Views from the Pews – Proper 18 – Sunday, September 8, 2024

Brothers & Sisters,

The mission and ministry of Jesus was preaching, teaching and healing.  Preaching and teaching were about the imminent kingdom of God – Jesus called his hearers to be alert, and to live in anticipation of that great event.  The healing ministry of Jesus focused on the miseries of sickness and disease.

Today, the Gospel Reading remembers Jesus in two healing stories.  First is a Gentile woman from Syrophoenicia, whose daughter was troubled by a demon.  Strangely, Jesus heals her daughter only after provocations by this woman.  She is an outsider, not belonging to God’s people of israel.  Does Mark suggest that Jesus had a limited scope of mission and ministry?  Did Jesus refuse to concern himself with those outside his own people?  This is an interesting question.  But this woman’s insistence overcame Jesus’ reluctance to heal a Gentile woman’s daughter.  He pronounced her daughter’s demon gone;  and when this woman returned home she found her daughter healed.

The second healing story is about a man who was deaf, and had a speech impediment.  He, too, came to Jesus to be healed.  Mark says Jesus took the man aside; put his fingers into the man’s ears, spit, and touched the man’s tongue.  Then Jesus looked to heaven and cried out, “Be healed!”  At once the  man could hear and talk plainly.

So, where is the Church  in this story? Maybe we are the friends who brought their deaf friend to Jesus. It is interesting to see how many stories there are in the gospels of Jesus healing people who did not come to him on their own, but were brought to him. Even in the first story in today’s gospel reading, the girl who was healed did not go and find Jesus, and in fact never even met Jesus. It was her mother who went to Jesus. In the story of the deaf man, it was his friends. So, maybe we are the friends. 

In many many ways there is an unnoticed healing experience going on in the church.  This is not healing of tumors, fractures, psychoses, or other serious pathologies.  We must be honest here.  But at church there is healing, a healing that happens even when medical science can do nothing about the disease.  A dying, terminally ill person or someone with a serious chronic ailment may be healed by those who offer regular friendship, gentle conversation, nourishment, expressions of hope, times of reminiscence, and a listening ear.  They offer healing regardless of the persistence of the underlying disease.

To someone who inquiries if our church has a healing service, we can say, “Yes it happens all the time in our fellowship, our activities, in our classes, and our worship.  We are a healing congregation.”

Contributed!