Salvation as Holistic Health

5 Epiphany B  February 8, 2015

Isaiah 40:21-31 Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23 Mark 1:29-39

   One of the major issues in life is the issue of health.  Health has many meanings in our lives.   Health and disease have a long human history.  One could say that the entire biblical tradition is about how people have reflected upon the meaning of health and illness.

  We believe that the general health of the world has improved because of modern medical science and we base this upon the statistic of life expectancy, even as we find that people are forced to live longer periods of time without what we would call "quality" of life.

  We would like to think that modern medicine is exact and precise though we know that there must be some hit and miss aspects of treatment.  We know that the perfect success rate of every pharmaceutical is questionable just by the long list of disclaimers that we listen to in the commercials.  In an advertisement about a psychotropic medication for depression we are reminded to consult a physician if we experience suicidal tendencies and one wonders why would one want to market such a medicine with such a counter indication for the very reason it is supposed to be prescribed.

  Today, we believe mostly that demons of pain and suffering in the body, mind and emotions can be exorcised by some form of medical treatment whether by surgery or by some magical pill or chemo-therapy.  Yes, we know that we cannot cure death, even by delaying its advent in our lives and in the lives of those whom we love.

  We also know that as scientific medicine has become supreme, we still find a place for what might be called folk medicine.  Acupuncture techniques used to be regarded as "folk medicine" from Asia but it has become mainstream medicine for some.  All sorts of ancient herbal remedies have found their way into modern practice.  Each of us has our hypochondriacal aspect of our personalities and we have our secret remedies for every sort of ailment ranging from colds and flu to cancer.  And everyone has proclaimed at some time the perfect diet for perfect health.  Eating is probably the most obvious health issue in our world and food can cast out rather quickly the demon of starvation known by so many in our world today.

  As we read the Gospel stories about Jesus as healer and exorcist, we are invited to reflect upon the nature of health.  One can noted that health treatment is very contextual.  How is it that exorcism which seems to be so basic to the ministry of Jesus is completely missing in the Gospel of John, the latest written of the canonical Gospel?  It probably means that the practice of exorcism would have had no meaning for the first readers within the community where the Gospel of John was being composed.

  Demonic cause at one time in the early Gospel communities was the easiest and broadest diagnosis to make about all sorts of diseases.  This simplistic diagnosis fit within  the cosmology of the community: the serpent of the Garden of Eden tempted humanity into a very great Fall, and all the king’s men and all the king's horses could not put the Humpty-Dumpty off-spring of Adam and Eve together again.  There was an awareness for the apparent fact that in spite of God being the great Creator of the world, in appearance it seemed that evil and the bad guy was actually winning. The proof of his winning was the fact that the victory of the serpent at the Fall guaranteed the great event of death.

  The biblical story is a Cosmic Story and Jesus is the hero of the New Testament Story in this great Cosmic Epic.  The resurrection of Christ is the antidote which addresses the greatest illness of all, Death itself.  But the resurrection of Christ was shown to have many other benefits of health and salvation as events of hope which could enter into the narrative of our lives.

  Death has many acolytes of pain, sickness, disease, effects of aging, sorrow, fear, anxiety and terror.  We live under the threat of all of these acolytes of death.  The threats that can come to us because of the temptation to believe that Death and all of Death's partner will actually win this life means that we can doubt the very hope that is implanted within us because of our being made in God's image.   Jesus came as the manifestation of God's heroic presence to enter the human narrative and affirm the validity of our hope.  Hope can provide us something to counter-prevail the threats of death and aging.

  We do not regard the quest for good health to be worthless exercises in futility akin to the proverbial rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic as it is going down.  We know in our minds that we are fully pre-committed to the aging process which at some time will end in the event called death.  At the same time we would use this as motivation for packing as much abundant life within the span of our lives as we possibly can.  To do this we then hope and hope's motivation provide us the energy to "keep on keeping on."  So even though we know about the final sickness which death is, the events of losing our health and regaining it, are very important to us.  And we are always hopeful about regaining our health, because hope has made us to believe that freedom from pain is what is most normal about the human condition.  Pain and sickness are deprivations from the normal conditions of health.  We cannot but protest pain and sickness and but seek freedom from pain.  And in believing this individually, we believe that we are committed to lives of doing no harm to others as well.  We believe so much in the normalcy of health that we are committed to as many people regaining as much health as they can when they lose their conditions of optimal health.

  The biblical record and the witness of Jesus indicates to us that we are all about health and salvation in our lives.  We are committed to the salvation and health that God's intends for us.  This program of salvation is total and holistic.

  It is cosmic, apocalyptic and eschatological; that is to say it involves dealing with death and end of life as we know it.  The event of the resurrection provides us with the occasion to make death but a gateway to a fuller life and so death is robbed of having "final power and authority."  With the resurrection we can gain a narrative of believing how our life energy is never ended; it is only in the flow of endless transformations but those transformations allow that the traces of personal identity will never be erased because of the perfect memory of the mind of God to retain us as personal identities forever.  This is having faith in the health of eternal life.

  Health is also mental; health is educational.  Metanoia or repentance is attaining a new and different "after mind:"  A new state of mind after this current state of mind which in turn allows me to adjust my behavior towards excellence.  So health is mental and educational.

  Health is emotional.  To be at peace is to grow in emotional health and intelligence.  Our emotions have often been formed by imperfect events of developmental trauma. We have not always had access to perfect mentors to help us recover from the interior impact of hurtful events in our lives.  And we have practiced repression to avoid dealing with trauma; but repression has demon-like voices and acting out behaviors which have to be exorcised and whispered into peaceful acceptance and integration into a better future.  Jesus promoted emotional health and emotional intelligence to deeply disturbed people.

  Health or salvation is also very social and very communal.  When we are sick sometimes we are afraid of the community.  We are afraid that the community will turn into silent rubberneckers about our misfortune and be clumsy and awkward with our situation even as we are trying to deal with our loss of health.  We are afraid of victimization; we are afraid of being trivialized as having pain that is inferior to the pain of others and so we should not complain.  We are afraid that others will over-identify us with our "sick condition" and we too might come to know the condition of our demise as our defining life achievement.  Sickness can drive us into hiding.  Jesus welcomed suffering and sick people into the public.  He would not let the Jewish public health quarantines keep sick people from the care of the community.  He brought those who were in quarantine into the public and one of the chief ingredients in regaining health is to know that other people are concerned about us and praying for us.  I commend the prayer ministry of our parish to you as a method to counter-act the victimization and privatization of sickness within the community.  Health or salvation is very social and very communal.  The sign of a healthy community is one which takes the sacrament of the prayer for the sick seriously.  Health is social in that it is political.  St. Paul said he became all things to all people to save them.  How do we adjust our lives for each other so that we can give each other our best news?  Healthy communities are made up of people who check their egos at the door in the effort to live together in harmony.  A healthy community consists of people who have learned appreciative reciprocity with each other and not competition for glory.

  Let us today not get bogged down in stories about Jesus as an exorcist; let us understand the holistic vision of health presented in the biblical contexts and let us find corresponding ways to promote the holistic vision of Gospel health and salvation within our own lives today.  Amen.