Pentecost 3A 2005

Hosea 5:15-6:6

Psalm 50:7-15

Romans 4:13-25

Matthew 9:9-13,18-26

I spent a few hours this past Friday in a waiting room at the hospital with Linda. Her son, soon to be 28, has testicular cancer. Please pray for Brent and Linda and their family.

This past Thursday Paul attended the funeral of a clergy friend who died of cancer at the age of 64. Leif was a good friend and valued colleague when we lived in Muscatine.

My friend Dan is off of work again, the leg that took so long to heal has cellulitus. 6 more weeks off, no income until disability kicks in 30 days from now, and he has lost so much time at work he is no longer assured a job when he recovers.

Frankly, friends, I am a little drained. There are times when I have seen so much pain, felt people’s loss, seen the look of fear in one’s eyes that I just want to hide.

But the phone rings, and I go to the hospital, and God gives me strength.

In the midst of this emotion, we have today’s Gospel lesson. Healing stories.

What do I do with these on a week like this? How do I lift up stories of healing when Leif died on his 39^th wedding anniversary? When Dan’s daughter is 6 months old and all they have is his wife’s child care income? When someone so young as Brent has to hear the word “Cancer”?

In the Gospel Jesus not only heals a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years, he raises a girl from the dead. I would like to call on Jesus now to work a few miracles in the lives of the people I love! Come on! Where is the healing now?

What are we to do with these miracles in the Gospel when the life we are faced with doesn’t seem to offer too many miraculous healings or resurrections from the dead?

Yes, we have a much better medical system in the 21^st century than in the 1^st. We have a longer life expectancy. In Jesus time you were lucky to even hit the age of 30. And 60% of children died in their teens. We have cat scans and chemotherapy and antibiotics.

We have highly trained medical personal and equipment. And yet we are still not able to avoid tragedy and sickness and pain and death.

As I wrestled with today’s Gospel I came across a helpful concept from the theologian John Dominic Crossan. He makes a distinction, known in medical anthropology, between curing a disease and healing an illness.

Bear with me… Diseases are “Abnormalities in the structure and function of body organs and systems.” All right? Diseases are what the doctor diagnoses us with, Aids, Cancer, Arthritis, Asthma….

Illnesses are “Experiences of disvalued changes in states of being and social functions.”

Illnesses are the social dimension of the disease. How does my diagnosis effect my family? My job? My place in the community?

So, Crossan points out, there is a difference between curing a disease and healing an illness. The woman with the hemorrhage had a disease, menstruating for 12 years straight had a medical reason. But her illness was the stigma of being unclean, on the outside of society.

Got it? The leper Jesus met had a disease, leprosy, and an illness, the stigma of being an outcast, unclean, isolated.

Think of AIDS. For along time, and in some respects even now, it is not only a disease, with a diagnosis and course of treatment, but an illness. People with AIDS still are in some respects and places outside of society, on the margins.

So was Jesus just about curing diseases? Making the leprosy disappear or the bleeding stop or the demon possession/mental illness go away?

Or was Jesus more about healing the illness? Restoring people into the community: Bringing people back into acceptance and society.

Jesus world had very stringent ideas about who was clean and who was unclean; who was pure and who was impure.

Jesus kept messing with the system, rewriting the unspoken social order.

Take the tax collectors. Only the head tax collectors, like Zaccheaus, the wee little man, were rich. The others were poor. They had to pay the tax money up front and then try to collect it from the people in the district assigned to them. Any fraud would benefit their superiors, not them.

Tax collectors were often rootless people who could not find any other work. Many were fair and honest. Even so tradesmen held tax collectors in contempt, as did the rich and educated. The very poor, who didn’t have taxes to pay probably didn’t care. They were too busy trying to scrape by.

If someone who was very concerned with being ritually pure had a tax collector stop by, they would be concerned. Anyone who handled so many items in one’s home in order to assess wealth would be considered unclean and would defile the group if he ate with them. (See Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh’s Social-Science Commentaries)

So Jesus not only cured diseases, thereby healing illnesses, but he ate at table with tax collectors, he spoke to women in public, he was seen with sinners. He upset the purity codes in practically every way.

Jesus sought out the sick, the unclean, the impure, the sinners, the poor, the outsiders. Then he created a new society of welcome and acceptance: The Kingdom of God: A vision of society based not on layers of belonging, but on compassion.

The Kingdom of God is defined not by illness, but by belonging. Jesus comes not to make the cancer go away, but to make sure the ones who suffer have a community of love and support. To make sure the one who fight the disease is not stigmatized by the community. But is supported and loved and held.

There is room at the table for one more. One more outcast brought into the circle, one more person no longer defined by their disease , one more person who is looking for answers but really needing love, One more person who is angry at the world and at God, One more person looking for home.

And when there is pain, loss, fear, struggles ahead, there is room here. And comfort and strength and a community that cares.

And the promise that Jesus doesn’t define us the way the world does. But Jesus gathers us all in, healing our illness, that we may be restored to the community of God.

So we walk with Linda and her son into the future, we pray for the family and friends of those who mourn Leif, and you add your prayers to mine for Dan and his young family.

And we continue to work to end not only the ravages of diseases like cancer, we work to end the illnesses that keep us apart. And we work to end the economic injustices that add to our burdens.

Trusting in Jesus, the friend of the outcast, the comfort of the lost, the hope of the future.

Working to make our church into a vision of God’s kingdom, with room for all who have found healing for their illness; with room for all who have felt left out and alone, with room for all who seek a community of acceptance and love.

Here in this place, there is always room for one more.

Amen.