This morning, I want to share three excerpts from healing stories found in Luke in the Christian Bible. These stories have something in common. They each feature an “outsider” who is in need of healing. They each involve breaking through a crowd or an established cultural boundary. And they each conclude with a statement by Jesus about what faith has done for the central character.
Here is the first story:
“Just then some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; 19but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. 20When he saw their faith, 24…he said to the one who was paralyzed— “I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home.” 25Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God.”
Further on in Luke, the story is told of a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years. This bleeding made her “impure” and she was not permitted in the Temple—the center of communal life. She was a social outcast by virtue of her physical condition. And she was broke because had spent all her money in search of a cure. Then she saw Jesus in a crowd and broke through to touch him—a bold and forbidden act by her cultural and religious standards. A bleeding woman should not touch a Jewish man. Jesus felt her touch his robe and said, “Who touched me?”
8:47-48: “When the woman saw that she could not remain hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before him, she declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. 48He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”
Finally, I will tell part of what is known as the story of the ten lepers. Leprosy is another case in which a disease made people “impure” and social outcasts. Lepers were forced to live outside the walls of the city. In this story, Jesus is outside the city, too, walking to Jerusalem through the region between Samaria and Galilee.
14When he saw [the lepers], he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
In each of these stories, Jesus acknowledges the presence of a faith that has the capacity to heal, to make whole, to bring an outsider back into the life of the community.
The obvious way to understand “faith” in these stories is as “faith in” or “trust in” Jesus as a healer. Stories surrounded Jesus in his travels that he could cast out demons and heal lepers, the blind and the deaf. These people, in their desperate physical and social circumstances, hoped that he might heal them, too.
But the beauty of religious texts is that, like poetry, they ask us to go further, to go deeper. We shouldn’t always stop at the first and obvious meaning, but dig down to discover meaning that has power for our lives. As we consider these stories, what other meanings can we derive from the word faith?
The paralyzed man on a bed couldn’t get into the house where Jesus was because there was such a big crowd. But his friends weren’t deterred. They hauled him up to the roof, ripped off the tiles (thank you, neighbor!) and lowered him down through the hole so he could get close to Jesus. When he saw their faith, the man was healed. He stood up and took his bed and went home…
So, what is faith in this story?
The association I make is with ‘persistence.’ The man’s friends demonstrated undaunted determination to achieve contact, to make a connection. Faith here is thinking creatively to solve a problem because the stakes are very high. It means taking risks to break through erected barriers to be seen and heard and healed.
In the story of the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, what can we understand about faith?
In this case, I interpret faith as holding on to hope, even if it takes years to realize healing. Faith is the self-awareness that we are in need of healing and are ready to be healed. And faith is the courage and confidence to assert our wholeness, even if it means crossing a line, transgressing a cultural taboo. Her faith made her well.
Finally, the story of the healing of the 10 lepers includes the notation that one, the Samarian, came to back to express gratitude. Jesus acknowledges this gratitude, this faithfulness, and encourages the healed man to go on his way—to claim his freedom and live.
These stories in Luke are commonly used as illustrations of the power of Jesus to provide miraculous healings. But what if they are read as revelations of the power and example of his love, as illustrations of the transformation that can occur when everyone is included? What if we can discover in these stories how faith is the catalyst for unleashing the potential in all of us to love and to heal and to be healed?
I have been thinking about the politics of identity, of how we often say “We” and in doing so create an “Us” and a “Them.” How we create “inside” and “outside.” How we draw circles around ourselves to mark the divide. And what kind of “faith” it will take to dismantle those divides.
If you haven’t yet read the book Infidel by Ayan Hirsi Ali, I hope you will soon. It is the biography of a young Somali Muslim woman who escaped an arranged marriage by becoming a refugee in the Netherlands. She eventually ran for office in her adopted country and became a member of Parliament. However, she had to give up her seat and seek asylum in the US because she spoke publicly about the repressive nature of Islam as she experienced it. For speaking what she believes, she began to receive threats on her life.
Ayan grew up inside a very tight-knit circle defined by her gender, her religion and her familial clan. At a very young age, her grandmother literally beat her into understanding her place in the world. By five years old, she had memorized her lineage back several hundred years, and knew in her core where in her society she was an insider or outsider.
As long as she accepted her position within the clan, she was in. As long as she submitted to the requirements imposed by her culture and religion, she was in. If she ever stepped outside the oppressively proscribed boundaries, she would be out. And that breaking of boundaries could prove fatal.
Paradoxically for Ayan, it took declaring that she no longer believed in the God of her childhood religion that brought some healing into her life. It took re-evaluating her inherited traditions to free her from inherited oppressions. For her, “faith” is a fearless
re-membering of her worth and human dignity, even though breaking through the crowd of oppression was and remains dangerous. She continues to live faithfully, advocating democracy and freedom and justice, breaking out of the silence imposed on her woman’s voice, struggling to open the world for other women.
What does it mean for us to be a community of faith? In what way is ours a faith that heals, makes whole and saves?
I am filled with joyful anticipation of proclaiming our faithful affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of all people by voting next week to become a Welcoming Congregation. As Rebekah addressed in her sermon last week and Stephen in his two weeks ago: it is not enough to believe that we are already welcoming or that we are not racist, not really. We must actively work towards anti-racism, work affirmatively for anti-oppression—because the boundaries have been set for too long and are too pervasive. It is like we are fish, and racism and oppression is the water we swim in. We cannot even notice it until we step outside it and look carefully and faithfully at our social condition and conditioning.
We have worked as a congregation for two years to be more aware, to awaken to the systemic, persistent oppression of prejudice in our institutions and culture. We have been striving to change the conditions and the conditioning here within our religious community and in ourselves.
With our vote next week, we will be writing our own faithful healing story…of taking down the barriers, the boundary lines, and saying publicly: Welcome. You are welcome here. You—whoever you are--are inside. Your faith has healed you: your courage, your persistence, your righteousness, your belief that it could be different. By faith, we are healed and made whole. In faith, we are ready to say “We” and, finally, mean everyone.
But our faithful, healing work will not end with our vote next week. That will be our commencement. Our new beginning. Because “[w]e are not healed to stay the same, but to live differently...”
Early last year, ABC journalist Bob Woodruff was wounded in Iraq by a roadside bomb that sent shrapnel into the left side of his brain. For a long time after he came out of a coma, he couldn’t remember names like ‘Israel’ or ‘Hezbollah.’ Amazingly, he is working as a correspondent again. Healed, he is doing it differently. He is speaking out on behalf of wounded soldiers. His reporting includes stories on the shortcomings of veterans hospitals and the difficulties veterans face in accessing care.
On a personal level, he is not even aiming to be the same as he was before. In an article in The New York Times last week, Woodruff said, “It’s probably not going to be 100 percent in the same way it was before. But in some ways I’m 120 percent better…My wife has even said I was kind of a jerk sometimes, and now I’m not.”
We are not healed to stay the same, but to live differently. Let us strive to be a community of faith. Let ours be a faith that is persistent, courageous, hopeful, grateful and self-aware. May that faith make us whole and strengthen us to do the work of dismantling the barriers that keep some out. May this be our saving faith. Amen.
