Healing

Sermon By: Fr. Bob Wickizer

Liturgical Readings:  Jeremiah 17:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26; Psalm 1

Sometimes a familiar bible passage is so well known that our familiarity with it prevents us from really understanding what is going on.  A chunk of scripture can be like our expectations for how our uncle Joe always gets drunk at family dinners and makes a fool of himself. We say hello to our strange uncle and ignore him after that because we know he will always behave that way. Such expectations become mental shorthand for understanding the world and making sense of it. They can also be very lazy habits that lock us in place preventing any good thing from happening or any real understanding.

Today I invite you to discard any lazy notion that you understand this beloved passage from Luke, because a little detective work will show just how much we need to pay attention to this gospel today. Let’s put on our Colombo hats and follow the money.

First up is to ask who was the crowd that followed Jesus to the north shore of Lake Genessaret? They came to be healed, but of what diseases, what problems, what sicknesses? They sat down in the grass on a gentle slope overlooking the lake or sea perhaps a half-mile to the south. The ancient village of Capernaum is now an archaeological site. Nearby on that grassy slope is a Roman Catholic chapel.  It is beautiful.  It was built in the 1930s and has a plaque on the outside wall telling us that the chapel was built by Benito Mussolini. So even bad guys can do good things.

I think it is not likely many blind or lame people walked those hillside paths for a mile or more to see Jesus. The crowd that sat down that day most likely was not suffering from any debilitating physical infirmities.  Have you ever walked a mile through waist high grass?

So, what were their problems needing healing?  Hold that question for a minute.  Next, we need to ask what was the region like then? What were the politics? How was it governed? How did the people on that hillside feel about their local rulers, government, military, and the economy? How would their social and political positions influence what they heard Jesus say?

The region of Galilee at that time was governed by Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, and died during the reign of his son also named Herod.  This son, Herod Antipas, was a reasonably competent governor so there was not a lot of political friction out there in the boondocks compared with the hotheads, the zealots, the rioters, and troublemakers back in the big cities.  

But, like any good Roman ruler, Antipas had ambitious building plans.  He rebuilt the city of Tiberius on the lake and Sepphoris only a few miles from Nazareth.  The new Tiberius was built on top of a cemetery making the entire town unclean for Jews to enter. Antipas had his wealthy friends from all over populate the cities, 12,000 in Tiberius and 20,000 in Sepphoris. Jewish peasants and laborers who had lived in Galilee for generations were conscripted to rebuild these cities. You can imagine how the local residents felt about being forced to do construction work for rich people who lived far away and wanted a nice lake house for not much money.

As a result, there was widespread disagreement on what to do.  Cooperate with Herod’s abusive building programs, or try to counteract it somehow. They felt powerless against the Roman military. They feared Roman power. Their lives of peaceful rural existence were being upended by the demands of the Roman elite. Into this pot-stirring cauldron of rural gossip, fear, distrust, and questions about how their Jewish faith applied to their situation, an itinerant band of Jeshua, son of Joseph and Miriam comes into town.

Jeshua and his followers crammed into the little stone temple last Saturday where he read the lesson from Isaiah. Today, they are out on this hillside with hundreds who want to be healed. Of what precisely? The Greek text uses two different words for healing. They alternate through the text. The people who need healing are often described in the bible as the “blind and the lame,” but I think this is more poetry than fact. 

One term for healing is based on the idea of supplying something that is needed such as a person’s inner strength, their will, a sense of order or support. This term is often used for healing the lame. I think many of the folks on that hillside that day had lost a sense of direction and purpose in their lives. They were spiritually and emotionally lame. Antipas had come along to provide social order and stability, but at the expense of building these ridiculous cities and bringing in all kinds of outside turmoil into their formerly peaceful, rural lives.  Nothing made sense anymore.  Their world had gone mad.

The other healing term is the root of our word “therapy.” It involves supplying warmth, light, or emotional warmth. It cures blindness, and it cures coldness of heart and pride.

The rural people of Galilee had lost their traditional way of life, they were frightened, confused, gossiping, and uncertain of what to do or how to act. Jesus addresses their coldness of heart, their pride, their fear of foreigners, their failure to apply the hospitality laws of their own faith to the new people in the region. Jesus defines righteous behavior and bad behavior in very plain terms.

“Blessed are you who are poor,

for yours is the kingdom of God.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now,

for you will be filled.

“Blessed are you who weep now,

for you will laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets."

"But woe to you who are rich,

for you have received your consolation.

"Woe to you who are full now,

for you will be hungry.

"Woe to you who are laughing now,

for you will mourn and weep.

"Woe to you when all speak well of you, 

for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets."

All of us need this kind of healing today. Because we’re not much different than the folks back then.