Working Wonders

There are two central claims made in the passage from Wisdom. God did not make death. God made us for incorruption. Volumes have been written in theological argument about them. Do we agree? Most of us come to our own conclusion. We frame for ourselves a working hypothesis.

When the news reported that Steve Jobs would be back at his desk soon, after a liver transplant, they showed a clip from an earlier commencement address at Stanford, after his first bout with life-threatening disease. In it he said that death was nature’s change agent. And St. Francis referred to Sister Death, implying that death is an integral part of life and the life cycle. So what are we to do with the claim that God did not make death? Placing the passage back in context helps.

This wisdom book was written less than a century before Jesus’ life and the early Christian record. It comes out of the melting pot of Alexandria, where many faiths and philosophies met and mingled. The Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures, came out of Alexandria.

In terms of demographics, here are the realities of life and death in that century, as lived by the original audiences of Wisdom, Corinthians, and Mark. “In the cities of antiquity, nearly a third of live births were dead by age six. By their mid-teens, sixty percent would have died, by their mid-twenties, seventy-five percent, and ninety percent by their mid-forties. Perhaps three percent reached their sixties. Few ordinary people lived out their thirties (Social Science Commentary on the Gospels, Malina & Rohrbaugh, 211).” We think Jesus died while still a young man, but by life expectancy data such as this, he had lived a fairly long life.

Now let’s consider the verse immediately before the first claim, that God did not make death. It exhorts, do not invite death by the error of your life. And listen to the verse immediately after the second claim, that God made us for incorruption. It condemns the wicked, who with their deeds and words invited death and made a covenant with death. So then, we recognize what the author is saying. The wages of sin is death. The way of the wicked is doomed.

Those who make a covenant with God experience life differently. The wages of repentance is life. The way of the upright is open to possibility. Grace upholds reliance on God. So the kind of death this author is discussing is defined as separation from God, who is life itself. It helps us to understand the point about incorruptibility. Anyone who abides in God is therefore incorruptible. The author is making distinctions about quality of life in this world. The disobedient are the walking dead. The obedient are alive in God.
The best news of the passage is conveyed by a third claim. The generative forces of the world are wholesome. It is God who upholds the integrity of creation. Grace is the agency of healing, the impetus to wholeness. In the brokenness of human life, grace supports the redemptive work of justice. We might say that the wages of holiness is wholesomeness. God is manifest in those who learn God’s way of working. These claims are part of the context of Corinthians and Mark.

Before we move to the New Testament, the psalm, an older document, adds a persistent and pernicious twist. The crux of the psalm is to say that the psalmist cried out to God, and God restored him to health. There’s a catch though. The equation of health with security due to divine favor, and disease with insecurity due to God’s disfavor, is problematic. We don’t experience things that way, when we’re sick or someone we love is sick. Many faithful people are sick, and we all die sooner or later. Yet these ideas were prevalent in the first century. They linger today and still compound distress.

Here’s a set of questions raised by the lessons. How much of physical health and well being is a matter of our own influence? How much is a matter of communal influence? How much a matter of environmental influence? And how much a matter of God’s attitude towards us? Keep them in mind as we consider the gospel story.

Mark’s story involves two healings, of an older woman and a young girl. The girl’s father, Jairus, is a prominent citizen, the local religious leader, a public figure whose personal tragedy attracts notice. His appeal to the itinerant wonder worker has all the makings of a communal drama, what we would call a media spectacle. The woman in the crowd is invisible. She is far below Jairus in status. She probably shouldn’t have been in public and in danger of touching anyone. Her affliction had rendered her unclean and outcast for all those years. Yet Jesus responds to each appeal with the same consideration.

Both fall on their knees before Jesus. They acknowledge their vulnerability, their need and their hope of healing. The woman took matters into her own hands, by touching Jesus, rendering him unclean by the law. She shows moral courage, confessing, when he asks who had claimed his healing power. She knows she has been healed of her physical ailment. Now she must risk exposure, to be healed in spirit and in public. Jesus declares that she will continue to abide in God’s shalom, upheld in God’s wholesomeness.

The disciples missed a lot of what happened and considered it a distraction and a delay. They were incredulous that Jesus was capable of distinguishing one particular touch from the crush of the crowd. It means they weren’t tracking grace at work as he was. They still have much to learn. Jairus may have felt the same way, concerned as he was for his child. What is Jesus is saying about life and healing? He’s demonstrating what we may call God’s version of universal access health care. Jesus confirms that it is the woman’s faith that fuels her hope of health and her initiative to seek her own healing. The patient’s cooperation is essential, and the system is available to all.

As they continue on their way, they are told that it is too late for the child. Indeed, ritual mourners have begun the ceremonies before they arrive at the house. Jesus reframes, interrupting their chanting. She is not dead, only sleeping. They laugh, but wait to see. Space for God’s possibility has been reclaimed. Who knows how many borderline cases there are, that may be tipped by group assumption? Even with all our monitoring equipment, we know of coma cases that appear hopeless for years, yet reverse unexpectedly and without explanation, to the astonished relief of those who wait.
Who can say how this happens? What we can say is that the boundaries are not as clearly delineated as we sometimes suppose. When the child arises from her sickbed, Jesus prescribes nourishment. Then he tells the family and disciples to frame the occurrence as he has done for the crowd. She was not dead. She was sleeping. The statement is released to the waiting public.

Before we put this together, we need a piece from the epistle, where Paul is goading the Corinthians to give as much relief aid to the Jerusalem church as the Macedonian church has coughed up. But what he says to move them to generosity is what we pray routinely in school chapel. May those of us who have more than enough share with those of us who have less than enough, so everyone will have enough of the basics to live. It’s pretty simple, distributive justice.

Here’s another set of questions for us. How much life can we impart to one another? How much life support can we give one another? How much healing can we accomplish by touching and being touched, by accompanying one another when faith and hope are tested, by speaking encouragement to one another?

There are mysterious and collaborative dynamics at the heart of our faith and our healing. Christians are called to be engaged in these complexities, to be working cooperatively with grace, at the limits of life, without understanding, but with faith and hope and love. Christians are about what is possible with God, about well being in its broadest sense, because wholesomeness is what God is all about.

I have a hunch that the limits of our power and influence are far more fungible than we recognize. The only way to learn more is to practice more. The gospel calls us to exercise our full capacity, to use every resource, and to cultivate every facility, working as well at the boundaries of our own abilities. As we participate in the work of redemption, the sovereignty of grace over fear and doubt, over injustice and oppression, over illness and disease, will be revealed. Thus will our discernment and efficacy increase. Thus will the generative forces of the world increase the wholesome outcome. We disciples have much to learn about how to cooperate with God, about how to collaborate with nature’s healing power.

The national press tells us that the summer topic is health care reform. Can we reform our delivery system for basic health care, to be more equitable and affordable and economically viable? Yes, if we have the collective will to face down those who benefit from the present inequities. We won’t solve our public health issues any other way. God’s health care plan tells us that justice serves the common good, that injustice is a social disease. Let us pray that we find a way through, a middle way. But in the lessons, public health was fairly low tech. There was no highly developed and specialized medical system. That is a fairly contemporary wonder.

Ponce de Leon wasn’t the only one who went in search of the fountain of youth. People have their bodies frozen at death, in case modern medicine will one day be able to thaw and revive them. The cosmetics industry thrives on the pursuit of ways to make us appear ageless. Last week I heard that there is now a self-contained, off the shelf, artificial heart. And it’s wireless, operated by a battery pack worn at the waist.

We are told by the prevailing cosmology that we live in a closed system. Nothing is wasted or added. Everything is recycled and reused. Elemental components are the building blocks of renewing life. This idea appeals to me, because I feel very close to the dead. Not only are they in my DNA, but I breathe their dust, and one day I’ll be as redistributed as they are. It’s as though the cosmos itself is the organism at the top of the food chain. So if we’re talking of incorruptibility, it appears we’re talking about something other than bodily integrity.

Given the Hellenistic context of the writings, we’re probably talking about psyche, the soul. That’s a word we can use to point to the part of our selves that lives forever in God’s comprehension. In a closed system, our unique individuality is part of the whole. That idea takes the Hebraic form of being recorded in God’s book, the book of life. Paul speaks of the distinction between the corruptibility of the flesh, our physical bodies, and the immortality of the soul, whatever of us remains in God as part of God’s life.

But can we beat the rap? There are a lot of people trying to do that. Let us recall that Lazarus was called out from the tomb and his near death experience to resume life in Bethany. Presumably, he died again sometime later. And let’s say that Jairus’ daughter got up from her sickbed, had matzoh ball soup, grew up, married, had kids, raised a family, and lived to be a grandmother, beating the demographic odds of her day. Presumably, she died at some point. It’s not about beating the rap in that sense.

The lessons are about leaving behind the ambulance chasing, the sensation seeking. They are about shedding the grave clothes of injustice and oppression. They are about silencing the clamor of ritual obsequy that assumes the worst too soon. They are about faith healing, as distinct from snake oil and quackery.

Jesus says to us, touch each other with care and compassion. Encourage each other in wellness. Give to any who need what you don’t need for yourself and do need to share to become whole. You’ll be amazed at how much kitchen table medicine you can accomplish in my name. Be attentive to the dynamic of grace, and go with the flow. Healing will happen beyond your capacity to imagine. If we are to transcend what we now consider possible, this is the way that God has given us find out.

Who knows how far we may advance God’s wholesome will as amateurs, as healers by means of love? And who knows how far we may advance by collaboration, as amateur healers, in cooperation with those trained and skilled in the medical arts, and with the technological advances daily made available? It’s all wonder working, if you ask me. But hear this, any health care system, to be effective, must be rooted in justice, compassion, and good faith. That’s the gospel. You can quote me to the press. AMEN

The Rev. Dr. Katherine M. Lehman+ Rector
4 Pentecost, proper 8, June 28, 2009
Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24
Psalm 30
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43