Healing Towards Wholeness
Sermon preached on Sunday, January 19, 2025 by Subdeacon JD Swartz
I was in a conversation with a priest recently, discussing challenges encountered when ministering to people with disabilities. One very important point that he made was that we do not have a great understanding of the difference between healing and cure. We often conflate the two, assuming that if one is healed, they are cured, and if they are cured, they have been healed; while there is a relationship between the terms which has led to their interchangeable use, their uniqueness is important. A cure is a definitive action to eliminate a disease, while healing is the process of becoming whole.
In today’s Gospel, we find Christ encountered by ten lepers asking for His mercy. Rather than using the terms cure or heal, Scripture says that Christ cleansed the lepers and did so without a word, but instead he sent them to the priests so that these men who had been unclean might be seen and be found to have been purified. No longer were they outcasts or societal blights forced to live away from family, barred from worship, or cut off from community – for these men, the cleansing of their skin was the cure which led to their healing, their restoration to complete personhood.
We no longer follow the purity laws set forth for the Jewish people, as we have in Christ the fulfillment of the law and find in the New Testament revelations such as St. Peter’s vision of the sheet of impure animals descended from Heaven from which he was told to kill and eat, and to which he objected and was scolded – “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” We also know more now about the human body and disease; we know that leprosy is not so highly contagious, and we have found ways to cure it – it is no longer a sentence of banishment or loss of humanity, simply a trip to the doctor and a course of treatment. And while we as a species may imitate God in our ever-developing understanding of the workings of the body, the planet, and the universe, there remains a fundamental need for us to find healing.
How do I know this, that we all need healing? Do people still go hungry? Are there still prisons? Is there war? Our species needs healing. For those of us here, who have “seen the light, the true light,” are we all at peace with our neighbors? Are we still asking, “who is my neighbor?” A quick answer to that – if you can see anyone, then you see your neighbor. Are your passions quelled? Are you oriented in all things toward the Lord? Do your actions match the values you claim to hold? I can answer – no. We need healing.
The Church as the body of Christ is the continuation of the Incarnation – the tangible and time-bound image of God which was instituted by our Lord to bring Life to the world. As God became man so that man might become god, we are here to facilitate the process, to embody and enact the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit on behalf of all. We are here for restoration – to encounter the Cure – via healing. And while I do not argue against the existence of miracles, I am a firm believer that we each have the capacity to be miracles for one another and to consciously let those opportunities pass by with the hope that someone, or something, else will be the answer is sin; and maybe worse than sin, because it is nothing – and nothingness is the antithesis of the God who fills all things.
Let’s be clear though – we are not the cure, we do not have the Cure, nor do we own the Cure – we simply entrust ourselves to Him. Just as the lepers laid no claim to Christ, we do not possess Him. He is ours not by ownership, by right, or even by dogma, but only by His love; it is relational, just as we are relational with one another. We are made in the image of God, we are made according to the archetype – the Holy Trinity existing in perfect love. By entrusting ourselves to the Lord, we participate in the healing process given freely by Christ who is the Cure. In this healing we see the brokenness in ourselves and we recognize it in those around us and we do not judge but strive with our whole being to find paths of mercy.
Sergei Bulgakov wrote, “Humanity is one in Christ, persons are but branches of one vine, members of one body. The life of each person enlarges itself infinitely into the life of others, the ‘communio sanctorum’ ... each person is humanity… He or she belongs not only to that part of humanity which, living on earth at the moment, stands before God in prayer and labor, for the present generation is only a page in the book of life. In God and His Church, there is no difference between living and dead, and all are one in the love of the Father. Even the generations yet to be born are part of this one divine humanity.”
To paraphrase St. Silouan, my brother or my sister is my life, and so I am to be life to them.
Fr. Lazarus, a monk in the Egyptian desert said, “In me all mankind lives, so if I pray all mankind prays. If I don’t pray, all mankind turns from God…So, if you think like this, if you see yourself as the iconic embodiment of humanity, standing before God, you will pray because you will be terrified not to.” Just as any one of us is the representative embodiment of all of us, each of us is made to be the living icon of Jesus Christ, and through any one of us anyone is meant to encounter the living God. To recognize in oneself the image of God is not hubris, but an acceptance of reality – you are not made evil, you are not totally depraved, we are all fellow workers with Christ in our theosis and in the redemption of the cosmos; and it requires that we see that same image of Christ even in those who do not recognize it in themselves. As St. Paul wrote in today’s Epistle reading, “Christ is all, and in all.”
This sounds weighty and overwhelming, and it is unless it is founded in the boundless and eternal love shown to us in the Holy Trinity. Recognize that the process of healing can be slow and that it takes consistency; and in our world of constant change and insecurity, simply being consistent in patience and in love can be the miracle needed to begin process of restoration and wholeness.
We are not a complacent conduit for God to act through, we are coworkers with Him – we must do the work of Christ in our every day lives, not for reward or favor, but because we have seen the light, the true light and because of this, we work with the Lord who is healing us toward unity with Himself. Each day is an opportunity to be like the Samaritan who returned to Christ to give thanks for his healing, or to be like one of the other nine who did not – either way, they all were healed. But, as St Athanasius said, “[the nine] thought more highly of their cure from leprosy than of him who had healed them…Actually, [the Samaritan] was given much more than the rest. Besides being healed of his leprosy, he was told by the Lord, “’Stand up and go on your way. Your faith has saved you.’”
Receive healing from the Lord and from one another with boundless gratitude, taking every opportunity that you are given to encounter Christ.
Amen.