Discipling the Sick
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the February 1, 2014
Sabbath School Lesson
“But some of them said, “Could not he
who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” John
11:37, NIV
In the early
1970s, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Weber produced a rock opera called “Jesus
Christ Superstar.” One memorable scene in the Broadway production that
eventually also became a movie came after Jesus cleansed the temple of the
money changers. Appearing exhausted and consumed with the weight of events soon
to take place during Passion Week, he is besieged by those seeking healing. The
lyrics betray the burden of these demands and perhaps the sometimes selfish
motives of those making them:
“See my eyes. I can hardly see!
See me stand. I can hardly walk!
I believe you can make me whole!
See my tongue. I can hardly talk!
See my skin. I'm a mass of blood!
See my legs. I can hardly stand!
I believe you can make me well!
See my purse. I'm a poor, poor man!
Will you touch, will you mend me Christ?
Won't you touch, will you heal me Christ?
Will you kiss, you can cure me Christ?
Won't you kiss, won't you pay me Christ?”[i]
Anyone who has traveled in a
third-world country and been beset by crowds of beggars may begin to feel how beleaguered
Jesus must have been. When I was in Saigon visiting the city zoo during the
Vietnam War, a couple of children came up to me asking for money. Feeling sorry
for them, I gave them a few Piastres.[ii]
Almost immediately a couple of dozen children and disabled adults came out of
nowhere like a flood and surrounded me begging for more Piastres. Feeling
overwhelmed and unable to provide even one Piastre apiece for so many, I
quickly found refuge in a nearby Buddhist temple where the monks did not allow
begging, seeing it as competition for the temple offerings.
Perhaps in our own sufferings, we can
understand the desperation and need that drives these destitute petitioners. I
prayed many, many times beseeching healing and favor from God on behalf of my
first wife, who succumbed to the ravages of Multiple Sclerosis after three
decades of marriage. Instead of healing, I saw her slowly lose strength,
agility and even hope for healing before the relentless onslaught of the
disease. Sadly, during the course of her illness, many charlatans sought to
deprive us of our financial resources by touting “sure” cures that they happened
to be selling through multi-level marketing schemes. These “cures” were always
expensive and always came with the line, “What does the cost matter if it heals
your wife?”
After spending money on some of these
schemes, we found most did nothing and a few actually made her worse. Finally
we told the hucksters, if they will pay for the first month of “treatment” and
she improves, we will take it from there. We had very few takers once their own
finances were on the line. The few that did found they had the same results.
This experience helped us to understand the desperate lot of the woman coming
to Jesus who had an issue of blood for twelve years and spent all she had on
doctors.[iii]
Not able to heal her, the doctors were certainly not eager to return her money
either.
We also encountered those who said
that healing was a matter of faith, and if we had sufficient faith, my wife
would be healed. Perhaps they were basing this on the encounter when Jesus
descended from the Mount of Transfiguration and was confronted by a father with
a son plagued with seizures.[iv]
The Disciples were unable to heal the boy, and Jesus rebuked the father for his
lack of faith. When the Disciples asked why they could not heal the boy, Jesus
told them they also lacked the faith necessary to do so. But is faith the
answer? If so why do so many saints sometimes suffer so greatly from physical ailments?
Even Paul had his “thorn in the flesh” that some feel might have been a vision
disability.[v][vi]
Perhaps there is more to healing from
God than simple faith. When Jesus went into the synagogue in Nazareth,[vii]
He pointed out that during a severe famine in the time of Elijah, God did not send
relief for anyone through Elijah except for a foreign woman from the same
country as the wicked Queen Jezebel, notwithstanding that there were many in
Israel who were suffering from the famine. Also, in the time of Elisha, no
lepers in Israel were cured through Elisha’s intercession. Only Naaman, a
Syrian, who practically had to be dragged unwillingly into the river to be
cured, found healing through the prophet. If faith was a necessary precursor to
healing, why were these foreigners healed over anyone in Israel? Is God
capricious?
Far from capriciousness, the Bible
tells us that God sends his rain on both the just and the unjust.[viii]
The rains were necessary to provide good harvests in an agrarian economy. God
apparently dispenses such a blessing without favoritism. If blessings are
shared without regard to righteousness, would it be reasonable to assume that sufferings
might be equally shared as well? If so, perhaps real faith is not in finding
deliverance from suffering, but in how we face it. In the well-known Shepherd’s
Psalm,[ix]
we are not told that God will deliver us from the “Valley of the Shadow of Death,”
but that instead He will be right there in the valley with us. That presence is
perhaps a comfort for all those who have been in the vale of despair. Maybe
deliverance comes not through the absence of suffering but in experiencing the
presence of God.
Some might say that God has a purpose
in our suffering, and if we could understand it, we would agree with His
decision not to deliver us. However, this paints a rather Machiavellian
portrait of God, a God who justifies the means by the end. It would be hard to
picture such a God weeping[x]
at our misfortune since He decided to make us go through it. Is God really such
an intriguer, or are we merely attributing human ways to Someone who transcends
all of that. The Bible prophet Isaiah says that His ways are not our ways,[xi]
yet we nonetheless often anthropomorphize Him and his actions. Maybe in the
face of our lack of understanding, silence is a better response than attributing
to God human character, especially negative human character.
Some when dealing with human
suffering in the face of ongoing prayer are tempted to say that God is
answering the prayer, and the answer is “No.” This is a trite response that
makes God appear indifferent to the sufferer. It also flies in the face of a
God that Jesus said would provide whatever was asked for in faith.[xii]
Perhaps for the saint, the citizen of the Kingdom of God, the answer is always “Yes,”
but the timetable is up to God. Like a surgeon who decides when the patient is
best able to handle a needed surgery, God may delay the answer until the moment
it will be optimally received. For some that may be at the Parousia. For
others, it might be during their lifetime here on Earth, only at a later time
more appropriate to the sufferer’s best possible outcome.
This possibility allows God to
continue to be loving. It does not make Him indifferent or scheming to a
particular end at our expense. As with any human perspective, it naturally
falls short of adequately explaining God. How can we explain a being that can
exist outside of space and time and yet is said to have entered into that space
and that time in the person of Jesus? Our perspective is bound by that very
dimensionality that defines our universe. We may as well be ants trying to
describe the various aspects of human society around the globe while limited to
our anthill and its immediate environs.
When we peer into the vast expanse of
space with our best telescopes, we are unable to view the edge of our universe.
We can only mathematically speculate that such an edge even exists. We do not even
clearly understand dark matter which apparently makes up much of that universe.
When we attempt to project what we understand from living on Earth into the
cosmos, will it hold up, or are there things beyond our understanding that will
fail to conform to our expectations? Do we even understand here on our little
blue-and-green marble of a planet the possibility that the basic underlying
principle of everything we see may be love?[xiii]
Is it possible that if we allowed ourselves to be swept in the surging current
of that love, its presence would be all we would need in our dark valley of
suffering?
