The Ministry of Healing and the Gospel of Hope - Chapter Four

Chapter Four:

Salvation and Healing - Two Side of the Same Coin 

The racy historical drama, The Tudors, chronicles the life and times of King Henry the Eighth and the Tudor court.  While the writers have taken liberties with the historical evidence, there are several aspects of English political and religious life that are faithfully represented.  In particular, Henry believes that God has punished him (and his kingdom) for taking his brother’s wife by not giving him a living male heir.  To this end Henry seeks to have his marriage to his pious Spanish wife Katherine of Aragon dissolved in order to pursue the much more vivacious and alluring Anne Boleyn.  Historians have argued as to whether Henry actually believed this doctrine of divine retribution, or whether he simply used it for political ends. Be this as it may, this religious idea was very much a part of the life and times of late-medieval and early modern people.  The thought that God punishes us for wrongdoing by inflicting illness, and even death, upon us was a pervasive notion in the early modern period of history.  Indeed, in the sixteenth century cradle of Anglicanism, one can find authorized prayers both in the Prayer Book and in the occasional prayers released from time-to-time that underscore this belief.  Consider for example, this exhortation in the service for the visitation of the sick from the first edition of the Book of Common Prayer from 1549:

“Dearly beloved, know this that almighty God is the lord over life, and death, and over all things to them pertaining, as youth, strength, health, age, weakness and sickness.  Wherefore, whatsoever your sickness is, know you certainly, that it is God’s visitation. And for what cause so ever this sickness is sent unto you; whether it be to try your patience for the example of other , and that your faith may be found, in the day of the Lord, laudable, glorious, and honourable, to the increase of glory, and endless felicity:  Or else it be sent unto you to correct and amend in you whatsoever  doth offend the eyes of our heavenly father: know you certainly, that if you truly repent you of you sins, and bear your sickness patiently, trusting in God’s mercy, for his dear son Jesus Christ’s sake, and render unto him humble thanks for his fatherly visitation, submitting yourself wholly to his will; it shall turn to your profit, and help you forward in the right way that leadeth to everlasting life.”  (BCP 1549 – 260-1, Everyman’s Library Edition)

The idea that sickness is given by God was a pervasive well into the nineteenth century.  It was the normal way of understanding illness. It was a way of making sense of a disordered world.  It was a way of making sense of senseless affliction. Sickness was either a punishment for something wrong done, a burden to test the faith of the individual, or a pedagogue to teach some moral virtue. When one considers that there was no modern medicine and that the outcome for many sick people was bleak, linking sickness a response to sin, a test of faith, or the teaching of virtue may have been the most pastoral response the church could have offered. Until modern times the church answered the question of “why do we suffer” in this way. It is doubtless than in their helplessness, grief, and sorrow, many found solace in this sort of theological reflection. They did not have the “magic” of modern medicine that could simply make it all go away. We must be cautious in condemning the pastoral care of another age.

However, in the day in which we live, I would be hard-pressed to find any mainstream cleric who would preach such.  We understand illness in very different terms. We have a different sort of religious mindset that is shaped by the advent of modern medicine and the psychological insights gleaned over the last one hundred or so years. What was considered pastorally edifying in the sixteenth century would certainly be considered pastorally insensitive and possibly emotionally or psychologically destructive in today’s context.  Furthermore, to suggest that someone’s illness is the result of their sinfulness, or that it is a visitation of a God who seeks to test their faith, or teach us some kind of lesson, runs against the image of the all-compassionate, all-loving God that we have proclaimed so extravagantly, and I think rightly, in this generation. But then again it may be a bit easier to proclaim that all-compassionate God in a world in which we can explain illness and beat it in so many more cases than our medieval and early modern ancestors could.

Our modern pastoral approach assumes a more agnostic view of illness.   In some cases we can rationally explain why someone is sick. We know where illnesses come from and it makes no sense to blame God.  In other cases in which the cause is inexplicable, we practice a certain medical and philosophical agnosticism – we don’t know where the illness came from, or why it attacked me, or if we can heal it. We do know that there is a rational explanation. We just have not found it yet.  Our survival depends not so much on our virtue, or the providence of God, but on statistics and certain factors beyond our control, like genetics. The odds are overwhelmingly against me; or, I’m one of the few who make it.  Either way, my ability to survive is probably in the hands of my genetic makeup. We don’t blame God.

However, when science can’t help us, and where we are amongst the statistically unfortunate, we still face the existential question and even the theological question of “why?” Where we have been taught that science can cure anything, we come to the realization that there are still some cases in which science can be of no help. The scientific agnosticism about illness is a cold form of pastoral care indeed. What do we do with unexplained (and even explained) suffering in the context of belief in a loving God? We may not know the cause of illness or why we are afflicted, but I don’t believe that it is pastorally helpful to immediately ascribe our suffering to God or as punishment for some sin we have committed. That is coming at the question the wrong way. I have felt chastened and corrected by God at times, but that realization is retrospective rather than prescriptive.  It makes no sense to impose a meaning on someone else’s suffering. That is between them and God. It may be that upon reflection and meditation on our own illness and healing that we believe that God has used the illness to teach us or correct us, but it is not the place of the pastor or companion to name that. Rather, it is our task to proclaim the God that goes with us on the road of suffering, who will not abandon us in our illness, even when we may never be fully cured.

To complicate matters, though, I am not so sure that the early-modern view of illness as punishment, testing, or teaching has completely disappeared. It seems to me that there are plenty of people who still do believe that illness is a visitation or test from God.  How many times have we heard someone say, or have even said it ourselves, that God doesn’t give us what we can’t endure?  What does such a turn of phrase reveal about where we believe illness comes from? There is a robust folk-religion amongst many Christians that still envisions God, in spite of all our preaching to the contrary, as a God who brings suffering as punishment, a trial of endurance, or test of faith.  I have encountered it in my own ministry.  Why does such a view persist? One supposes that it is because the church has continuously taught this view for centuries and it has simply embedded itself in our religious and ethical consciousness. However, I think that in such cases our instinct is pointing to something more intrinsic in our understanding that there is a connection between body, mind and spirit, between health and behaviour that people understand, even if we cannot always explain it.  For all the work we have done to separate illness from sinfulness, to place them in completely different compartments of our lives, people still seem to associate illness and sinfulness and draw a connection between their own suffering in body and their suffering in spirit. In truth, I think they are not wrong. However, we need to understand the whole gamut of human brokenness, and seek to understand that the relationship between sin and illness is not strictly causal.  For example, I would not make the connection between someone’s illness and something they previously did wrong, and suggest that God had inflicted them with illness as a punishment or as a corrective measure.   Nor can I believe that the loss of someone’s child would be some kind of test that a sadistic god would inflict on a mother or father to test their faith.  These may have been commonplace pastoral explanations of another time, but in our context these sorts of simplistic connections offer us as seriously flawed image of God, and quite frankly, of ourselves.  Yet, when we consider the fact that illness and other forms of brokenness are often found together, we must seriously think about how one form of brokenness is interwoven with other forms of brokenness. 

To help us through this web, I offer the example the family who is caring for another member of the family who has a chronic or terminal illness.  Think of how often families “come to blows” in this situation. The serious physical illness of one family member and how the family deals with it can trigger and open up old wounds. New rifts in the relationships of the people in that family unit often surprisingly emerge.  It is not that the sick person is to be blamed, but rather his or her physical woundedness has created the space where other kinds of woundedness begin to intrude on family relationships. Do we appeal to our better angels in such a circumstance, or do we fall further brokenness and even into sinful behaviours. Do we support each other or lash out at each other. The physical brokenness of one member of the family can be a challenge to how the rest of the family acts, and can lead to angst, frustration, and broken relationships. How often do we hurt each other when a family member is caught up in a painful moment of illness?  How often are old and unresolved wounds exposed? How many families fall apart when unexpected illness or death hits the family? 

We must recognize that we are not compartmentalized beings. Our physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual health are integrated.  And what is more, the health of our communities can be affected by the well-being of each of the members.  As we seek health and well-being as individuals, so too do we seek the health and well-being of our community.

Illness can bring out the worst in people. I certainly am not the most patient and loving sick person. Conversely, certain destructive behaviours inevitably lead to physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual consequences.  However, it is often not so simple.  Many people find themselves caught up in cycles of addiction, abuse, fear, and shame that affect all aspects of their being physical and spiritual.  To unfold the web of connection in terms of causality rarely gets us anywhere. We need to treat  the whole person.

Perhaps one of the most important stories of healing in the New Testament in the third chapter and fourth chapter of Acts in which Peter and John offer healing to the crippled beggar at the Beautiful Gate.  This act of healing is intrinsically related to the proclamation of the gospel, and when Peter and John are called to task, they are called to task not simply for their preaching of the gospel, but for their healing ministry.

From the point of view of the Jerusalem religious elite, i.e., the very Sanhedrin that crucified Jesus, the concern is that the disciples have been practicing magic, and not going through the official religious channels. The concern of the religious leaders is that subversive religious practices will break apart the community; but Peter reminds them that it was the official religious channels that led to the crucifixion of Jesus, and yet, God turned over the brokenness of the system, and it was the very name of the one that they crucified, Jesus of Nazareth that brought healing, literally, “good health” to this man.   The Greek word used for “good health,” is hygies, which typically connotes the thorough well-being of an individual.  In the case of the beggar, not only has his physical health been restored, but also his spiritual health.  Indeed, when Peter says that the man has been healed, he uses the Greek word whose root is sozo, or “to save”.   The New Testament, and in particular the Lucan texts, use the same word for salvation and healing. Consider then, what it means to be “saved?”  Indeed, Peter uses the word both ways in the same passage: “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed (sesotai), let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel that this man is standing before you in good health (hygies) by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, whom you crucified; whom God raised from the dead.  This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the chief cornerstone.  There is salvation (he soteria) in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved (sothenai).” (Acts 4:8-12).  Sesotai, soteria, and sothenai all share the same root, sozo. Peter uses the same word to describe how the name of Jesus has healed the man and to articulate that there is no other name under heaven for salvation.  You see, the root, both lexically and spiritually is the same:  the salvation that Jesus brings is not only about eternity and the soul, the spiritual, but about the here and now, the natural.  And conversely, the healing that he brings is not only about the body but also about the soul.

What is even more subversive, though, is that the brokenness of the system is used for the advancement of the gospel.  Peter and John stand before the same body that condemned Jesus, but through God’s vindication of him, the very system that crucified Jesus is now the means through which his saving and healing power is proclaimed.  The interrogation of Peter and John is the opportunity for God’s healing and saving power in Jesus to be manifest. The powers that defeated Jesus now see his power to heal and save standing before their very eyes.  

In all of this, it seems to me that God is a God who puts things back together, and more than that, recreates and reshapes the world in which we live. Even more profoundly perhaps, God helps us revision and look anew at this broken world so that we might see his power to heal and save at work.  While I would not wish to return to the early modern view of suffering and illness as a visitation or test from God, I think that perhaps our sixteenth century ancestors still have something to teach us.  They believed God was alive and active even in the midst of their suffering.  And what is more, they believed that God could transform their suffering for good, whether it be through physical cure or in their redemption in the life to come. They believed that even in illness, God was reaching out to them.  What the early moderns did understand, something that we frequently forget, is that the pieces of our lives are woven together.  If our body is broken, there is great potential for our spirits to be broken.  If our soul is not well, in our discouragement our bodies may well yield to illness.  That is why, in our very first Anglican prayer for anointing, Thomas Cranmer, who compiled and shaped the first English Prayer Book, had the wisdom to include such a prayer as this:

“As with this vivsible oil thy body outwardly is anointed: so our heavenly father almighty God, grant of his infinite goodness, that thy soul inwardly may be anointed with the Holy Ghost, who is the spirit of all strength, comfort, relief and gladness.  And vouchsafe for his great mercy (if it be his blessed will) to restore unto thee bodily health, and strength, to serve him, and send thee release of all thy pains, troubles and diseases, both in body and mind.”  BCP 1549, 264-5 [ital. added]

It is a holistic prayer, asking for relief not only from disease, but from any pain and trouble -- relief not only in body but in mind.  The prayer goes on to offer an absolution for sins, and so has every Anglican healing liturgy since those early days.  The recognition of Christian healing is that it is the whole person that needs healing; it is the whole person that needs saving, body, mind, spirit, and soul.  We would do well not to forget that our entire being is of great interest to God, and to pray for each other, that we might know God’s healing and saving power in the entirety of our lives and being.