what a gospel should be; not an exact chronological account, complete description, or objective report of clearly datable events, but a theological document, similar to a sermon, whose purpose enables people to understand, experience, and be transformed by encountering the good news of Jesus Christ and God’s reign of Shalom or wholeness. The Gospel of Mark and its successors (Matthew, Luke, and John along with the non-canonical gospels) are intended to create and sustain faith in Jesus and enable readers to experience the power and grace which comes from a relationship with God’s beloved child. This is truly good news – to encounter the living Christ, still healing through his liberating word, welcoming actions, and healing touch.
Although we don’t know the identity of the author of Mark’s Gospel, many scholars suspect that it was a younger companion of either Peter or Paul. Mark drew his narrative of Jesus’ life from oral and written materials circulated among the first Christians.[10] No doubt, like the other three biblical gospels and the many extra-canonical accounts of Jesus’ life,[11] the author whom we call “Mark” emphasized certain aspects of Jesus’ ministry and placed others in the background, as a result of his theological perspective, understanding of Jesus’ identity and mission, and awareness of the needs of the communities he was addressing. Some scholars believe that Mark’s emphasis on the interplay of healing and suffering in the life and ministry of Jesus are intended to encourage and empower Christian communities undergoing persecution, primarily at the hands of violent Roman oppressors.
Mark, like the other gospels, gives us a glimpse of Jesus’ life and ministry, and not the whole story. Indeed, if we look specifically at the healing stories, none of them can be encompassed by the written word. How can we describe what happened to the woman with the flow of blood in the short paragraph included in the gospel? Her experience – or that of Jairus and his family – leap from the page into our hearts, hands, and imaginations, inspiring us to be God’s healing partners and good news bearers in our time. As John’s Gospel proclaims, “There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:24). God’s wisdom, embodied in the healer from Nazareth, is always more than we can imagine or fathom. No paragraph-long story can encompass the intricate tapestry of fear, hope, and amazement that characterize every gospel healing narrative or our own quests for healing and wholeness.
Mark’s intent is to invite us to experience the good news of Jesus by giving us a portrait of his acts and teaching. The heart of Mark’s gospel can be found in his description of the first days of Jesus’ ministry:
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” – Mark 1:14-15
For Mark, the good news involves Jesus’ healing of mind, body, spirit, and relationships and our openness to being transformed by God’s coming reign. It inspires turning from the ways of death to the path of life. Mark’s Jesus is truly a holistic healer whose teaching and touching changes physiology, social standing, and spiritual values. When Jesus cures someone, everything changes in her or his life – he or she moves from outcast to beloved friend; guilt is released and physical ailments spontaneously disappear; touch awakens life-transforming energies. Every cure points beyond itself to Shalom or wholeness, the primary characteristic of God’s realm and vision for our world, then and now.
Mark is a healing gospel, not just because it contains at least seventeen miracle and healing stories or because nearly half of the first eight chapters pertain to healing and illness, but because Mark intended his first listeners and their communities as well as readers like ourselves to experience healing in the act of reading and contemplating the stories themselves. Mark intended the gospel to be read imaginatively and with a sense of wonder. Every story in its brevity leaves out important details, not only by Mark’s intention, but to enable us to use our imaginations to see ourselves as characters in the story. Like every inspired author, Mark gives us space to shape the story itself for our needs and the challenges of our time. Every reader of Mark’s Gospel, without exception, and this includes Mark himself as he reflected on the oral traditions he received, needs healing in some aspect of her or his life and virtually every spiritual, physical, and emotional condition finds voice in Mark’s simple narrative. The Gospel of Mark is intended to reach out to every person and every spiritual, physical, emotional, or relational condition with the promise of God’s healing love.
Like the rest of the New Testament, Mark’s Gospel was meant to be read by communities and not just solitary individuals. Mark is clear that the realm of God, the embodiment of God’s values in everyday life, requires communities devoted to healing and wholeness; it also calls forth healing communities dedicated to transformed relationships at every level of life – individual, marital, familial, relational, congregational, communal, and planetary. We are to replicate in our congregations and relationships the healing circle that Jesus created to bring healing to Jairus’ daughter or the courageous faith of four friends who tore open a roof to seek healing for their friend. Communities need to hear and believe that they can experience good news, be transformed, and then transform the world. We need to hear Jesus’ loving words to Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” as an inspiration to reflection, confession, and bold petition for the healing of ourselves and our loved ones.
Although my focus is primarily the meaning of Mark’s healing gospel for people today, I also call upon the wisdom of John’s Gospel. The last of the four gospels to be written, probably near 100 C.E., John’s Gospel complements the starkness and straightforwardness of Mark: John is philosophical, Mark is concrete; John is global, Mark is local; John’s Jesus is a philosophical teacher, Mark’s Jesus is a hands-on practitioner. John describes the heavens and the resurrected life, while Mark points to resurrection emerging in our daily lives, as we are astounded by wonder of personal transformation and overwhelmed by an empty tomb and an absent body. In that spirit, I will focus on John 5 and John 9, the healings of the man at the pool and a sight-impaired man, to address the profoundly personal as well as theological issues of sickness and suffering. Amid their apparent contrasts in approach, method, and attitude toward healing (John has the fewest healing stories), both Gospels share the belief that those who truly encounter Jesus Christ are radically changed and renewed: energized by God’s healing presence, they shall mount up with wings of eagles, running without weariness, and walking with strength (Isaiah 40:31).
Theology and Healing. The healings of Jesus challenge us to join faith and knowledge in order to be responsible interpreters of the texts. As a theologian, who reflects on questions of God, suffering, meaning, prayer, revelation, and virtually everything human, one of my tasks is to explore what healing and wholeness mean in the twenty-first century.
We live in a very different world than the first Christians: our names for diseases differ as do our diagnostic and treatment protocols. Maladies attributed in the first century to demon possession, while not ruled out by modern theology or science, are now primarily understood in terms of physiological or psychological causes, and treated with medication, counseling, and psychotherapy. Modern understandings do not necessarily challenge the gospel healing stories but frame them in light of our time, place, and technology. The healing stories don’t stand still, but come alive in new and creative ways from generation to generation.
Theologians ask hard questions of scripture, spiritual healers, and scientists to fathom the complexities and impact of personal and intercessory prayer, positive thinking, community support, personal choices, and God’s presence in health and illness. I regularly challenge liberals, evangelicals, new agers, and Pentecostals alike in my explorations of faith, healing touch, prayer, and spiritual energy. I believe that peoples’ lives are transformed by the interplay of call and response, reflected in the dynamic interplay of God’s presence and our own religious practices. I still must ask the same hard questions that surfaced in my own childhood, though with the recognition that theologians, like physicians, must follow the principle, “first do no harm.”
As a believer in God’s healing presence in our lives, who regularly participates in liturgical healing services, reiki healing touch sessions, and prayers of intercession and petition, I am compelled to ask questions such as: Where is God in this situation? Why did God cure one person but not the other? Is God responsible for the pain and grief we experience? How do we judge some of the dramatic healing claims – restoration of the dead and growing of new limbs - made by both Pentecostals and new agers? How do we explain failure in ways that do not blame the victim or her or his family? How shall we understand these healing events in light of our contemporary understandings of medicine and medical treatment?
A theologian must ask challenging questions to insure that our religious explanations heal rather than harm. In many healing contexts, persons with illness and their parents are still blamed for their illness or their failure to improve. In other cases, people are told that God gave them unendurable pain or debilitation to strengthen their character, test their faith, teach them a lesson, or punish them for sins. Along with everyday believers, theologians challenge explanations that lack adequate moral, spiritual, scientific, or intellectual stature and gravitas.
Theology begins with the question of suffering and the profound distance between our hopes and dreams and the stark realities of moral imperfection, sickness, oppression, injustice, and death. Theology can add to the suffering of the world through superficial or harmful explanations of peoples’ conditions. But, it can also be a healing force, enabling people to open to powers within and beyond themselves and to balance the realism of their current prognosis with the deeper realism of God’s loving presence coursing through our cells as well as our souls. My questions – and yours as well – are not the result of faithlessness but a testimony to our desire to be faithful to God’s wisdom and spiritually sensitive to vulnerable and suffering people. As you reflect on Mark’s healing gospel, bring your whole self to the text, in the spirit of a loving father who confessed, “I believe; help my unbelief.”[12]
My Approach to Mark’s Healing Gospel. Good theological reflection involves the interplay of vision, promise, and practice. It also involves embodiment and emotion. Our words must take flesh in acts of justice, love, and healing. Accordingly, my approach to Jesus’ healings involves heart, mind, and hands. I see the healing stories as an invitation to our own personal healing and wholeness. I don’t assume that we should take these stories literally without questions, doubts, and second thoughts, nor should we assume that we can replicate them exactly in our time. We live in what singer-songwriter Paul Simon describes as an age of miracle and wonder technologically in which we join prayer and Prozac, contemplation and chemotherapy, and intercession and intravenous drips. We have tools for treatment and palliation that no one in Jesus’ time could imagine.
Still, we deal with the realities of sickness and mortality. These realities shape our quest for healing and our hopes for divine assistance when our own efforts no longer avail. I believe that God is at work in the world in the cells of our bodies and in our spiritual adventures. I write as a believing scholar, who seeks to practice what I preach and experience the words I write in the dramatic and undramatic moments of everyday life. Like my father and mother before me, I have a prayer list of persons in crisis for which I intercede every day. I daily visualize people surrounded by God’s healing light and transmit healing energy through reiki healing touch. I regularly lead and participate in healing worship services. Still, I struggle to understand the meaning of healing and God’s role in healing and illness. I take time to pray throughout the day, yet I live with unanswered prayers on a daily basis. I will share my experiences with healing and illness in the course of this book and invite you to reflect on your own encounters with God during life’s most vulnerable moments.
In the course of conceiving, researching, and writing this text, two of my closest friends have died of cancer, one whose life was interwoven with mine for over forty years, the other a fellow parent and next door neighbor whose son was one of my son’s best friends. I prayed whole-heartedly for them, bringing my intercessions to what my Baptist parents called “the throne of God” in quest of a cure. Right now, three other close friends are facing diagnoses of incurable cancer. One has just refused further medical interventions beyond palliation, entered hospice care, and prayerfully waits for her death, trusting in God’s promises. The other, my dearest friend and spiritual companion is facing a new cycle of chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Just this morning, I received word that one of my wife’s oldest friend’s wife recently died after a ten year battle with breast cancer. Her pastor-husband is dealing the pain of bereavement like the women who came to Jesus’ tomb that first Easter morning.
As you read this text, I invite you to bring your whole self to Jesus’ healing stories. Place yourself in the text as you seek to fathom its intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and vocational meaning for yourself, your loved ones, and your community. Each chapter weaves together scriptural study, theological reflection, spiritual practices, personal narratives, and practical application.
Each chapter will conclude with a spiritual practice related to the healing story being considered. Feel free to shape these practices according to your personal and spiritual needs. I also include questions and spiritual practices for group study and spiritual formation at the end of the book.
In conclusion, let me once again state that this book is a labor of love and a testimony to prayer, building on nearly thirty years of living with the healings of Jesus as a pastor, theologian, spiritual guide, and person seeking my own healing. May you experience God’s healing touch and transforming love and seek to embody God’s healing marks in your own life.
[1] For more on reiki healing touch, see Bruce and Katherine Epperly, Reiki Healing Touch and the Way of Jesus (Kelowna, British Columbia: Northstone Press, 2005).
[2] Morton Kelsey, Healing and Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995).
[3] Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Boston: The Christian Science Board of Directors, 1994).
[4] See Louise Hay, You Can Heal Your Life (Los Angeles: Jay House, 1999); Rhonda Byrne, The Secret (New York: Atria Books, 2006); A Course in Miracles (Mill Valley, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1975).
[5] Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of American Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001).
[6] Harold Koenig, The Healing Power of Faith (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001); Dale Matthews, The Faith Factor: The Proof of the Healing Power of Prayer (New York: Penguin, 1999).
[7] Herbert Benson, The Relaxation Response (New York: Mass Market Paperbacks, 1976) and Beyond the Relaxation Response (New York: Mass Market Paperbacks, 1985).
[8] Larry Dossey, Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine (San Francisco: Harper One, 1995).
[9] Philip Jenkins, The New Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
[10] See the bibliography for texts on Mark’s Gospel.
[11] Some of the non-canonical gospels include the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Judas, Pistis Sophia, and the Gospel of Philip. For more on these gospels, see Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Viking Press, 1989).
[12] For more on the theology of healing, see Bruce Epperly, God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2001) and Healing Worship: Purpose and Practice (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2006).
