And He Cured Many Who Were Sick
Health Care

Mark 1:29-39

We need only to look at television and magazines, to listen to our commercials, or consider the distribution of our income and time to realize that we live in a world that values mental acuity, power, military might, athletic and sexual prowess, and narrowly defined images of beauty. Illness, aging, disability, and death are hidden away from sight in hospital rooms and nursing homes, as if by hiding them away, we can forget the truth that we, too, will face a similar fate one day.  In this world, it may be hard for us to imagine the love God has for our physical bodies in all ages, stages, health, illness, and abilities. As much as many of us would like to deny our own bodies and the bodies of those who are disabled or sick, our God cares about the incarnational aspects of our lives—our flesh, our bodies.

Our God is One who creates us as embodied beings and cares about the flesh of a brother who is killed. Our God brings floods upon the earth because of sin but restores creation and gives a promise not to destroy all flesh. Our God hears the cries of a woman and child, cast off and wandering in the wilderness, giving them water and proclaiming a promise to them. Our God cares about women whose wombs are barren and makes them fruitful. Our God provides for fleshly needs of hunger and thirst in the wilderness. Our God answers the deathbed plea of a king and heals him for God’s own glory (2 Kings 20). The biblical witness testifies that God’s judgment, testing, mercy, and grace are experienced through human flesh.

If the salvation history contained in the Old Testament is not enough to convince us that God chooses fleshliness for God’s creatures, and God cares about and works in and through human flesh, God made this even more clear by coming in the flesh to dwell among us and make God’s self known to us. God could have chosen any way to come to us, but chose the human flesh. In that flesh, God, as the Christ, healed those who were blind and lame, cured an elderly woman with a fever, calmed those tormented by mental illness, and reached out with compassion to the suffering crowds who pressed around him, desperate for healing.  God fed the pangs of hunger and told us that we will be judged by how we care for the bodies of others (Matthew 25). And God makes our bodies the temple of the Holy Spirit.

This stuff of which we are made, our physical bodies, clearly matters to God. Our body is the form we have been given to live in this world, and it matters how we take care of it. It matters because this body is God’s creation, God’s handiwork, and it reflects God’s signature and love. It matters because this body is needed for God’s work in the world. Our hands and feet, as well as the hands and feet of those who cannot afford medical care, may be the only way that someone will know God.  The hands and feet of people who are elderly, disabled, poor, sick, those who have experienced the limits of their own humanity, are often the very best hands and feet to bring the good news of God’s steadfast love and mercy to those who are “healthy, wealthy, and wise,” as they can truly witness to what God can and will do in the face of our weakness and limitations.

Can we honestly say that the bodies of the insured, the bodies of the wealthy, are more worthy of healing and care than the bodies of the poor or uninsured? Can we say that it is right for those who are insured to have access to all of the medications that they need, while others with treatable illnesses go without medication and medical treatment because they cannot afford the cost? Is it right for insurance companies to negotiate lab fees of $2 to $6 while those who are uninsured are billed $40 to $50 for the same tests? Should a woman have to choose between heart medication and food or rent? One woman I met recently had $800 a month in medications. What kinds of choices would each of us have to make if we were faced with costs such as these in addition to our regular living expenses?

While the world may value persons differently based on income, earning capacity, education, experience, race, physical ability, appearance, or socioeconomic background, there are none of these distinctions in Christ. All flesh and bones, all bodies, are God’s creation. We have all been gifted by God for God’s work in the world. The person who happens to be insured or who can afford the cost of medical care is no more or less important to God than the person who is uninsured or underinsured, no more or less important than the barren woman, the dying king, the wandering and hungry Israelites, the suffering Job, the blind and leprous men, the bleeding woman, the child on her deathbed.

As the church, we have a responsibility to witness to the incarnational love of God by the way we care for the bodies of those who may not be able to care for themselves in our world, those whom the world casts aside as unimportant or of less value. We have a call and responsibility to listen to the stories of those who visit the doors of our clinics and crisis programs or who sit in the rooms and halls of our nursing homes, to open our eyes to the ways that our systems and society are leaving some without adequate health care, and to begin to make changes, through the way we care for those in our midst and through legislation and political advocacy. When we open our eyes and hearts to hear, we will hear the voice of God calling us to care.

By Rev. Susan H. Harrison, Soapstone United Methodist Church, Raleigh