On the Relationship Between Healing and Forgiveness

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

12 January 2020

Mark 2.1-12; 18-22

Listen to the sermon here:

https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/on-healing-and-forgiveness

I’d like to start this morning

            by setting out clearly a couple of things that I don’t believe,

            before coming on to some things that I think I do believe.

Firstly, I don’t believe that sin causes disability.

Some of you have heard me speak previously about my wonderful grandfather,

            he was a powerful influence on me when I was growing up,

                        and in many, many ways modelled the kind of human being

                        that I would aspire to be.

He was also a convinced atheist.

            The thing is, he had been brought up as a Christian Scientist.

I don’t know if you’ve come across the Christian Science movement,

            and as with many religious groups

            these days it is in something of a decline,

but you can still visit Christian Science reading rooms in many towns,

            and there’s one not far from here up at King’s Cross.

Christian Science originated in the States in the late 19^th Century,

            when Mary Baker Eddy published the book Science and Health,

in which she argued that sickness is an illusion

            that can be corrected by prayer alone.

Mary Baker Eddy described Christian Science as a return

            to what she called, ‘primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing’.

And whilst there are some superficial similarities

            with the more mainstream Pentecostal traditions

            of praying for physical healing,

there are also some significant differences.

Christian Scientists believe that reality is purely spiritual

            and that the material world is an illusion,

which means that, for them, disease and disability are mental errors

            rather than physical disorders,

and that the sick should be treated not by medicine

            but by a form of prayer that seeks to correct

            the beliefs responsible for the illusion of ill health.

Those of you who know your classical philosophy,

            or who have been watching The Good Place on Netflix,

will recognise echoes here of Platonic Dualism,

            which has dogged Christianity for the last two thousand years,

                        dividing our spiritual selves from our physical selves

                        to no-one’s real benefit.

What Christian Science boiled down to at a practical level, for my Grandfather,

            was an argument over a tooth abscess.

He was about 14, and needed to go to a dentist because of the pain he was in.

            His mother refused, and told him that he must devote himself instead

                        to prayer for forgiveness for whatever spiritual sin it was

                                    that had crept into his life,

                        and was causing the painful illusion of toothache.

            Well, he was 14, and we can all guess what thoughts had recently crept into his life

                        that he might be concerned were sinful.

Eventually, after six months of physical, sexual, and spiritual torment,

            his father relented and took him to the dentist to have the tooth removed.

Quite reasonably, I think, my grandfather rejected religion at this point;

            I would probably have done the same,

                        and I am grateful that I was brought up in a less abusive religious tradition.

So, my first point:

            I don’t believe that sin causes sickness and disability.

However, you could be forgiven (so to speak) for thinking that Jesus did,

            on the basis of our first reading this morning from Mark’s gospel.

I remember learning this story in Sunday School,

            colouring in drawings of the man being lowered down

                        by his friends through the roof of the house,

            having his sins forgiven, and then standing up,

                        taking up his mat, and walking out.

I remember learning lessons about the power of friendship,

            the importance of forgiveness,

            and how the unfortunate man could never have got to Jesus on his own.

But I don’t remember anyone ever addressing the question

            of what was going on here in terms of the link

            between forgiveness and physical healing.

Which brings me to the second thing I don’t believe:

            I don’t believe that we should set up expectations of physical healing

            for those who come to church or to Jesus.

Another story:

About a year ago, when I was on Sabbatical,

            I attended church with a friend.

It was one of those places where you sing enthusiastically for 40 minutes,

            then have a 40 minute ‘sermon’,

            and then sing again for another half an hour

                        whilst people pray for those who have come forwards for ministry.

The preacher had been speaking about healing,

            and how God wants to heal everyone of whatever is wrong with them.

The sermon then went what I can only describe as ‘slightly off-piste’

            and said that God specifically wanted to bring physical wholeness

                        to those who had had injuries and operations

                        that had left them with metal in their bodies - pins, plates, and so on –

            because these are unnatural and need removing.

The preacher claimed to have been present at a healing gathering

            where he had seen people experience

            the miraculous removal of metal from their bodies.

The prayer ministry at the end was an invitation

            for those who had such metal to come forwards and receive prayer for its removal.

At one level this is laughable nonsense,

            but we should note that this was a well-attended mainstream church,

                        with an educated and intelligent congregation,

                        some of whom went up for prayer for healing.

I’m afraid my mind started wondering what would happen

            if someone with an artificial hip or heart valve went up

            and it suddenly vanished!

Anyway, the serious point I want to make

            is that this is abusive religion, because it sets people up for failure.

If, as my grandfather discovered,

            you faithfully yearn and pray for healing that doesn’t happen,

there is a good chance that you will feel very let down

            by God and by God’s people.

So, I don’t believe that we should set up expectations of physical healing

            for those who come to church or to Jesus.

In the light of which, what are we to make of the paralysed man,

            lowered through the roof,

                        who receives forgiveness for his sins, and healing for his paralysis?

Well, the golden rule for biblical studies is always consider the context,

            and we need to remember that Jesus lived in a world

                        where people didn’t have access to a scientific understanding

                        of disease or disability.

            They didn’t understand genetics and the processes of heritability;

                        and they didn’t understand about bacterial infections, or virus transmission.

So, in one way, as twenty first century readers of this ancient story of Jesus,

            we’re at a profound advantage

            in terms of our understanding of the mechanisms of disease and disability.

However, there is an area where I think the first century Jewish worldview

            was way ahead of us.

I mentioned earlier the influence of Platonic Dualism on Christianity,

            of how it invites us to divide the physical from the spiritual,

                        to see the body as a cradle for the soul,

                        or the mind as the master over matter.

Well, here’s the thing - this dualism, this separation,

            is alien to the Hebrew mind-set.

To read Jesus as healing the man’s paralysis

            through the mechanism of forgiving his sins

is to impose a dualistic perspective

            on actions that are not dualistic, but holistic.

Jesus wasn’t enacting a kind of early Christian Science approach

            where the physical ailment was mechanistically resolved by addressing spiritual sin.

Rather, he looked at the man and saw him as a holistic being,

            mind-body-soul in unity rather than in division,

and he recognised that the man on the mat, as with all of us,

            had multi-dimensional needs.

To have simply healed his paralysis with a wave of the hand

            would have been to do only half the job;

this man needed wholeness in every area of his life,

            from the physical to the spiritual to the relational.

And in publicly forgiving him his sins,

            Jesus was acting to restore the man to right relations with society

            by healing not just his body, but his relationships.

I think there is an important key here in the words of the Lord’s prayer,

            where Jesus instructs his disciples to pray,

            ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us’.

The Scribes might have accused Jesus of blasphemy

            for daring to offer forgiveness of sins,

but in their anger they missed the point of his doing so,

            which was that forgiveness that starts with God to the individual,

            finds its fulfilment in the forgiveness that restores people

                        to right relationship with each other.

This, then, is the context in which the man takes up his bed and walks;

            he has been healed holistically, rather than physically;

            it is forgiveness and restoration which creates the environment for his enabling.

In terms of what we might take from this

            for our own understanding of forgiveness, healing, and prayer,

            there are a couple of key points I’d like to draw out.

Firstly, I think that Jesus was enacting here

            something akin to what we might today call the social model of disability.

This is a way of viewing the world developed by disabled people,

            and in a nutshell says that people are disabled by barriers in society,

            not by their personal impairment or physical difference.[1]

So, for example, a person whose legs don’t work

            is disabled not by their impairment,

                        but by the physical barriers in the world

                        which prevent them from getting around.

If they have access to a wheelchair, suitable ramps, lifts, and toilets,

            they still have the impairment of non-functioning legs,

            but that impairment doesn’t disable them.

This means that the healing of the disability

            is something that is the responsibility of the community,

            rather than the individual.

It is social, not personal.

SCOPE, the disability equality charity says,

‘Barriers can be physical, like buildings not having accessible toilets.

            Or they can be caused by people's attitudes to difference,

                        like assuming disabled people can't do certain things.

The social model helps us recognise barriers that make life harder for disabled people.

            Removing these barriers creates equality and offers disabled people

            more independence, choice and control.’[2]

I’m aware that not all people who live with disability find the Social Model helpful,

            and there are other ways of framing the dialogue between society and impairment.

However, when I look at the story of Jesus encountering the paralysed man,

            it is I think very profound that Jesus doesn’t simply resolve the physical impairment,

but rather starts with a holistic approach

            which restores the man to right relationship with God and with others,

            to create the context within which his disability can be addressed.

We need to keep remembering that the world of the first-century

            was very different to ours,

            particularly on attitudes towards disability and illness.

A paralysed man would have been an outcast in his society,

            unable to work, judged as sinful by others,

            prevented from accessing the temple or the synagogues for worship,

            quite possibly ostracised from his family.

And I think there is something profound that we can learn

            from Jesus’ encounter with this man,

which addressed first his relationship to society,

            as a prerequisite to addressing his disability.

I think that if, as a church, we are to talk about healing

            in a meaningful and non-abusive way,

we have to stop fixating on the part of the story

            where the man picks up his mat and walks off.

I’m not going today to get into the big discussion about, ‘yes, but did it happen?’,

            because I don’t think that’s the point of the story.

The point, as Mark tells it very clearly, is not that Jesus can heal,

            but that Jesus can forgive sins.

This is the crucial aspect that we need to grasp here.

Jesus is bringing into being a new world,

            where the old rules of sin and suffering are torn up.

The scribes, as always in Mark’s gospel,

            are locked into their worldview of mechanistic legalism,

declaring Jesus a blasphemer

            for doing what they say only God should do,

and consequently declaring the man still unforgiven;

            while missing the point entirely that Jesus is bringing a new world order into being,

                        where forgiveness and restored relationships

                        are now available to everyone,

            inaugurating a new community based on inclusion rather than exclusion.

Last week I argued that Mark’s story of Jesus healing the man with the skin condition,

            was less about the condition itself,

                        and more about reversing the exclusion he suffered

                        at the hands of a society that declared his condition ‘unclean’.

Well, this week the story of the man let down through the roof on his mat

            is told by Mark as another example of this new world,

                        where everyone has access to the forgiveness and restoration

                        that Jesus is offering.

That which was previously unclean is declared clean,

            that which was previously unforgivable is declared forgiven.

Outsiders become insiders,

            and those who were once the guardians of the border between ‘in’ and ‘out’

            find their power to exclude torn away from them.

One of the implications of this new world

            is that it affects the way we view and understand forgiveness.

Too often churches have focussed on eliciting personal forgiveness for personal sins,

            a bit like my poor grandfather being told to seek forgiveness for being a teenager.

Dare I say that this is not what Jesus has in mind when he speaks of forgiveness?

            Or at least, it isn’t the whole story of what he offers

                        when he pronounces forgiveness.

Rather, he has in mind the creation of a new community

            of right and restored relationships,

where forgiveness is both given and received by those who are part of it,

            as the natural outworking of the forgiveness they have received from God;

and this new community is the context for holistic healing to occur.

It is through the transformation of community and relationships

            that disability is removed.

Those church traditions which have overly focussed

            on personal morality and individual salvation

            frequently miss this communal aspect.

Simply telling individuals that they must repent of their personal sins

            to be acceptable to God and God’s people

is a distortion of the forgiveness that should be shaping us together

            into communities of love, restoration, transformation and wholeness.

But still the scribes, both ancient and modern, don’t get it,

            they can’t see the benefit of this new world that Jesus is inaugurating,

                        this new ‘kingdom’ as Mark calls it,

            which is as different to the old way of doing things

                        as day is different from night.

And so they oppose it,

            challenging Jesus and those who follow after him,

            whenever we proclaim the radical, communal, universal,

                        transformative, healing power of forgiveness.

Our journey through Mark has already given us glimpses

            of the disruptive nature of who Jesus is, and what he does;

starting with his baptism in the river Jordan

            when the heavens were torn open

                        and the Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove,

            with a voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s son.

This language of the ‘ripping apart’ of the heavens

            is echoed in the two little parables

                        that we heard towards the end of our reading this morning,

            about new wine in old wineskins, and new cloth on old cloth.

‘No-one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak,

            otherwise the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old,

            and a worse tear is made.’

The word ‘tear’ here is the same word Mark used

            to describe the heavens being torn open at the baptism of Jesus.

And the lesson here, is the same as it was at the baptism,

            which is that Jesus is disruptive of the way things are,

                        he is doing something new which is incompatible with what was.

The world of the sceptical scribes,

            built on rules and boundaries,

            and on exclusion and power,

is coming to an end.

Similarly, says Jesus, the new wine of the kingdom of God

            will burst any old wineskin that tries to contain it, tearing it apart.

Religious systems built on definitions of who’s in, and who’s out;

            who’s clean, and who’s unclean;

            who’s forgiven, and who’s unforgiven,

are incompatible with the radical grace of the Kingdom of God

            that breaks into the world in the life and ministry of Jesus.

The scribes had lost,

            because their system of mechanistic religion

            could no longer contain God.

But the people rejoiced,

            because here was God coming to them in Jesus to offer forgiveness,

            to rebuild society, to transform relationships,

            and to bring healing and wholeness to those cast aside.

And this is the gospel that we have inherited.

Churches have a depressing tendency towards institutionalism,

            we become scribes and write things down,

                        defining God with ever more constrictive formulations,

            and the Spirit of Jesus is always working to tear that apart,

                        with acts of inclusion and mercy and grace and forgiveness.

Last year, as part of our Inclusive Church series,

            my old college friend Glen Graham preached here on disability inclusion,

and Glen, who is blind, said

            "We must include everybody, there is no opt out clause...

            because we are being shaped into the likeness of Christ's body".

We are the body of Christ, and as such we are the community of Christ,

            we are the new kingdom which he proclaimed as coming into being.

We can, and should, be the place

            where this new society takes shape,

inviting the world to participate in the gospel of Christ

            which is good news for all people.

We are those who can proclaim forgiveness to one another,

            even as we are forgiven by God and by others.

We are those who can model healing and wholeness,

            where no impairment or characteristic is exclusionary or unclean.

This is why it matters so much that we, as God’s people in this place,

            take seriously what it means to see others brought to healing and wholeness,

and it is why we continue to offer our persistent challenge

            to a world still hell-bent on scapegoating and violence.

This why it matters that we take seriously our commitment

            to making our church accessible to all.

Whether this is physical adaptation of the building,

            to the way we structure ourselves communally.

This is why it matters that we work with others from different faith traditions and none,

            to bring transformation to society

            through our involvement in London Citizens.

If we are to be the people of Christ, our mandate, our manifesto,

            is to tear, to rip, the fabric of any society or institution

            that tries to contain the and constrain the new kingdom of Christ.

And it is all because we are ourselves declared absolutely forgiven,

            we know what it is to be declared unconditionally clean,

            we know what it is to be part of a community

                        of healing, restoration, and wholeness.

---

x

[1] https://www.scope.org.uk/about-us/social-model-of-disability/

[2] https://www.scope.org.uk/about-us/social-model-of-disability/