Mark 5:34
The Reverend Luther Zeigler
July 1, 2012
July 1, 2012
Emmanuel Church
One of the
great privileges of the priesthood is that we are often invited into people’s
lives at times of crisis, including at times of serious illness. To prepare us for this ministry to the sick,
our seminaries require that, prior to ordination, a candidate for the
priesthood spend at least one intensive summer working as a hospital
chaplain. This rite of passage is known
as clinical pastoral education, and it is often, and in my case was, one of the
more profoundly formative experiences of seminary education.
I was
blessed to do my clinical pastoral education at NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, in
its Clinical Research Center, the nation’s largest hospital devoted exclusively
to clinical research. The CRC is an
extraordinary place, and over the years, has been responsible for many of the
great advances in modern medicine, including the development of chemotherapy for
cancer; the first use of an immunotoxin to treat a malignancy; the
demonstration that lithium helps depression; and the first treatment of AIDS;
among others.
Patients
come to NIH from around the world. For
the most part, these patients come to participate in clinical trials of new
drugs. These are patients for whom
conventional therapies have failed and whose last hope is often to participate
in a clinical trial for an experimental treatment, and the CRC is the place
where many new therapies are tried on humans for the first time.
The task of
a hospital chaplain in this kind of setting is to provide spiritual care and
support for these patients: by praying
with them or for them; by listening to their stories and helping them to cope
with their anxieties and fears; by being a companion to them on a frightening
and difficult journey; and by reminding them that they are known and
loved.
During that
summer, I worked alongside four other chaplains in training: a rabbi, a
Benedectine monk, and two fellow Episcopalians. On our first day on the job, after a brief
orientation and a short training session, we were each given a roster of
patients to visit. We knew almost
nothing about these people: a name, a
room number, their disease, and a religious affiliation, if any. Our assignment was to go on rounds, knocking
on doors of very sick people who were complete strangers to us, to ask if they
would welcome a short visit by a chaplain.
I was
responsible for the patients in the hematology/oncology unit. Most of them were struggling with various
forms of leukemia or lymphomas. As I
started out that first day, I was petrified.
I didn’t know what to expect. Among
other things, I feared that I would be rejected, turned away by a patient angry
at God. I feared that I wouldn’t be able
to find the right words of hope or consolation.
I feared that I would be asked questions I couldn’t answer. I feared that I would be grossly inadequate
to the task. I fought off my insecurity
by trying to prepare. I memorized some
prayers for the sick from the Book of
Common Prayer, so that I would have something at the ready just in case.
My first
visit on that first day was to an Ethiopian man. Let’s call him Eboo. Eboo had leukemia. Next to religious affiliation, it said
“Orthodox Christian.” I knocked. No response.
I gently pushed the door, already slightly ajar, and walked into the
room. I could see this wisp of a man
lying in bed under a sheet, completely still, but with his eyes open. Eboo stared at me blankly. “Would you like a visit from a chaplain?,” I
clumsily stammered. He said
nothing. And then, what should have been
obvious occurred to me: he neither spoke
nor understood English. So much for my
carefully rehearsed prayers from our Anglican prayer book.
Not sure if
my presence was welcome or not, I slowly walked over to the chair next to Eboo’s
bed, and sat down, looking for clues in his body language as to whether he
wanted me there or not. Eboo laid there,
silent and motionless, looking up at the ceiling, his breathing barely
noticeable. In contrast to his
stillness, my heart was racing, sweat gathering on my brow, as my sense of inadequacy
swelled inside me. What should I do
now? With vastly different languages and
cultures separating us, communication seemed impossible. Not knowing what else to do, I closed my eyes
and tried to offer up a prayer for Eboo in the silence of my own head.
Just then, in
the midst of my silent prayer, I felt Eboo’s hand reaching for my own. Using the little energy he had, Eboo had
quietly lifted his frail arm from under the bed sheet, reached over, and
grasped my hand. He squeezed, and as he
did, he closed his eyes. I could see
that he was himself in prayer. We sat
there in silent prayer together, hand in hand, for about ten minutes, at which
point he let go, signaling to me with his eyes that I could go now.
We repeated
this little ritual each morning for the one week during which Eboo was in NIH
for his round of drug therapy. Then, he
was gone, his treatment completed. I
never saw him again and have no idea whether his treatment was successful. Given how advanced his leukemia was, and the
experimental nature of his drug therapy, it is frankly unlikely that Eboo was
healed.
But I can
tell you that he healed me. One of the
mysterious ironies of ministering to the sick is that we often presume that we
are there to heal the other when we in fact are the ones healed in those
encounters. With the grace of his touch, Eboo relieved me of my fears and
healed me of my own sense of inadequacy.
He taught me that ministry to the sick is more a ministry of human
presence than it is a ministry of words, and that being present to another
often requires making yourself vulnerable, risking a real encounter with a
stranger, being willing to touch them with hands of compassion and care.
In today’s gospel
text, Mark describes two seemingly unconnected healing stories that, when read
together, shed powerful theological light on the nature of Jesus’ ministry to
the sick. The first involves Jairus, a
prominent rabbi in town, and his unnamed 12-year-old daughter, who lies dying
of an unknown ailment. The second
involves an older, unnamed woman who has been plagued by hemorrhaging for 12
years, whose doctors have been unable to help her, and who has spent everything
she has on failed attempts for a cure.
The narrative
opens with Jairus rushing to Jesus, falling on his knees, begging Jesus to heal
his sick daughter. No sooner has Jairus
made his plea, however, than his efforts are interrupted by the bleeding woman,
who literally barges upon the scene to reach out from the crowd to touch Jesus’
garment in the hope that she might be healed.
Jairus and the woman are a study in contrasts. As the town rabbi, he is privileged,
powerful, accepted, and male. By
contrast, the woman is ritually unclean by virtue of her continuous bleeding;
she is poor, having spent what little she had on doctors; she lives on the
margins of her society as someone both vulnerable and powerless. She is literally nameless.
Surely, as the
crowd looks on, their expectation must be that Jesus will take offense at this
unclean woman grabbing on to him so rudely and presumptuously, that he will chastise
her for her violation of Jewish purity laws, and that he will return his
attention first and foremost to Jairus, the one with social status and
authority. But that is not what Jesus
does. He recognizes the woman’s dire
situation, he openly acknowledges her as a “daughter,” he praises her for her faithfulness,
and he attends to her touch and uses it to heal her. Indeed, to the astonishment of the crowd,
Jesus does all of this while the prominent rabbi’s daughter lapses into a coma just
next door and apparently dies.
The message
is clear: the Kingdom Jesus is
proclaiming is one that upends conventional notions of rank and status, where
those on the fringes of human society are on the margins no longer. And Jesus shows his willingness to cross the
legalistic boundaries of purity codes to effect a direct relationship built not
on law but on faith. Hidden in this tale
“is a flash of precious intimacy between two human beings who are socially very
distant from each other. Their
scandalous touch does not yield the anger and alienation you might expect. Rather, it brings wholeness, healing, and peace.”[1]
To be sure, at the end of the story, Jesus returns to Jairus and his child and restores life to the young girl, again with a gentle touch and with tender words that recognize her as a daughter too. The pleas of the prominent and the privileged are not ignored, but they are placed in the context of Jesus’ re-ordered Kingdom: the first shall be last and the last shall be first; and all shall be welcome.
To be sure, at the end of the story, Jesus returns to Jairus and his child and restores life to the young girl, again with a gentle touch and with tender words that recognize her as a daughter too. The pleas of the prominent and the privileged are not ignored, but they are placed in the context of Jesus’ re-ordered Kingdom: the first shall be last and the last shall be first; and all shall be welcome.
Yet, Jairus
and the hemorrhaging woman do have something fundamental in common, however
different their social situations are. They
both trust in Jesus’ divine power, they both seek him out in faith, and they
both are willing to open up their lives and their deepest needs to him in
transparent honesty. This, it seems, is
the real predicate for the gracious gift of God’s healing.
There is a risk
of misunderstanding these stories of healing, however. While the gospels are replete with accounts
of Jesus’ healing touch, we all know that not every disease or illness in life is
cured, despite our most fervent prayers.
Oftentimes the sick do suffer and die.
Are we to conclude that our prayers in those situations go unanswered,
or worse, that those persons are not also deserving of Christ’s healing
touch? Hardly. It is a mistake to interpret these stories of
healing, and to view our prayers for healing, in such utilitarian terms, as if
we are placing an order with God for a certain result. The purpose of prayer is not to win an
outcome, but rather to draw us into a deeper relationship with God. Prayer is not intended to change God, but to
change us.
For the
truth of the matter is that our lives on this earth are short, and our bodies
stay young and healthy for only so long before they begin to age and fail. That is the nature of our creaturely
condition. And while it is natural and
appropriate to hope and pray for long and healthy physical lives, and for
healing from those illnesses that sometimes beset us, our ultimate destiny is
not in these bodies we now inhabit. Our
ultimate destiny is to draw nearer to God. It is not our bodies that need healing so much
as our hearts, and it is for hearts that are open and receptive to Christ’s
presence that we should pray. For our
bodies will come and go, but through Christ’s redeeming work, our hearts belong
to God forever. That is the good news that Christ brought to Jairus and his little
girl and to the woman with a hemorrhage, and that is the good news I learned anew
from my quietly humble friend, Eboo.
Amen.
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