Are healing and cure the same? In the gospel lesson this morning, we see how they’re different. All ten lepers who come to Jesus are physically cured. No more disease. Yet, only one of them who returns to Jesus after being made clean or cured is healed. You might wonder what the difference between healing and cure is. We can consider two differences. One is that cure is physical while healing involves both the body and the mind. Healing is not limited to the body but brings a sense of wholeness, being made whole, which leads to holiness. The other difference is that cure is temporarily maintained while healing can be sustained despite physical, thus temporary, conditions of the body. Cure has an expiration date whereas healing doesn’t.
These differences may suggest that cure doesn’t automatically guarantee healing, which in turn can mean healing doesn’t always require a cure. One can be healed while not physically cured. We see the nine lepers are cured but not necessarily healed in Jesus’ eyes. If their illness is no longer in remission, they will be excluded from their community again. (Jesus’ instruction of telling them to go to the priests is to gain reentry to their community. These are outcasts because of their disease.) We might then ask ourselves what this healing entails. The Samaritan’s action after being cured and healed gives us a clue: “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him.” He stops going to the priests so that he can go back home, back to his community. Instead, he turns back and praises God. This praise is an expression of gratitude. Of course, he’s grateful for the cure of his illness but I want to believe there’s something more than that. He’s able to reflect retrospectively on this curing process. He re-examines his graceful experience of encountering someone who genuinely cares about his well-being. This is someone who compassionately has the best intentions and goodwill for him. What may have cured his illness can be considered supernatural, that is, going against nature, but what heals him goes beyond both natural and supernatural phenomena. It is love that heals. This love neither shames who he is nor requires who he ought to be in order to be cured. This same rule of love equally applies to the other nine lepers. Note that Jesus doesn’t even request any prerequisites for them to be cured. He sells nothing. Grace is free of charge. What differentiates the Samaritan from the other nine is his act of turning back. This turning back (traditionally expressed as metanoia in Greek) signifies his return to the source of that healing. He goes deeper into that which healing arises. Jesus calls this act of gratitude faith. So, he declares, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” The Samaritan’s faith is demonstrated in his act of metanoia and thankfulness. His initial experience of being cured of his disease would probably fade away but his experience of being healed, being made whole in God’s grace and love is embodied and ensouled. Here’s an interesting point that Jesus makes in the story. He reveals and highlights the background of the one who returns to him. This may at first sound like his criticism of the cultural superiority that his fellow Jewish siblings might have towards the Samaritans. Yet, I would rather see this as his way of shifting people’s focus from one’s identity to one’s action. What matters is not “who” does what but “what” one does. The Samaritan’s act of gratitude and humility is the basis of his faith that has him well according to Jesus. Friends in Christ, we Christians go after healing. Of course, we desire for cure as the poet Ron Padgett says, “the idea of immortality” is “the birthright of every human being.” Yet, we chose the path of healing which is the narrow way Jesus takes. We are called to mend what’s broken and divided because in Christ we know healing is always available for all as long as the kingdom of God is within us. All the wounds that seem impossible to be healed are made whole. In this union, we become holy, for God is holy. “Thank you” then becomes the sacred expression of healing. “Increase our faith!” This request of the apostles to Jesus sounds similarly humble to the cry of the demon-possessed boy’s father, “Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) But not so. The second parable of Jesus on the role of the master and the slave ironically directs the apostles to be humble as if he can read their minds. They want to get big and famous, and faith is a means to that end. The medicine that Jesus prescribes for their misdirected desire is a mustard seed. More specifically, it’s the size of a mustard seed. It’s not the size of their faith that needs to be increased. They don’t seem to have what they call “faith” to begin with.
One’s faith is not something that can be grown by someone other than oneself. You can explain your experience of what it is like to ski or swim or actually meditate but I cannot really experience it myself. I need to go in and through. Faith is just like that. I do not know how you breathe and what kind of breath energizes or calms you. We can be compassionate companion or guide for each other but cannot fully share this experience of faith. Then, we might wonder what faith is. It is more of a conviction that is strengthened by lived experiences. As we live our lives, going through ups and downs, faith is that which enables us to carry on when we have all the reasons to give up. We might not get what we so desperately desire. We see life is unfair. Yet, there’s something deep in our hearts that empower us to move on, though with a limp. What we want to do with the faith that is planted in us is to grow and cultivate heedfully. Imagine we have a bucket filled with the water of the Holy Spirit. Without water, there’s no growth. Who waters? It’s ourselves with the help of the Holy Spirit. There are different ways to cultivate the seed. Hardships of summer heat, snow, or wind change and mature our understanding of God who might have been like a vending machine or a Genie in a bottle. In this sense, faith as conviction is more like a working hypothesis. It’s not a fixated state but a dynamic process that develops through our lived experiences. The more our life experiences enrich in and through, the more wisdom we gain and the more we feel certain of God’s presence dwelling in us. We live out Jesus’s good news on God’s inner kingdom, God nearing closer than we are to ourselves, God becoming so human to us in our hearts. The mystery of the incarnation is nothing to be sought without but within. Faith is anchored not in our head or dogma but in our very own breath. This breath that we are taking in and out, which is not merely the air traveling into our body, is the breath of God. This belief, not coerced but experienced and confirmed conviction, motivates our practice of contemplation. Again, to increase our faith is up to us. The bucket filled with the water of the Holy Spirit is always available wherever, however, or whoever we are. So, the key takeaway from the second parable of Jesus is that no one can do this work for others while the analogy of the master and the slave is not appropriate in our context. If we truly understand that this work of increasing faith or cultivating the seed of faith is our duty, we wouldn’t want others to do it for us. Not only is it impossible but also whoever attempts to do that work on my behalf does me a disservice. “This is my work. Let me do my job.” We wouldn’t take away a scalpel from the surgeon and say, “You sit here and give me that scalpel. I’ll do it myself.” (ref. Luke 17:7) Breath is like a mustard seed. We may not even notice we’re breathing because it’s like that small mustard seed that is about 0.039 to 0.079 in diameter. Once we start paying heedful attention to our breath, it will reshape the way we think/feel, speak, and act. This transformation is no less than uprooting and planting a mulberry tree in the sea. In the 18th century, convicted prisoners in the UK were sent to develop a newly colonized Australia. To do so, private shipowners were contracted with the British government and paid based on the number of prisoners on board. From 1790 to 1792, 498 prisoners died out of 4082 (12% mortality rate), and in one case 158 out of 424 died (37% mortality rate). No medical support was available to the prisoners on the ship. No doctors, no medicine. Ships were overloaded, which created a shortage of food and poor environmental conditions. Since shipowners were already paid based on the number of prisoners, they didn’t have to care for the well-being of prisoners.
The British government with economic losses was criticized for being morally irresponsible and even cruel. Two approaches were suggested to resolve this moral and economic problem. One was for the government to intervene by sending a government official and a doctor to each ship. Nothing, however, improved. Officials were bribed by shipowners to reduce costs and do what they used to do. If officials disagreed, they were killed. The other approach was to educate shipowners morally, emphasizing their work as patriotic causes and the sanctity of life for all. This moral teaching also didn’t work. Both government intervention and moral preaching failed. So what would’ve been the solution? The British government used the very human nature that we all share: “seek advantages and avoid disadvantages” Instead of paying the shipowners based on the number of prisoners, the government started paying them on the actual number of prisoners who safely arrived in Australia. In 1793, only one prisoner died out of 422. (This story is from the website: www.min.news/en/history/031da6adf2c495020a48d3b78e29b751.html) In the gospel lesson today, the dishonest manager shows our human nature that seeks advantages and avoids disadvantages. Knowing this self-interest-driven nature of humanity is what the children of this age are more shrewd about than the children of light per Jesus. The dishonest manager understands how to use self-interest to prepare for his life after getting fired. Self-interest, while we might consider selfish, is one of the most essential motivating factors in our decision-making process. The manager’s self-interest before he was about to lose his job was to be comfortable with his role to the point where he eventually got caught wasting his employer’s resources. Now his self-interest is how to save himself from being homeless and jobless. He squanders his employer’s resources for his own benefit. Wealth is no longer important to him but life itself. He clearly sees what matters more. The employer in Jesus’ parable of the dishonest yet shrewd manager is an odd character that is hard to exist in the real world. Yet, we get his point: know how one’s self-interest changes, depending on different contexts. Explore my self-interest first and evaluate. How does it change in a different context? The more we’re attuned to our true self-interest, the more we become serious about them. “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” When we don’t know what we want, we keep missing out. Jesus contrasts God and wealth (mammon in Greek) in the lesson. Wealth would be one’s self-interest yet when it comes down to a matter of life or life after death, it changes. We look for what’s better for us and avoid what’s not. Jesus goes deeper. What’s better for us regardless of context is God. God is that which fulfills our self-interest. This sounds like “God knows better” but that’s not the point. In our practice of contemplation through which we do bodily feel, wisely discern, and spiritually sense the presence of God within, we experience something that is never shaken or gone but instead is eternally present, connecting us with others through that very presence. The more we cultivate, the more we are convinced and felt that this is the only thing that fulfills our self-interest as well as our existential void. There’s nothing better or more satisfying than this. Jesus tells us, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” When we truly experience the joy that comes out of the union between the divine and the human, wealth is nothing to serve but to use for good, for God. Wealth is overrated in our experience of God’s presence in ourselves. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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