When It Seems the Great Physician Won't Heal - Mark 1:29-34

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I have spent a great deal of time, over the years, with the sick, the dying, and their families. We’ve been together in their homes, in care facilities, in hospice centers and in funeral homes. After hundreds of these visits, I have come to expect this question: “Why isn’t God healing me or my loved one?” If we’re in a funeral home, the question is slightly different: “Why didn’t God heal my loved one?” Sometimes, there are other questions – sometime spoken, sometimes left hidden in the shadows of the mind: Is God unable to heal me? Does He not care how much Dad hurts? Did my son do something so terribly wrong in this life that he had to suffer so much?

I want you to know that I do not believe these are questions that come from a lack of faith, or from someone who is doubting the love, or mercy, or grace of God that is given to us in Christ. This is not a Christian denying the baptismal covenant given to them in water and word. It’s not a Christian telling the Holy Spirit to get out. No…these questions are asked from faith while staring full-on into the harsh reality of life in a fallen world. It’s recognizing that we, as Christians, live under the cross of Christ.  These kinds of questions say, in effect, “I know and believe these things are true: that God loves me and does not desire my death and suffering; that Christ suffered once and for all and made satisfied God’s anger against sin; that, by faith, Christ’s Easter victory is given to all who trust the promises of God.” Faith speaks the “amen” and the “this is most certainly true.”  

But we still are human beings who live in a world that is fallen. We see all around us where the promises of God collide with the devastation of the post-fall world. So faith says, “God is the great physician of body and soul,” but hospitals are full of people in pain. Faith says, “Christ suffered, once for all,” but you  or Christians whom you know wrestle with breaking marriages, depression and anxiety, and bodies wracked with pain. Baptized into Christ, faith says that Christ’s victory is mine and death has been conquered, but when a mom or dad, a husband or wife, a son or daughter is lying in the ICU and the doctors say, “I’m sorry…there is nothing more we can do,” in moments like these where faith and life seem to collide, and our very lives and the lives of our loved ones are at the breaking point, we simply pray, “Lord have mercy.”

And so when we hear this morning’s Gospel reading where Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, we are quick to listen with both hope and with envy. And when we hear that all of the city were bringing their sick and demon-possessed friends and family members to Jesus and he healed them, we wonder if the same mercy might be extended to us today. Should we become critically, life-or-death ill, God will miraculously heal us so that lives can continue on, uninterrupted. If only God would do this miraculous act and heal my wife, my daughter, my daddy…if only.

If only… Have you noticed the number of free-standing emergency rooms and clinics around? Back in Houston, it seems every neighborhood now has some kind of health care place. A friend of mine is friends with a doctor who owns a partnership in a ER. He said they need about 8 patients a day to break even on costs. This doctor then told my friend that since the first week they opened, they average twice that each day. It’s not just there. I’ve been to hospitals to see sick members when the ER waiting room was standing room only. Think of the hundreds of people just in Victoria suffering with the flu right now. There are almost a dozen funeral homes in town, each one with services already pending for this week. Wouldn’t it be great if Jesus would just step in and stop all of this – put the ER, the hospital, the hospice, and the funeral home all out of business?

It is tempting to turn Jesus into this Messiah-as-healer. But, I want you to notice something in this morning’s Gospel lesson: Jesus doesn’t stay there in Capernaum. While he was by himself the next morning, praying, his disciples found him with the news that everyone is looking for him. There are more who are sick; more who need Jesus miraculous care; more who are dying without His intervention.

Jesus answers the disciples with this statement: “Let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” He leaves behind those who were suffering with illness and ailments, with aches and pains, with deadly disease, and with some already at death’s doorstep. He leaves them all behind.

People ask me if I have Bible passages that I struggle with. This is one. It sounds so cold…so callous…so unloving and unlike Jesus. I mean, doesn’t Jesus have some kind of divine Hippocratic Oath that he has to do this? No –That’s not why he came. He didn’t come to heal everyone from their sicknesses and illnesses in this lifetime. He didn’t come to restore bodies to health. He came to allow His body to carry our sins with Him to His own death on the cross. The way Jesus heals, the way Jesus silences demons, the say Jesus shuts the grave is to die, Himself.

But first, Jesus has to preach. He must tell that this is His purpose, His mission: to be the Savior for whom the world had long waited. He must move on so others can hear, so others can believe. The miracles are important, but their importance is not the miracle in and of itself. The miracles demonstrate His God-ness, His divinity. Only God can do such a thing, and His doing the miraculous healing shows the people He is God in flesh, Immanuel, Messiah – the Christ – that Israel has long waited for. He comes to preach, to declare He is this One. That the Kingdom has arrived in His ministry. That He must suffer and die and be raised. That He will take all of our sicknesses, all our frailties, all our weaknesses that are a result of the fallenness of our bodies and the fallenness of this world and He will take each and every one to the cross. And He will die your death. And He will defeat it into eternity. The miracles are evidence of the new creation that will be restored. They are precursors, sneak peaks of His resurrection, when He – the Creator and Redeemer of the World – begins restoring Creation again.

You see, the irony is that every one of those people whom Jesus healed in Capernaum, every one of them eventually did die – whether it was from another illness, or an accident, or simply old age: every one of those people died.

But His preaching – His preaching gives life that cannot be taken away.  By the power of the spirit of God, who is active in the written, read, and preached word of Jesus Christ – whether it was on a hillside in Capernaum 2000 years ago, or in the Valley of Mission today, the preaching of Jesus gives life that cannot be taken away.

I started by sharing the question, “Why isn’t God healing” or “Why didn’t God heal?” If this is you – if you have ever asked that question, I want you to hear this: it isn’t God’s desire that you are sick. He doesn’t cause disease. Illness isn’t a punishment from God. Rather, God has all things under his control. I cannot tell you why He may be allowing these things to happen – the “why” is hidden from us all, and we are foolish to dare hazard a guess. Reconsider the question: Is God healing? Yes. Maybe, according to His divine will, you’ll be like Peter’s mother in law and, after a couple days, get back up and moving. Maybe it will take longer and it might include painful surgeries and treatments before it happens. Because we don’t know, we follow in the footsteps of those people of Capernaum, and we carry our sick and ill to the Lord in prayer, placing them at the feet of Jesus, asking for His divine intervention and grace. And, it is also possible, that it is the Lord’s will that you fall asleep in Jesus. But even here, the Lord is still at work. Pastor Guido Merkins, a retired Lutheran pastor in San Antonio, was fond of saying, God will heal you of every disease and illness except one: that is what He will use to take you into eternity with Himself.” And, on that day, He will reach down to you – as He did to Peter’s mother in law, and take you by the hand and raise you up from your grave. And, in that moment, all of the prayers for health and healing that you spoke or others uttered for you, all will be answered with a “yes” in your own resurrection.

So, carry them - your parents and your children; your sons and your daughters; your brothers and sisters; your friends and co-workers – all of those who have requested your prayers, faithfully carry them to Jesus and pray, “Thy will be done.” Know that even before you have uttered these prayers, in faith, they are already known by God, for Jesus has already carried your tears, and hurts, and petitions, and requests to His Father on your behalf. He has heard them and He has done something about them all: He died, and rose, and lives. And, buried and raised with Christ, this is true of all of God’s baptized children as well. You know this. Believe it.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.