Faith and Healing

Sunday, June 30, 2024 – Gospel, Mark 5:21-43. Also Lamentations 3:22-33, Psalm 30, 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

One of the most amazing stories of healing I ever heard came from a medical doctor named Norm Shealy. It was in a workshop in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a place known for its healing waters, that Dr. Shealy shared his incredible story.

A woman who was dying of cancer was brought to one of his workshops literally on a stretcher. She couldn’t sit up and seemed to be nearing the end of her life. At one point, Dr. Shealy led the group in a guided meditation. At the end, the woman was motionless. He thought she had died right there and checked her pulse.

But within a few minutes, the woman opened her eyes, sat up, then stood up, and walked out of the workshop on her own two feet.

Everyone was shocked. About six months later, Dr. Shealy landed at the same city’s airport and that woman picked him up. On the way to his hotel, she told him her miracle story.

She said that she had been married for decades, and that her husband began cheating on her the day they were married. He continued that behavior throughout their entire marriage, and every time she thought she might leave him, something got in the way.

And then she got cancer.

She told Dr. Shealy that in the meditation he led, she came to the realization that her husband would have cheated on anyone he was married to, and that his cheating was not about her.

That realization was the miracle.

Because in that moment, she was able release psychological beliefs that seemed to have been part of her illness. She was able to reclaim her own worthiness and with that shift, she said, she perceived that a flood of light coursed through her body. And she knew she was healed.

And now here she was six months later, cancer free.

Is it really possible that a shift of mindset or belief can change the physical world? It doesn’t seem to work that way for everyone, but I’ve spoken before about the ways in which early life trauma and its emotional aftershocks can affect our bodies for the worse.

If that’s true, then surely positive beliefs can do the opposite and affect our bodies for the better. That’s what we see in what is often dismissed as the “placebo effect.”

The people in our gospel story – Jairus and the unnamed bleeding woman – are desperate for healing. So much so that Jairus falls at Jesus’ feet, begging him to come and heal his sick daughter. The bleeding woman is also in a state of desperation.

She’d spent all her money on doctors and only got worse. According to religious law of the time, bleeding women were considered unclean and couldn’t be touched by their husbands. This poor woman had been bleeding for twelve years. Think of how isolated and alone she felt.

In that crowd, she was also invisible, but she reaches across that great divide of invisibility just to barely touch the edge of Jesus’ clothes. It sounds so insignificant. But Jesus feels the power flow out of him and turns to see who had touched him. She too falls down at his feet and admits what she did. Jesus tells her that her faith – her trust in him – has made her well and sends her off in peace.

Is faith all that is needed for healing? In other words, does our healing only depend on whether or not we have the right amount of faith?

Theologian Bruce Epperly suggests there are more facets to healing than just an individual’s faith alone. He writes that this woman’s faith “opened the door to healing power residing in the healer.” But then he goes on to say that

Healing is not about us, but a synergetic connection of our faith, the faith of others, our condition and previous behavior, the nature of the illness and medical responses, and God’s ever-present goal of abundant life.”

We see this in the story of Jairus’ daughter. When Jesus gets to the house with his inner circle of disciples, he’s confronted with a crowd who all believe Jairus’ daughter is dead and laugh when Jesus claims she is sleeping. In the face of that lack of faith, Jesus sends the unbelievers out of the house and gathers his circle of disciples and family around him and the girl.

In this circle of faith, the power to raise her is made manifest.

Maybe that woman at Dr. Shealy’s workshop needed the roomful of people around her – a community of fellow travelers – to support her as she moved into a mental space that could allow healing.

This connection of healing with faith or beliefs is a dicey thing though. That connection can make people think that their continued suffering must be their own fault. That if only they’d had enough faith they would be cured.

I’ve struggled with an eye problem for three years now and was completely convinced it would be gone within six months. Why hasn’t my faith resulted in healing? I wish I knew the answer to that.

But I’ve often said that we can experience healing even when we don’t experience a cure.

We can experience a sense of inner peace even if our outer circumstances don’t change. (I can’t say I’m quite there yet about my eye.) This is what the people of Israel had to do when the Babylonians conquered them and took their land.

We see this kind of shift in Lamentations where the author uses the word “portion” – a word that generally meant the inheritance of land a son received from his father – to describe his relationship with God. “’The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’” Maybe that hope was made possible by the community that surrounded him in exile.

Even when we lose everything, our health or our homeland, as children of God in communion with one another, the inheritance that no one can ever take away from us is God. We might even lose our faith, but no one can ever take God away from us. Even when we don’t see or experience God, God is always present. Even when we feel abandoned, as Jesus did on the cross, God is with us.

As Paul writes, nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. And when we stay in community with each other, we can remind each other of that truth. That is what builds faith.