LET THE HEALING BEGIN
If you could be healed of whatever ails you, how would it change your life? What would it mean to be free of that problem that keeps you from living a full and happy life?
Do you want to be healed? Or have you grown accustomed to the pain you feel or the burden you bear? Have you resigned yourself to the idea that God simply refuses to heal you in this life?
Many of us are caught in the in-between state of believing that Jesus is the Great Physician with the power to heal anyone, and what we call “reality” – that he does not heal today. Some may even doubt that God heals miraculously in this generation. Others of you have been healed and give full credit to the Lord for that healing.
We would have to confess that the majority of us are a little skeptical about God’s desire to heal us today. You have prayed for yourself and for others and have seen nothing tangible to affirm your faith. I have been in that very position myself.
So now we read today in Mark 1:35-2:12 that Jesus came preaching the good news and healing many. We believe that Jesus has the authority to heal but we may be left wondering what the purpose was behind Jesus’ healing ministry. What could it possibly mean for us today? We cannot help but sit under a cloud of doubt about this.
What I want to show you this morning is that Jesus’ healing ministry exemplified what the good news was all about – specifically, pointing people to God.
1. Jesus Preaches a Message of Healing
a) The drawbacks of healing ministry – From the beginning of his ministry, Jesus mixed healing with preaching. While preaching in the synagogue in Capernaum, a demon-possessed man interrupted the message and Jesus dealt with him (1:23-26). After the service while at Simon’s home, Jesus healed his mother-in-law. With the news spreading about Jesus that same day, many others came seeking him. And Jesus healed them.
While news about Jesus spread quickly and crowds began to seek him, a problem arose. What would you do if you heard a man was healing all manner of diseases? You would seek him out. But why? Do you want to get to know the man, become friends with him? Would you care about the message he is preaching? No, you want the healing that he offers. People could easily get the wrong idea about Jesus. They would seek him out just for the healing and not for what the healing says.
So Jesus retreated the next morning to pray. You will notice that Mark writes about Jesus praying in connection with his temptations. Jesus prayed a lot. But Mark only records when Jesus felt tempted that he went and prayed. What is this temptation? It does not say, but we can guess that Jesus would feel pressured to stay and heal all who come to him.
b) The relationship of healing and preaching the good news – Simon confirms this pressure: “Everyone is looking for you!” he says excitedly. Jesus replies, “Then let’s get out of here.” Or as Mark records it, “Let us go somewhere else – to the nearby villages – so I can preach there also. That is why I have come” (1:38). Jesus goes through all of Galilee – doing what – preaching and driving out demons.
The miracles continue; Jesus does not stop healing. But he goes on to other places to preach and heal. This begs the question: What is the relationship between healing and preaching?
One thing you may notice is that we don’t know what the content of his messages was, except for the line “the kingdom of God is near.” What Mark insinuates is that the miracles of healing are the message. Jesus was not healing for healing sake; he was sending a message. What message?
Back in 1:14 Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.” Healing and casting out demons were the verification of that message. When Isaiah foretold of the One who would come and redeem his people he wrote, “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor…” (Is 61:1). The healing indicates that Messiah has come and that is the reason Jesus keeps moving on – to spread this news everywhere.
2. Jesus Heals the Inner Child
a) Approaching Jesus – Now a man with leprosy finds Jesus and begs him, “If you are willing you can make me clean” (1:40). This should not have happened.
The Law of Moses forbids this encounter. The leper was unclean and he made everything he touched unclean. Leprosy was considered highly contagious and incurable. Lepers had to live apart from the general population; they lived in garbage dumps and ate what scraps they could find. They were required to wear bells around the neck to warn the healthy of their presence. If they met someone on the road they were to yell out “Unclean, unclean!” to avoid accidental contact.
Lepers were a sorry sight with ulcers and deformities making them grotesque to look at. They were cut off from their families and from the community of faith. Unclean people could not go to temple to worship or offer sacrifices.
This man gave Jesus no warning; there were no tinkling bells. He approached Jesus out of desperation and gambled that Jesus would heal him. Jesus could have rebuked him and sent him off; maybe he should have. But the leper wanted to be restored, to be clean.
b) “He touched me” – Jesus has shown us in the gospels that he can heal from a distance. He speaks the word and it is done. Jesus could have stood safely at a distance and yelled “be healed.” He doesn’t though. Jesus reaches out and touches the man.
How long had it been since someone had touched him? The alienation this man felt went far deeper than the surface scars on his skin. He was ostracized and treated like a monster, cut off from those he loved. And Jesus touched him.
There is so much to say about the healing power of touch. In our politically-correct world with its sensitivity training and rules of conduct we are afraid to touch another person for fear of being inappropriate. There is a right and a wrong to touch, no doubt. To pray is one thing; to lay hands on someone and pray sends a deeper message. We should not be afraid to touch the hurting and speak into their hearts.
Jesus touched the man and healed his inner child. That is, when we hurt we become like children, desperate for the love and affection of a parent. Like the commercial of the man with a cold who begs for his mother. Then his wife throws him a bottle of Nyquil as if to say “get over it.” Jesus never says, “Get over it,” but reaches out and touches the man; he heals the little boy inside and heals a deeper hurt.
This is ironic. This is the first and only time in history when someone clean touched something unclean and both were clean as a result. If I lean up against my car today with my clean suit, both my suit and my car will be dirty. But here the world is turned upside down: Jesus touches the leper and he becomes clean instead of Jesus becoming unclean.
The leper symbolized our alienation from God. He could not enter God’s house and was outside the community. There was nothing he could do to change his status. But he goes to Jesus and says, “If you are willing.” This is true repentance – an unqualified turning to ask if we can be made clean. We come like children to be washed and made right.
c) Fallout from association – Jesus tells the man not to tell anyone but to go to the priests for verification of his healing. Not that Jesus did not heal him; it seems rather that Jesus was sending a message to the religious establishment: the good news has come. But the man disobeys Jesus and starts telling everyone what Jesus did. “As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places” (1:45b).
I have always understood this line in the sense that Jesus could not go into town because he was being mobbed by the sick and possessed. This is not the case. Because the man told everyone that Jesus touched him, an unclean leper, the townspeople assumed that now Jesus was unclean. Now Jesus was being ostracized, cast out, and declared unfit.
Still, people came to him, even in the wilderness.
There is symbolism in this too. Does not Isaiah 53 say that he took up our infirmities, was despised and rejected by men? He took up our sorrows and was considered stricken by God. This suffering was part of the ministry of healing too. Jesus became like us to suffer with us in order to heal us.
3. Jesus Heals the Most Crippling Disease
a) Removing the barriers – Jesus returns to Capernaum and is preaching again. The house is packed. People are listening from outside. “Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on,” (2:3-4).
Can you hear the commotion these men made? They clambered onto the roof, started pulling up tiles and tearing away the structure to create a hole big enough to lower an outstretched man down. I would have stopped preaching and stared in disbelief, plaster dust in my hair.
What a dramatic scene! They saw an opportunity to restore their friend to health, to get him back on his feet. It seemed that there is a measure of faith here too since the men believe that Jesus can accomplish this desire.
b) The Question of “Need” – Jesus says to the man who cannot walk, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” (2:5). If this were you or me, I think we would say, “Wait. What? I’m paralyzed here. Could you deal with that?”
But in fact Jesus knows something the man doesn’t know – that he has a much bigger problem than his physical condition. Jesus is saying to him, “I understand your problem. I have seen your suffering. I’m going to get to that. But please realize that the main problem in a person’s life is never his suffering; it’s his sin.”[i]
This could be problematic since people in those days equated sin with disease. Most of the people listening to Jesus that day would have assumed that the man on the mat had committed a sin for which God had judged him. That’s not what Jesus is saying.[ii]
Jesus is saying that he knows our real need. What is our real need? The Bible says that our real problem is that every one of us is building our identity on something besides Jesus. Whether it’s to succeed in our chosen field or to have a certain relationship – or even to get up and walk – we’re saying, “If I have that, if I get my deepest wish, then everything will be okay.” You’re looking to that thing to save you from oblivion, from disillusionment, from mediocrity. You’ve made that wish your savior. You would never say it that way – but it’s turning out that way. And if you never quite get it, you’re angry, unhappy, empty. But if you do get it, you ultimately feel more empty, more unhappy.[iii]
Jesus wants to be your savior. If you have Jesus, he will actually fulfill you. And if you fail him, he will forgive you. Thinking that if we got our deepest wish would heal us – that’s the problem. We have to let Jesus be our savior.
This is the problem with our concept of healing itself. We focus on the healing and not on God. It’s the same with forgiveness, peace and even going to heaven – if we focus on just getting to heaven and not on God who is the main objective of our faith, we have not been converted by the gospel.
c) True healing – Jesus asks a question of the teachers of the law who were judging his words, “Which is easier to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?” (2:9).
That’s always been a tough one. It’s been debated for centuries. We must settle on healing being the easier task. Here’s why: You can only forgive a sin when it’s against you. When Jesus says to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” he’s actually saying, “Your sins have really been against me.” The only person who can possibly say that to a human being is their Creator. Jesus, by forgiving the man, is claiming to be God. That’s why it is the harder task.
This is even more profound when you consider that the harder task involves going to the cross. Any miracle worker can say, “Take up your mat and walk,” but only the Savior of the world can say to you, “All your sins are forgiven.”
We see in this story the shadow of the cross. To the religious leaders present, Jesus is a heretic. A miracle worker can be tolerated, but Jesus claims to be the Savior. If he not only heals this man but forgives his sins as well, he’s taking a decisive step down the path to the cross.
That is the cost of true healing. That healing brings us to God, to relationship with the Almighty. And that is what we really need more than any other healing or answer to prayer.
Should we ask for healing for our physical or mental illnesses? Yes, absolutely. God cares for you and knows our suffering.
In some cases he heals miraculously; in others through doctors; and still others are not healed (and that’s another sermon). But in one instance Jesus heals every time: our deepest wound is the sin that separates us from God. Our greatest disease is the crippling effect of sin that keeps us from walking in relationship with God.
Every gift we receive from Jesus is meant to point us to God: His salvation, his forgiveness, his healing, his NOT healing us. Healing is not our goal; God is our goal, and enjoying him forever.
Tony Campolo tells a story about being in a church in Oregon where he was asked to pray for a man who had cancer. Campolo prayed boldly for the man’s healing.
That next week he got a telephone call from the man’s wife. She said, "You prayed for my husband. He had cancer." Campolo thought when he heard her use the past tense verb that his cancer had been eradicated! But before he could think much about it she said, "He died." Campolo felt terrible.
But she continued, "Don’t feel bad. When he came into that church that Sunday he was filled with anger. He knew he was going to be dead in a short period of time, and he hated God. He was 58 years old, and he wanted to see his children and grandchildren grow up. He was angry that this all-powerful God didn’t take away his sickness and heal him. He would lie in bed and curse God. The more his anger grew towards God, the more miserable he was to everybody around him. It was an awful thing to be in his presence.
But the lady told Campolo, "After you prayed for him, a peace had come over him and a joy had come into him. Tony, the last three days have been the best days of our lives. We’ve sung. We’ve laughed. We’ve read Scripture. We prayed. Oh, they’ve been wonderful days. And I called to thank you for laying your hands on him and praying for healing."
And then she said something incredibly profound.
She said, "He wasn’t cured, but he was healed.”[iv]
Jesus preached good news. He illustrated his message with healing. And he came to truly heal us. So let the healing begin.
AMEN
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