Being Looked After - Healing and Wholeness

I’ve kept on seeing it this week!

That bronze pole with a serpent on it became a sign of healing and a sign of life for the wandering people of God in the wilderness – ‘whenever a sermon bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.’

There it is in the middle of a blue cross on the side of the First Western Ambulances – the bronze pole with a serpent on it – still a sign of health and healing.

And linked with the NHS, of health and healing from the cradle to the grave.

That sign of health and healing is more than anything a sign of life and life in all its fullness.

For John it introduces one of the most wonderful verses of the Bible – as it makes John think of the way the crucified Christ is raised up on a cross and that death and resurrection of Christ is what for John and for us brings life and life in all its fullness.

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

There is, it seems to me a wonderful cross over between the health service and the wholeness and healing that is at the heart of our faith.

If the NHS is about us being looked after from the cradle to the grave, then how much more is our faith and the love of God in Christ about being looked after from the cradle to the grave … and beyond.

IN the story of the woman with the issue of blood there is a reference that’s easy to skip over to physicians – ‘though she had spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her.’

Tradition has it that the one putting this story together in this gospel is none other than that travelling companion of Paul who was also responsible for writing the Book of Acts.

It is as Paul crosses over to Macedonia that the narrative changes to the first person plural and off and on for the remainder of Acts the narrative slips back into the first person plural.

It is as if the writer, Luke, is travelling with Paul and noting down the events that happened.

As the story reaches its climax it’s apparent that Luke is with Paul during his imprisonment.  Maybe, speculates one of the commentators, he took the opportunity those two years of arrest in Caesarea gave him to explore Judea and Samaria, maybe up into Galilee and meet with the eye-witnesses that he tells us at the outset of Luke’s gospel he draws on in telling the story of Jesus.

Joining with Paul on that hazardous final journey towards Paul’s imprisonment in Rome it looks very much as if Luke remains with Paul helping him in the course of that imprisonment.

Four of Paul’s letters appear to have been written from prison.  Colossians is one of them.  As Paul gets to the end of the letter he speaks of some of those who are close to him … and among them he mentions ‘Luke’

14Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you

You get the feeling that Paul honours and values the company of Luke not just as a friend, not just as a supporter, not just as one who is much loved but as a beloved physician.

Physicians then were honoured as we honour physicians now.   In amongst Jewish writings that come after the end of what we have as our old testament is a collection of wisdom literature that dates from the couple of hundred years before the time of Christ and gives a good insight into the Jewish world just before the time of Christ.  It is the wisdom of someone called Jesus ben Sirach and his book is included in Orthodox and Roman Catholic bibles, but in our bibles it is included in the apocrypha.

Known as Sirach or Ecclesiasticus it has a wonderful passage ‘concerning Physicans and health’.

As we explore a little further what it means at the heart of our faith to recognise that we are ‘looked after’ – I think it’s good to put side by side our faith and those who are skilled as physicians.

Honour physicians for their services,

   for the Lord created them;

2 for their gift of healing comes from the Most High,

   and they are rewarded by the king.

3 The skill of physicians makes them distinguished,

   and in the presence of the great they are admired.

4 The Lord created medicines out of the earth,

   and the sensible will not despise them.

5 Was not water made sweet with a tree

   in order that its power might be known?

6 And he gave skill to human beings

   that he might be glorified in his marvellous works.

7 By them the physician heals and takes away pain;

8   the pharmacist makes a mixture from them.

God’s works will never be finished;

   and from him health spreads over all the earth.

I think there’s a wonderful celebration of medicine as itself the gift of God to us – the wonders of medicine in the modern world and the care – for me there is something special about seeing that age old symbol of life from Numbers still used as a sign of health and healing today.

4 The Lord created medicines out of the earth,

   and the sensible will not despise them.

7 By them the physician heals and takes away pain;

8   the pharmacist makes a mixture from them.

God’s works will never be finished;

   and from him health spreads over all the earth.

One of the things that has happened for us is that the skill of those physicians the remarkable medicines those pharmaceutical companies produce has the danger of separating out what the physicians do from what God does.

We see them as two separate things.

And prompted by that story of the woman with the issue of blood we can easily find ourselves turning to God for hhis healing touch only when the phyicians have failed.

The wisdom of that ancient writer Jesus ben Sirach goes on to suggest that prayer to God and the skill of medicine are rather two sides of the same coin.  That we should engage in both as that releases something of the strengthening, the peace of God into our lives – for we are looked after by God.

⁹ My child, when you are ill, do not delay,
   but pray to the Lord, and he will heal you. 
¹⁰ Give up your faults and direct your hands rightly,
   and cleanse your heart from all sin. 
¹¹ Offer a sweet-smelling sacrifice, and a memorial portion of choice flour,
   and pour oil on your offering, as much as you can afford. 
¹² Then give the physician his place, for the Lord created him;
   do not let him leave you, for you need him. 
¹³ There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians, 
¹⁴   for they too pray to the Lord
that he will grant them success in diagnosis
   and in healing, for the sake of preserving life. 
¹⁵ He who sins against his Maker
   will be defiant towards the physician. 

See health and wholeness as two sides of the same coin and that will lead to greater honour towards God and towards the physician.

But what about the situation when there is no cure.

At that point too what is at the heart of our faith comes into its own – we are being looked after – prayer is one of those things that releases that sense of God’s love encircling, upholding and strengthening us and drawing us towards that wholeness he alone can give.  IT may be a strength we can draw on from beyond ourselves that will see us through the darkness we are all too conscious of.

Maybe one thing to do is to think of that story of the woman with the issue of blood.

Picture yourself in the story - caught in the crowds, desperate for help..  No ne to help.

Not daring to think that any help is possible from Christ … and yet wondering, hoping, hoping against hope.

The woman cannot face him … and creeps up behind him.  Conversation is not possible and so she reaches out … she cannot bring herself to touch him for fear she might catch his attention.   To engage with him is the last thing she wants.

She touches the fringe of his garments, the hem of his robe.

Something happens.

How good it is to reach out, however tentatively, however hesitantly, even at such a distance.

It makes a difference to Jesus.

He stops.

He asks, Who touched me?

The crowds are pressing in.  It is Peter who sums it up – Master, the crowds surround you and press in on you.

But Jesus is sure, Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me.

It is at that moment that the woman realises she cannot remain hidden.

It is a remarkable thought that as we approach Christ, even if is so hesitantly, something comes from his presence deep into our hearts – deep down to us.  He calls it power.  A strength.  Something beyond definition.

The woman comes trembling,  and then she tells her story to Jesus.

Approach Jesus from behind – it is a wonderful image to have in your mind.  And then Jesus turns and looks you in the eye.  And there is a love that streams from him.

It had felt as if no one could look after you.

Now there comes that overwhelming feeling, Jesus is looking after you.

Then Jesus says something remarkable.

Daughter,

Just pause there a moment.

This woman has an illness that her society not only cannot help, but doesn’t understand.  They keep afar from her.

Maybe that’s how we feel.  That people don’t understand us.  That society means we are squeezed out.

But Jesus looks at us and says, daughter.

That’s a wonderfully special moment – a measure of how close his love is how much he looks after her, how much he looks after each one of us.

Your faith has made you well – the word is ‘saved’

I could imagine the woman inwardly snorting with decision.  My faith!  But she hadn’t much faith at all.  She couldn’t bring herself to approach Jesus – she had crept up at a distance.  She h ad felt the outsider.  Her faith.

No, her faith – even that faith – had been the saving of her.   Go and keep on going in peace.  In the peace that comes from God, the peace that leads to God, the peace that the world cannot give.

The word used at the end isn’t the word ‘cure’.  It’s much deeper, much richer.

When there is no cure – yet, there is a wholeness and a peace that can come.

Go in peace and keep on going