Health, Healing and the Church's Mission E-Book

Willard M. Swartley

• Herausgeber: IVP Academic
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 484

Beschreibung

Does the Christian community have the resources to develop a coherent response to health care challenges today? Accounting for biblical, theological and church-historical streams, Willard Swartley divulges a long tradition of healing and health care inherited by Christians today. Beginning with in-depth studies of Old and New Testament understandings of healing, the book surveys three millennia of biblical and theological teaching and practice in congregational life and mission. Along the way Swartley uncovers how Christians have understood the role of the church and other institutions in providing health and healing. The book concludes with an attempt to synthesize these biblical, historical and moral perspectives to help all Christians, including those in health care professions, respond to our current health care challenges.

Leseprobe

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Health, Healing and the Church's Mission

Biblical Perspectives and Moral Priorities

Willard M. Swartley

www.IVPress.com/ books

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InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected]

© 2012 by Willard M. Swartley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

While all stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

The words to “I Worship You, O Lord” are by James E. Seddon, © The Jubilate Group (Admin. Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL 60188). All rights reserved. Used by permission. The addition to this hymn by Calvin Seerveld is used courtesy of Calvin Seerveld <www.seerveld.com/tuppence.html>.

Quotes from Jean Vanier originally appeared in The Church and the Disabled, published by Templegate Publishers in 1983 and used courtesy of Griff Hogan.

“Midnight Prayer” and “Hold Me, Lord” from Henry Swartley’s Living on the Fault-Line are used courtesy of Willard Swartley.

The words to “O Christ, the Healer,” are by Fred Pratt Green, © 1969 Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

“Nine Maxims on Suffering” is used courtesy of Reverend Cornel G. Rempel, director of pastoral services and CPE supervisor, Philhaven, Mt. Gretna, Pennsylvania.

Figure 7.2 by George Panikulam is from Koinōnia in the New Testament: A Dynamic Expression of Christian Life in the series Analecta Biblica 85, and it is used courtesy of Biblical Institute Press,Rome.

Portion of “Hard Rock into Springs of Water: Working in Hope,” is used courtesy of Tim Leaman, M.D., from Mennonite Health Journal 11, no. 3 (July-Sept. 2009): 24-25.

Cover design: Cindy Kiple Images: © Ragnarocks/iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-3974-2, print ISBN 978-0-8308-6330-3, digital

In memory, to my parents and siblings:

William Henry and Ida Swartley

Kenneth, Henry, Clifford, Emerson, Marian

And to those who remain: Dorothy and John

All who nurtured me with love

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part One: Healing

1: Seven Theses

2: Healing in the Old Testament

3: Healing in the New Testament and the Church’s Practice

4: Biblical and Theological Analysis of Healing

5: The Church as Healing Community

Part Two: Health Care

6: Health and Health Care in Biblical-Theological Perspective

7: Biblical and Theological (Anabaptist) Foundations of Health Care Through Mutual Aid

8: Healthcare in Christian History and Mission

9: Disability, God's Two Hands of Love

Part Three: Toward New Paradigms

10: Health Care Reform

11: From High Tech and Triage to Shalom and Service

12: Living Toward Sustainable Health Care

Summary and Concluding Reflections

Appendix 1: Mennonites, Brethren and Related Groups in Health Care

Appendix 2: Center for Healing and Hope

Bibliography

Name Index

Scripture Index

Notes

About the Author

Endorsements

Preface

Writing on health and healing is a daunting task. Amid the dominant health care debates today, a book on health and healing in Scripture and the Christian church’s commitment to health care over the centuries may relegate this study to narrative archaeology. Nonetheless, if the church is to be faithful to its source, Jesus Christ, we cannot camouflage Jesus’ dual mission of healing and proclaiming the kingdom of God. The topic faces us with the pressing existential realities of sickness, suffering and dying as well. What does love for one another, prayer for ourselves and others when ill, and caring for the sick mean for us in today’s world? This book addresses these topics.

With necessary limits for such topical scope, this book focuses on the church’s mission in health and healing. It calls the Christian church to own its biblical, historical and theological heritage and its mission in healing and health care. It challenges the current dominant assumption that health care is an economic, political or medical issue only. It regards U.S. health care a moral priority. May it stimulate discussion!

I owe special gratitude to readers and helpers in bringing this work to fruition. I thank Philip Yoder, minister and seminary graduate with interest in healing, health care and mission. Philip read chapters in their initial stages and wisely suggested I include a historical overview of the church’s healing ministry (thus chap. 8). Similarly, Amy Jo Jones, a hospice chaplain in Oregon and former student at the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (hereafter AMBS), read most of the manuscript, with suggestions for improvement. Her out-of-the-blue e-mail to me one day began the conversation, resulting in her wise counsel. I am indebted to Jenn Burkett, director of Total Value Management at Elkhart General Hospital, for her suggestions regarding the present health care challenge and helping me construct categories of expression at home among health care professionals (chap. 10). I am grateful for the constructive critique of parts of this book by six medical doctors in my church, Belmont Mennonite: Eben Kio (oncology), Sally Krabill (family practice), Josh Mathew (psychiatry), Ben Smucker (orthopaedic surgery), Jon Shenk (emergency medicine) and Jon Schrock (pain management). As chapter twelve shows, I am indebted to Dr. James Nelson Gingerich and Dr. Tim Leaman. My neighbor and professor emeritus at Fuller Theological Seminary, Wilbert Shenk, helped me with aspects of mission history, especially the Mennonite and Brethren in Christ story (appendix 1). My nephew, Dr. Herbert Myers, retired psychiatrist, made many helpful suggestions. John A. Lapp kindly read the manuscript and helped with accuracy on certain points, as well as several infelicities, and to Willard Roth for his counsel on several editorial matters. I am grateful to Rick Stiffney (CEO for Mennonite Health Services Alliance) for helping me understand how this alliance of health-related institutions contributes to numerous dimensions of health care. Thanks also to Rick for connecting me to numerous denominational leaders in health/health care ministries, who commend this book. Other professionals (theological and medical) contributed insights as well, for which I am grateful.

I express special thanks to Gary Deddo, senior editor at InterVarsity Press, for his guidance from beginning to end in making a manuscript into this book. With patience, good will and blessing, he accepted “additions” between the usual back-and-forth transmissions of the manuscript. I am grateful for the outside reader whose perceptive comments strengthen the book significantly. My thanks also go to Drew Blankman for his editorial work and to Caitie Johnston who at an early stage managed preparation for sales and marketing of the book. Thanks to those who did the typesetting and proofreading of the page proofs. I am grateful also for the publishers and persons who granted permission to utilize key quotations or diagrams that enrich this book.

Above all, thanks be to God/Jesus Christ/Holy Spirit, from whom all healing flows!

Introduction

On an ordinary early fall morning I read a most fascinating story in our local newspaper. It reported the mysterious, miraculous healing of a quadriplegic person in a nearby town, Bristol, Indiana. Laura Nauman, who suffered for five years from a degenerative disorder of the nervous system, diagnosed in 1991 as “spinal muscular atrophy,” woke up September 2, 1995, able to walk. The (Elkhart)Truth (October 1, 1995) reported Laura’s unprecedented healing, quoting words of amazement from her doctor, Bristol physician Alan H. Bierlein, and First Baptist Church pastor John Blodgett. Both went to her home on Saturday, the morning of the new Laura, and during the next nine hours watched her walk, drive a four-wheeler and ride in a convertible. A related Truth article narrated her church’s response when on the next Sunday morning her pastor mentioned her name, and one person thought, Oh, she must have died. But instead Laura got up out of her familiar wheel chair and bounded across the platform to the congregation’s amazement, clapping and praising the Lord. The healing is inexplicable. Whether Laura or church people were praying for miraculous healing was not indicated. The miracle was a gift of God’s lavish love and generous grace. In several other recent cases where medical specialists expected a person to die within a week or two, the person lives! One story cited in chapter eight, note one, also illustrates the miraculous.

But what about the majority who live with debilitating illnesses and are not cured, even though many prayers ascend to our Creator and Savior God for healing? This perplexity riddles this book. My denominational churchwide mission statement is:

God calls us as followers of Jesus Christ and,

by the power of the Holy Spirit,

to grow to be communities of grace, joy, and peace,

so that God’s healing and hope

flow through us to the world. [1]

God’s “healing and hope”—what does that mean? My own near-death heart illness is not fully healed, though I live, love, care, write and pray. The apostle Paul calls us to hope that goes beyond our present infirmities (Rom 5:1-3; Phil 3:10-12; 1 Cor 15). Can we affirm this mission statement without the hope that our bodies will be healed through resurrection, with its glimpses in history and fulfillment at the end of time? I think not—except when God surprises us to alert us to the kingdom in its fullness dawning even now in the “not yet” time. These texts remind us that resurrection hope points us beyond our own best efforts, toward the “heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” In the Ash Wednesday ritual we are reminded of our mortality: “dust we are, and to dust we shall return.” This is a necessary stance from which to begin. With resurrection hope, however, our thinking and acting in healing and health care ends not with Ash Wednesday but with Easter’s hope and healing.

Why do I write a book on health, healing and the church’s mission in the context of the present health care debates? These topics pose issues that baffle the best of minds and intimidate the heart’s good will. My training is not in professional health care but in biblical studies, with a longstanding interest in healing, especially emotional and spiritual (including deliverance ministries in which I have witnessed “miracles” also). My contribution thus focuses on some hard questions raised by Scripture and how we understand healing from a biblical point of view. I affirm too the significant contribution of health care professionals to health and healing. Without those, this book would not be.

While one goal of the book is to help us respond with moral passion to the current health care challenges in the United States and maximize healing and shalom in our lives, its main purpose is to reclaim the relationship between the triune God and our healing and health care efforts. This requires explicating the biblical (Old and New Testaments) understandings of health and healing, and assessing their ethical perspectives on healing and health care. The Christian church has been involved in health care since the church’s inception. Given this tradition, we are called to reaffirm and encourage the church’s present mission and ministry in healing and health care. A corollary purpose is to highlight the relation between God as healer—also Jesus as healer and the Spirit as healer—and the work of health care professionals, the many people in our churches who work in health care.

In many church congregations the Sunday morning worship service includes time for sharing. Members often request prayer for someone ill or facing a medical intervention. Why do we share these things in church? Only if we believe that the church body and its beliefs are integrally related to our health and well being does it make sense to do so. Gayle Gerber Koontz says in her editorial to essays on Suffering, “If this is not a place where tears are understood, then where can I go to cry?”[2] Some congregations, like my own, have designated Sundays when we have prayers for healing, when people come forward to request prayer for a given situation, and the pastor or elder prays for that person’s need, while the congregation may stand, sing and pray.

Perhaps an even deeper reason why it makes sense for a congregation to include requests for healing in its sharing time is because in baptism we pledge to care for one another. Praying and caring are important practices enabling healing. Some church congregations include health care related activities: blood pressure clinics, nutrition seminars, Weight Watchers club, twelve-step programs and even free immunizations, with doctors and nurses on hand.

My Journey Toward This Book

As far back as the late 1970s when I was working on my book Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women, I was thinking about healing, among other topics that might be treated to show that the Bible’s voice on healing is not monovocal. Because Scripture at places says if we pray for healing when sick—or whatever we pray for—we should receive what we ask for. Yet at the same time the Bible is clear that humans suffer illness and die. Humans are mortal and bear the scars of fallen humanity and flawed creation.

Further, my longstanding interest in Scripture and healing has been complemented by an equally longstanding concern for the biblical teaching on and the church’s practice of financially helping one another in times of sickness and other types of need. I addressed this topic in Communities of Compassion and speak to this issue in chapter seven of this book.[3] This combined agenda is the cradle of this contribution, as well as my journey toward healing from nearly dying from heart illness.

My heart attack in 1999 occurred when I was on a family retreat in the mountains of West Virginia. I did not recognize it as a heart attack because I did not associate severe indigestion with heart attack. That evening I was unusually tired and slept for three hours. Then I woke up and began throwing up (I thought my symptoms indicated food poisoning). Not until we began the drive to the hospital in Elkins did I feel any chest or arm pain. I was diagnosed with a massive heart attack. I was then flown by helicopter to the University of West Virginia hospital, where the cardiologist implanted a stent in my left artery descending. However, five hours had elapsed. Consequently I live with a 50 percent or more heart muscle loss that curbs my lifestyle.

The current health crisis and later interventions during the last twelve years inform and temper my perspectives. My experience illustrates the need for better self-education on health care. I knew, and my doctor knew, my genetic history forecast a strong possibility for a heart attack. I also knew fat, especially saturated fat, was to be avoided, and I usually did. My cholesterol was relatively low. I now realize salt is also a major heart killer. I could have done better on self-education and avoidance of salt in my already low-fat diet. I could have learned that severe persisting indigestion is also a signal of heart attack.

My learning has come the hard way. In view of my experience I am grateful to God as healer, praying friends and the excellent medical care I received. I now have a heightened awareness of the need to educate myself on recurring symptoms, and on when and how to seek assistance from medical professionals.

I cannot express adequately my gratitude for the prayers of many people, the wonderful care I received by the medical staff of the University of West Virginia Hospital, as well as the Rosenbaum Family House adjacent to the hospital, where after nine days of hospital care Mary and I stayed for another ten days for me to get strong enough to return to Elkhart, Indiana. What a gift also that a pilot from our congregation flew to Morgantown to take us home, while two other church men came with him to drive our car home. I received good care in my time of crisis.

Now the United States is responding to a longstanding health care challenge in which millions of people have gone without adequate care or no care at all. They lack (adequate) insurance coverage for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it is too costly or, until recently, they were excluded because of preexisting conditions. Health care costs continue to rise at an alarming rate, which forces insurance premiums to spiral. In light of Christianity’s long history of providing health care (chap. 8) the church must creatively confront the issues, discerning its role in health care and health education (see chaps. 10-12). A difficult question arises: What is the church’s role in relation to professional medicine and the government’s role, together with health insurance companies, to cover costs?

I hope this book promotes dialogue among church people, public policymakers and health care professionals. It intends to stir the moral conscience of the church to discuss and be proactive on health education and health care issues, to continue in concern and care for the sick and dying, and to ever thank God for the healing power at work in our bodies. This book blends God’s role with medical science’s role in healing. It reminds us that Jesus came as God’s agent of healing, and that Jesus was known as healer in his ministry on earth. The church is called to continue what Jesus began: to be a healing community. The biblical, historical, church and ethical perspectives are put in dialogue with the U.S. health care system. I consider medical, pharmaceutical and economic dimensions of health care, but leave extended treatment to others.

This book blends dual themes that I consider intrinsically related:

health, healing and health care

the roles of God, Jesus, Spirit and medical science in healing

The latter point is briefly but poignantly attested in a pertinent text from Sirach, a wisdom book regarded as Scripture by the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and early Anabaptist church traditions. This voice, from between the Testaments, witnesses to another perspective on healing, the role of the physician and medicine in healing. Physicians and pharmacists are recognized as allies in God’s work of healing. I cite the text for its significance to a pertinent issue of our time: the relationship between God as healer and the role of medical personnel:

Honor physicians for their services,

for the Lord created them;

for their gift of healing comes from the Most High,

and they are rewarded by the king.

The skill of physicians makes them distinguished,

and in the presence of the great they are admired.

The Lord created medicines out of the earth,

and the sensible will not despise them. . . .

[The Lord] gave skill to human beings

that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.

By them [the medicines] the physician heals and takes away pain;

the pharmacist makes a mixture from them.

God’s works will never be finished;

and from him health spreads over all the earth.

My child, when you are ill, do not delay,

but pray to the Lord, and he will heal you.

Give up your faults and direct your hands rightly,

and cleanse your heart from all sin. . . .

Then give the physician his place, for the Lord created him;

do not let him leave you, for you need him.

There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians,

for they too pray to the Lord

that he grant them success in diagnosis

and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.

He who sins against his Maker,

will be defiant toward the physician. (Sir 38:1-4, 6-10, 12-15)

The text praises the skills of the physician and pharmacist.[4] But it also says, “God’s works will never be finished; / and from him health [shalom] spreads over all the earth” (v. 8).[5] The physician is viewed as assisting God’s bestowal of health. I hold this view in my own prayers and proactive quest for health. As the progression of this book makes clear, health, healing and health care are all part of one whole. Unless the church owns these ministries, it will choose “the hole in our gospel” instead of the whole Gospel.[6]

In part one of this book I reclaim the relationship between the triune God and our healing efforts, by explicating the biblical (Old and New Testaments) understandings of health and healing.[7] In part two I focus on understanding the biblical, ethical and historical involvement of the Judeo-Christian faith in health care over the last three millennia. This leads to reaffirming and encouraging the synagogue’s and church’s mission and ministry in healing, health care and health education. In part three I connect the biblical, historical and moral perspectives with the current U.S. health care challenges.

Chapter one presents seven theses on healing, which grew out of my biblical study and the life experience of Jesus’ followers. It moves toward answering the persisting question, When God does not heal me or others, what am I to believe? Chapter two focuses on health and healing as God’s gift. It also starkly reminds us of our mortality. Chapter three focuses on Jesus’ healing ministry as sign and promise of God’s kingdom coming, and shows how the Christian church has regarded healing and health care as an aspect of its calling and mission, from its beginning to the present. Chapter four places the biblical study into a broader theological framework, noting the paradoxes in any theology of healing. These paradoxes guard us against pitfalls in healing ministries and acknowledge the reality of suffering. Chapter five focuses on understanding how the church’s normative practices can function as healing modalities, including rituals of baptism, Eucharist, anointing with oil and more. It provides criteria to enable the church to be a healing community.

In part two, chapters six and seven examine patterns of health care in the biblical world in order to open the dialogue between biblical perspectives, including mutual aid practices and modern modalities of health care and education. Chapter eight focuses on the history of the church in healing and health care, noting that this has always been regarded as intrinsic to the church’s mission. Chapter nine focuses on care for the disabled.

In part three, chapter ten describes the U.S. health care system/industry, together with the moral and economic problems it poses for sustainability. The challenges are formidable. Chapter eleven looks at health and health care in light of the biblical vision of shalom and service, and what this might mean for health care practices. Chapter twelve presents alternative philosophies and practices as models, shining lights in our present fog. The chapter narrates the vision and work of two medical doctors whose health centers provide models of holistic health care that are community oriented, focusing on those who need health care most. Health care fees are on a sliding scale, taking into account the patient’s income and ability to pay. This illustrates how biblical moral priorities can be practiced in health care for those with no (or inadequate) health insurance. These models present new or renewed ways of thinking about and administering health care. They lower health care costs. The first part of the chapter addresses how U.S. health care can contain costs and foster health quality.

Appendix one describes Mennonite mission history in health care. Appendix two describes a countywide effort to provide urgent-need medical care for uninsured persons. This is a model that other faith communities may consider to replicate.

To clarify the rationale for the perspectives of this book, I identify four values that bear upon the health care system. These apply not only to the United States but worldwide:

1. Historical learning. Prior to the modern period, religion was the caregiver of the sick and wounded. In the West the Judeo-Christian community played a major role in health care. The church of the first three centuries did what the government of the Roman Empire did not do: risk their lives to care for the starving, save and care for babies and children left to die in the streets, and minister to those sick and dying from plagues, while even honored medical people fled to rural areas to avoid the contagion. In the fourth to eighteenth centuries the church, often allied with government, cared for the sick. Hospitals and holy places for healing developed as an arm of the church. Since the Reformation the church’s involvement in health care dwindled. The Catholic Church, however, continued to be more involved in health care than Protestant churches. This was their practice historically; its involvement has roots in the Church’s longstanding social teachings, based on the moral principles of the Church’s faith.

One of the puzzling moral issues is, Why has the church, especially Protestant, beginning with the Reformation, largely abdicated its role in health, healing and health care? The church has sold this part of its birthright, for its healing ministry is inherent in its identity and the Great Commission. It is morally imperative to ask, How can the church reclaim its calling to be healer in the context of present-day health education needs and prevailing health care endeavors?

2. Mission perspectives. In the nineteenth century, Christianity’s missionary impulse was impelled by its commitment to literacy, education and health care services. Health care was an integral part of the gospel. Medical missions, begun around 1860, gradually extended medical services into almost every known country of the world, including newly known tribal groups (chap. 8). Historically, health care was integral to Christianity’s and Judaism’s moral vision. I am not arguing that church or faith-based organizations should take over the government’s responsibility for health care. In our pluralistic society that would not work. But we need to recover churchly concern and action for health care that includes the poor and sick that most need medical treatment.

3. Theological considerations. God’s desire, according to Scripture, is shalom for all people. Shalom is often defined as “wholeness” in physical health and communal relationships. Shalom includes a person’s physical, emotional and mental welfare. When some people are deprived of health care, communal shalom is threatened.

4. Moral/ethical issues. The present complex U.S. health care system faces us with difficult moral challenges. The cost of health insurance is so high that unemployed and poor people generally cannot afford it. Because health care is at the mercy of market profit by numerous “players” in the system, Mary McDonough aptly titles her book Can a Health Care Market Be Moral? Whatever position we take on health care reform, we must ask what our moral priorities are. Do we think only of ourselves and the needs of people most like us, or do we try to think as Jesus thought: How can the sick and those who desperately need healing and health care in our society find it? What is our moral passion on this issue that has reached crisis proportion in the economy and social welfare of the United States? And why?

This book does not address adequately the more technical issues of funding health care, although it does present some alternative models to the dominant form of health care in the United States. Experts in the fields of finance and researchers in health care delivery systems have and will continue to address those areas. This book’s contribution is from the perspective of biblical, ecclesial and moral passion and precedent. Health care is a moral priority, as the number of the underinsured and uninsured continues to rise. The complexity of U.S. health care has to a significant extent paralyzed providers in their ability to render their services well at a sustainable cost. At the same time, the cost of services rendered and technologies utilized plays into the system’s unsustainable future. Perhaps we can learn from other national health care systems, as T. R. Reid did in his international quest to learn how eight different national health care systems work and what each would do to cure his lame shoulder. The United States’ answer was a shoulder replacement but other countries had other solutions at varied costs.[8] Most interesting!

Part One

Healing

1 Seven Theses

From Scripture to Today

Teach me your way, O LORD,

that I may walk in your truth;

give me an undivided heart to revere your name.

Psalm 86:11

Who can tell what a day may bring forth?

Cause me, therefore, gracious God

to live every day as if it were to be my last,

for I know not but that it may be such.

Cause me to live now as I shall wish

I had done when I come to die.

Thomas À Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

Any topic or issue must be addressed from the context of a larger biblical theology. Both this chapter and the next four try to do just that—to forge a path toward a biblical theology of healing. Chapters two and three focus on the Old and New Testaments, respectively. In chapter four I examine four biblical-theological paradoxes that are foundational to understand healing. Chapter five views the church as a healing community.

To grasp the full range of the healing emphases in Scripture, a trinitarian view is helpful, since each person of the Trinity is portrayed in Christian Scripture with healing emphases. For example, in brief:

God as healer.

Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and do not forget all his benefits—

who forgives all your iniquity,

who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the Pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. (Ps 103:2-4)

This psalm is one of many that acknowledge God as healer of disease (cf. Ex 15:26). Not until later in Israel’s history were the gifts of medicine and pharmacy also acknowledged as beneficial to healing (see Sir 38).

Jesus as healer. After Jesus healed the Roman centurion’s servant by speaking the word of healing from a distance, Matthew reports an evening healing event:

They brought to him many who were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with a word, and cured all who were sick. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” (Mt 8:16-17)

Chapter three shows how integral Jesus’ healing ministry was to his mission. Healing and salvation are closely linked. This text unites Jesus’ healing with his exorcisms and sees both as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

Holy Spirit as healer.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Rom 8:18-27)

The Holy Spirit as healer complements God as healer and Jesus as healer. The Spirit reminds us that though we now enjoy redemption’s firstfruits, more is to come. Our bodies, medically and miraculously healed at times, waste away, but the Spirit-cry within us, Abba, promises redemption of our bodies when we are released from our present groaning. Our dying is transformed into life with the triune God eternally.

Further, the Spirit is our intercessor when we don’t know what to pray for, or we are so heavily burdened we cannot find words to pray. The Spirit takes our groans and translates them into petitions to God and Jesus for our good outcome. The Spirit also comforts us and assures us “all is well.” We can rest in our groaning and trust the Spirit to present the right healing prayer to God.

Within this trinitarian context I propose seven theses on healing:

Thesis 1. God intends shalom and community for humans and all creation, but sin and Satan play adversarial roles against us and against God’s intentions for us.

We live in a marvelous, mysterious world created by God. Whether we are enraptured by endless space with its billions of galaxies or the incomprehensible intricacies of our DNA codes, we know this world has been created by an almighty God. More than two hundred billion stars light the night sky of our Milky Way galaxy. But the human being is also a great wonder of wonders, with DNA codes and brains of incomprehensible complexity: “the number of synaptic interconnections in a single human brain vastly exceeds the number of stars in our Milky Way: 1015 synapses versus about 1011 stars.”[1] Living in this vast universe with another hundred billion galaxies beyond our Milky Way, we experience daily delights to the eye, ear, smell, taste and touch. When life is functioning normally, we say, “Yes, this is a good world.” When all is well, we call it health, and we claim it as a gift from God.

But then, as it does for most at some time, illness strikes, with a variety of faces. We wonder if God Almighty has abandoned us. We pray for healing, but sometimes don’t know how to pray. Sometimes our prayers are miraculously answered, but often not, at least in the way we would like. We then doubt God’s good world, and we wonder who else besides God is playing in this drama of history, obstructing the shalom of our health.

The Scriptures reassure us that, yes, God created us, and the creation is good, but another power, an adversary against God, is also part of the historical stage. On the one hand, we humans are created in the “image of God,” with the capacity and desire for human relationships (i.e., community) and capability to exercise dominion over all creation. This is the cultural mandate and opportunity, involving work, creative invention, managing, preserving and tending (Gen 2:15). Community and dominion (tending creation) are essential components of health. When we become ill, we feel incapacitated, precisely in our freedom to exercise these innate, God-given capacities.

But the biblical analysis goes deeper. It tells us there is a primal and ontological reason why the good creation, and our experience of it, is marred. Incited by the tempter, the snake, indeed the devil (Wis 2:24; Rev 12:9), our first set of parents yielded to the desire to be as God, thereby gaining the ability to know both good and evil. Rather than relating only to God in a trustful relationship, humans chose to obey the voice of the snake. In biblical thought post-Genesis 3, the creation is flawed and fallen as the result of this human opening to the evil power that works against God and God’s good creation. For this reason Paul writes in Romans 8:18-22 that the whole creation, which was subjected to futility, will be set free one day. Thus with all of creation, we also groan while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

Precisely within this context God reaches out to us in grace and helpful provision. God gives laws, the Ten Commandments, to enable humans to experience a goodness approximating the intention of creation, living together in shalom. Each of the Ten Commandments contributes to the health of the community. Breaking any one of them jeopardizes the health and welfare of the community.

Individualism is one of the greatest threats to community health. One person’s violation of the operative rules of community life affects the whole community’s health and relation to God. Rampant in Western society, individualism has had a disastrous effect upon community well-being. Our modern world highly values individual choice and self-fulfillment—and both are “good” within limitations. When pursued without regard for community life, the quest to freely choose whatever we desire stifles communal shalom. This is shockingly evident in the economic meltdown of 2008-2011, where greed and corruption in high places with unregulated free enterprise, ruined corporate welfare in the United States and globally. In turn, this negatively affects the community’s shalom-health (unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies). The twenty-two-day war from Christmas 2008 to January 18, 2009, between Israel and the Gaza Palestinians caused horrific destruction of shalom. Embargoes denying entrance of food and medicines into Gaza, or into any country, as was the case in Iraq for years and now Iran, destroy a people’s shalom. Without laws for community life, and security from marauding neighbors, the shalom welfare of any community is quickly undermined. For this reason God gave to Israel not only the Ten Commandments but also a system of built-in checks against human greed and corruption. The system of sabbath, sabbaticals and Jubilee celebrates equality, even between slaves and masters, instituting forgiveness of debts and release to the slaves every seven years, and redistribution of land and wealth every fifty years, in the year of Jubilee. The seventh year sabbatical also restores the corporate welfare of the people through its mandatory forgiveness of debts, release of slaves who desired release, and giving the land a year of rest, thus regenerating its productivity. Because Israel did not keep these laws, God punished them with exile (Ex 31:12-17; Deut 5:12-15; Is 56:1-2; 58:1-9, 13-14; Jer 32; cf. Mal 2:4-9).

Health is a spiritual issue.[2] When we fail to live in harmony with God’s design for human community, we aid and abet the powers of illness in our bodies and minds. Of crucial importance here is the role of repentance, confession and forgiveness in the structure of a community’s life. We are all sinners and we will all make choices at some time that cause pain and psychic stress to ourselves and others. The key for people’s health is whether these wrongs and hurts can be healed through forgiveness and mutual care for one another even in the midst of health tragedies. This theme, like many others, reminds us all that we live by God’s grace shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who gives us hope amid adversity (Rom 5:3-5).

Thesis 2. God is God and we are weak, mortal and frail creatures (Ps 49; 103).

Another part of biblical creation theology is that humans are adam, made from the ground (adamah), and are thus frail, mortal creatures. This means our health is linked to the earth and our care for it. Otherwise we curse the ground from which we have come and on which our health depends, in food, living space and aesthetic beauty. Also our relation to the earth reminds us that we need to accept our mortality and finitude. Wanting to be “like God” and thus denying or evading our mortality continues the Fall. Arising from human disobedience, it fails to let God be God and to let humans accept their creaturely dependence on God as Creator. Accepting our creature identity is an essential part of human health.

Even though animated by God’s breathing his spirit into a dusty art form—the human body—to become living souls (nephesh), we are still needy, vulnerable people, dependent on God’s sustaining presence and power. We must begin by emphasizing our human frailty, thus avoiding an easy, shallow optimism and unrealistic appraisal of the human situation (see chap. 2). This is the duality of our human nature: constrained by mortality and yet by God’s life-giving Spirit, we surge from one degree of understanding, discovery and invention to another. Finitude and freedom coexist in our being.[3]

Many times the Psalms emphasize the frailty of our human existence (e.g., 90; 103). In Psalm 39 the psalmist cries to God, saying, “how fleeting my life is.” I am only a “passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears.”

Thesis 3. Illness puts us in a quandary before God, for it interrupts and challenges God’s good world in personal experience. The Psalms lead us in voicing our cries of lament to God.

The lament psalms are cries of the righteous, appealing to God for healing, at least to be mindful of the desolate, lonely feeling of the human condition. Psalms 6, 30, and 88 are especially relevant. Psalm 30 specifically describes the sick person’s loss of shalom, interrupted by some type of illness. Psalm 30 traverses three stages of experience: original shalom (v. 6), the disorientation of sickness and cry for help and healing (vv. 2, 8-10), and restoration to life in which “you have turned my mourning into dancing” so “that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever” (vv. 3, 11-12).

Numerous images describe the distress of the sufferer: troubled bones, no soundness of flesh, eyes wasting from grief, wounds grow foul and fester, heart hot within, I mire in the waters, the floods overwhelm me. In many of these images a sense of sinking and being overwhelmed by chaos emerges. The evils of sickness and death are part of the chaos that Yahweh’s divine power holds back from swooping in and down upon life.

Psalm 88, similar to much of Psalm 22, expresses the human sense of Godforsakenness. It likely is describing the feeling of one mentally ill. Though it begins with an appeal to God to hear his cry (vv. 1-2), it dwells on the troubles of the sufferer. The psalmist feels forsaken, shunned by his companions, sinking down to the pit, abandoned to Abaddon—the place of darkness. The psalm never turns the corner to praise God, as most of the lament psalms do.

Martin Marty tells how he wanted to skip Psalm 88 as it came up in the daily reading schedule he and his wife followed daily. This scheduled psalm came up at the time she was dying of cancer. He began reading another psalm, but his wife stopped him, asking, “Why not read Psalm 88?” He told her it didn’t turn the corner to praise. She insisted he read it anyway, since it gave voice to her (and likely also his) feelings. Scripture in its diversity connects with the range of our human experience, and illness is no exception. In this case, it voices the anguish of the soul.

Psalm 103, in contrast, is a jubilant song of thanksgiving for healing, voicing the experience of illness and recovery that deepened appreciation for God’s mighty works of salvation and steadfast love. The sufferer is restored to where he or she can again praise God, function freely in the community, and thus reclaim shalom.

Thesis 4. Suffering means not divine absence but testing, even God’s love for us. In our suffering God is not absent but present in love (the theodicy question is addressed more fully in chap. 4).

We hear briefly four voices from Scripture: Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Isaiah and Job.

Jeremiah, more than any other prophet, writes about the loss of shalom and healing for the nation:

We look for peace [shalom], but find no good,

for a time of healing [marpe], but there is terror instead. (Jer 8:15; cf. Jer 14:19)

Jeremiah scores Israel’s leaders for only a shalom-healing veneer: the priest and the prophets have “treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jer 8:11; 6:14). Hence Jeremiah’s “grief is beyond healing” (Jer 8:18 RSV); there is “no balm in Gilead” and “no physician there . . . the health of my poor people [has] not been restored” (Jer 8:22).

In his “Confessions” Jeremiah cries out for personal healing, linked to the nation’s shalom and healing:

Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed;

save me, and I shall be saved;

for you are my praise. (Jer 17:14)

Jeremiah as prophet of pathos, like Hosea, embodies the sickness and no-shalom health of the nation. Jeremiah laments the lack of and need for shalom and healing for himself and the nation.[4] As Joseph Savage summarizes Jeremiah’s frequent linkage of shalom and healing: “Where a fracturing of shalom is evidenced, there is simultaneously a fracturing of health/healing and vice versa; . . . the terms of shalom and health/healing are mutually inclusive; one cannot be had without the other.”[5] From Jeremiah we learn that all sufferers are not sinners; some are sufferingsaints because of the nation’s transgression.

Habakkuk is plagued with the question of why the wicked prosper (a form of shalom) and overtake the righteous, “so that justice goes forth perverted” (Hab 1:4 RSV). The answer he receives, after he takes his stand to watch, wait and listen, is that “the righteous live by their faith” (Hab 2:4). He then reaffirms faith that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Hab 2:14). Climactically, he sees “the LORD . . . in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him” (Hab 2:20). From his voice we learn that some sufferers are worshiping saints.

Isaiah’s “servant of the Lord” lost his shalom through the horrible desolation of exile as a nation. Lamenting for Jerusalem (cornerstone of shalom) by the waters of Babylon (Ps 137), God reveals to him proclamation of the gospel of peace (Is 52:7), a word of hope in the midst of the suffering. Notably, the wounds of the servant, suffering in the cause of God’s justice (Is 42:1-4), are the means of shalom and healing for many (Is 53:5-12). In this we learn that a sufferer can also be a savior.

Job’s witness, arising from within the wisdom tradition itself, plumbs the depths of the sufferer’s agony and quest for meaning to suffering. He accepts part of the conventional answer: God is to be addressed as responsible for suffering. Job also tempers this judgment in that he realizes Satan also plays a role in suffering, though still under God’s sovereignty (cf. Is 45:7). But he does not accept the other part of the conventional wisdom represented by his friends: that suffering is just punishment for sin and guilt. He cries out for someone to listen to him and present the indictment so he can refute it step by step (Job 31:35-37). He knows he is righteous and the cause of his affliction lies not in his sin and guilt. The way (derek) out of his prison comes by an unlocking from the outside; God answers through the whirlwind: humans cannot presume to know the ways of God; in the midst of suffering God is still there;[6] and the righteous sufferer is a friend of God.

On the one hand, sickness and suffering appear to fight against God, to be of the devil, but Scripture also frames suffering differently. God hears the cry of the sufferer and, as loving God, is present in suffering, in Christ’s and in ours (more in chap. 5). Meilaender addresses this early on in his treatment of bioethics. I sum it up in three points:

At the heart of Christian belief lies a suffering, crucified God.

Suffering is not a good thing, not something one ought to seek for oneself or others.

But it is an evil out of which God, revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus, can bring good. We must therefore always be of two minds about it.

[7]

Thesis 5. Jesus is Healer-Savior and leads us in faith and prayer.

In the Gospels healings of various types were an essential part of Jesus’ mission (developed in chap. 3). From Jesus’ compassion and healings a new community emerged, those who followed Jesus, both women and men (Lk 8:1-3; 9:1-4). Love and healing go hand in hand. As C. S. Lewis puts it in Shadowlands, “We love, to know we are not alone.” The bond that unites Jesus and his followers is that they—indeed, we—have been touched with love and healed. Love, healing and peace are a seamless garment.

In Jesus’ healings faith (either that of the sick person or of friends, as in Mk 2:5) often plays a significant role in the healing, but not in exorcisms or in all healings, as, for example, the healing of the man born blind in John 9 or raising the widow’s son at Nain (Lk 7:11-17, though it generated faith). This raises the issue of Jesus healings as “faith healings.”[8] Because our modern conceptions of the relation between the physical/material and spiritual worlds do not mesh well with the worldview of the first century, the matter is complex. It is further complicated by the Calvinist and Arminian differences over the origin and nature of faith. If faith is seen as an act of the human will, which can be conjured up by our efforts, then no, the healings are not faith healings. If faith is seen as gift of God apart from the gospel message awakening faith, then no, also, the healings are not faith healings. But if faith is seen as openness to divine presence in humble reliant trust, then, yes, these are faith healings. For then people respond to Jesus as the one who mediates the divine power to heal. But unbelief constrains Jesus’ healing as in Nazareth where people regarded him as only the son of Joseph and Mary. But even then there’s a curious mix of can’t and can: “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them” (Mk 6:5). Faith and healing occur more normatively when people accept Jesus as messianic revealer of the kingdom. In every age the church needs to test whether claims to faith healing are fact or fraud. Ted Schwartz sees this as a continuing challenge and task for the church.[9]

How do we value and assess miracles as an ongoing ministry of the church? Scripture does not promise that miracles occur in accord with some formula of human faith. Rather, miracles are given as bestowals of the kingdom’s presence exalting Jesus Christ.[10] For those whose views of reality are not fenced by rationalistic walls that separate the material from the spiritual,[11] an openness to the presence of the spiritual may and, because God is gracious, likely will be answered by special signs of the kingdom—wonders, mighty works, call them miracles if you will—which unmistakably extol Jesus Christ as God’s mender of groaning creation. Prayer, inspired by Spirit power and in the name of Jesus, connects us to the God from whom all healing blessings flow. Hence prayer is essential, providing openness to God’s healing of sickness as sign of kingdom presence. Prayer also provides the empowerment to endure suffering in the hope of the ultimate healing, and prayer paradoxically also enables healing. (As I edit this, I marvel at a “miracle” reported this past Sunday and more fully in today’s e-mail: a woman in her early eighties and last days of life, all thought, inexplicably rallied and is now living toward robust life again! The doctors have no explanation.)

In Luke 10 Jesus’ healing ministry continues in the mission of the Seventy. Healing is linked to two other major themes of the Gospel: the coming of the kingdom of God and the downfall of Satan. Further, the gospel of peace is the greeting that elicits receptivity or rejection. Receptivity and faith in response to the gospel of peace are crucial. How do we hear the good news Isaiah prophesied: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace” (Is 52:7)? Jesus’ entire ministry is summed by his “preaching the good news (i.e., gospel) of peace . . . and healing all that were oppressed . . . doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:36, 38 RSV; see fig. 3.1).

Jesus’ compassion, his access policy and people’s faith are significant features in Jesus’ healings. These are interconnected with Jesus’ messianic mission: to bring near God’s reign of goodness and wholeness on earth, and to drive back the powers of Satan and sin, evil and darkness. Proclaiming God’s reign in Luke is announcing the good news of peace (fulfilling Is 52:7; see chap. 3). Further, however, as Michael Brown points out, “these supernatural healings were not merely authenticating signs of his divinity or messiahship; . . . rather, they reflected the very heart of God toward sick and suffering humanity.”[12] This balance of emphases is important in constructing a theology of healing in the life of the church today.

Thesis 6. The Spirit too is healer and is the divine pledge of complete healing.

A key New Testament perspective is that believers share in the sufferings of the present eon. Indeed, all creation has been groaning, waiting—standing on tiptoe—with eager longing for God’s final redeeming, healing work on behalf of those holding this Christian hope. God’s children await the redemption of their bodies (Rom 8:18-23), which correlates with God’s defeat of the last enemy, death (1 Cor 15:26, 57-58). The redemption of the body is based on the central Christian belief of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Hence, in uniting with Christ’s death and resurrection in baptism, believers receive the arrabon, the Holy Spirit, as down payment for the final redemption, resurrection in the life to come.

As long as this temporal tension is a part of our salvation, we share in the groaning and sufferings of “waiting in hope.” As Christiaan Beker says:

For in their own bodies, Christians live existentially the tension of their present uncompleted existence in solidarity with an unredeemed creation, and they must therefore yearn for the consummation of the resurrection, which is nothing but God’s triumph over the power of death that poisons his creation.[13]

From this perspective of suffering and hope we encounter distinctive features of a Christian approach to health: Christ’s work is viewed as a mending of all creation so that our personal health is seen within that larger context. The gift of the Spirit is our experiential participation in the overlap of the ages. It is a source of empowerment from the standpoint of God’s final healing of all things (ta panta). Kenneth Bakken emphasizes these points:

God brings us health in many forms, but until we are touched by the reality of the Spirit, we cannot be truly whole. Our spiritual life, then, becomes a key factor in our journey toward wholeness. Krister Stendahl, former dean of the Harvard Divinity School, has said that God’s agenda is the mending of creation. God is active in creation and is present in us—for our healing and ultimate salvation. The word salvation, from the root word salvus, means “healed.” Thus, an abundant life of wholeness comes only in the mending, the healing.[14]

Thesis 7. The church is called to be God’s face of healing in this world. Our mission is to mediate the healing power of God, Christ, Holy Spirit through prayer and exercise of faith.

In Practicing Theology, Tammy Williams insightfully develops a threefold analysis of practices of healing in African American churches. She assesses three streams of healing practice (see table 1.1).[15]

Table 1.1. Summary of Three Streams of Healing Practice

While table 1.1 does not do justice to the many good points developed in Williams’s article (she begins her discussion of each type with a “gospel song” text), it does show a profile of difference, found not only in African American churches but in churches generally. In introducing her article, she makes an important point, “Because healing is often practiced at the edge of life and death and often involves persons who are very vulnerable, it is essential that practitioners understand what they are actually doing and why they are doing it.”[16] While Williams leans toward the “holistic” type, she affirms elements in each and candidly identifies the dangers and weaknesses in each. She ends her article with a section titled “There Is a Doctor in the House and Jesus Is His Name,” answering the question in the title of her article. She calls for solidarity with those ill, emphasizes the need for spiritual transformation even though cure or recovery may not occur, and that doctor Jesus’ “aim is not to cure and then disappear but whose healing more profoundly consists in our knowledge of him and his presence with us. . . . [T]he aim of healing is ‘getting to know the doctor better’ and honoring our relationship to him in ‘sickness and in health,’ in ‘life and death’ (Phil 1:20).”[17]

Hermeneutical Reflections