Healing Marks. Bruce G Epperly
or made up stories to give credence to Jesus’ unique relationship to God, which itself was questionable in a one-dimensional, tightly deterministic cause and effect world in which miracle and magic alike are incomprehensible. Courses on healing and spirituality were seldom found in mainstream seminary curricula, despite the anecdotal evidence of congregants, pastors, and seminary students who experienced answers to prayer and surprising health improvements as a result of prayer or laying on of hands. Among many mainstream pastors in the last half of the twentieth century, it was assumed prayer might reduce tension or provide spiritual comfort, but it surely had no impact on our physical conditions. Many of these pastors implicitly lived by renowned biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann’s critique of the healing stories of the gospels: anyone who turns on an electric light must see the miracles of Jesus as superstitious vestiges of a bygone era.
Narrow understandings of the relationship between prayer, health, and divine power are being questioned, in part due to the growing theological and spiritual liberation of Southern hemisphere Christianity from the rationalistic bias of the Northern hemisphere. While healthy faith involves both rationalism and mysticism, what the great theologians of the church described as “faith seeking understanding,” a truly holistic and life-transforming faith embraces the growing Pentecostalism of the Southern hemisphere and the mysticism of Quaker and Celtic spiritualities along with the creative agnosticism and rationalism of Northern hemisphere religion and the scientific method. The fastest growing Christian communities are below the equator, and these communities take healing, spiritual gifts, answers to prayer, and mysticism seriously. As more and more people move from south to north, along with the growing Latino/a population in the United States, the face of European and North American Christianity is changing not only in complexion, ethnicity, and language but also in worship style, spiritual practices, and openness to miraculous events. This growing shift in Christianity is an invitation to a creative synthesis involving theological reflection, spiritual practices, and Pentecostal and mystical experiences in our emerging understanding of Jesus’ healing ministry. This synthesis joins the insights and practices of Pentecostal Christians, Western-trained physicians, complementary health care givers, scientists and researchers, and mystically-oriented mainline, emerging, and progressive Christians. Today, we can affirm in light of science and medicine that the dynamic healing powers described in the Gospel of Mark and the New Testament witness can be factors in bringing wholeness to vulnerable humankind.
Mark’s Healing Gospel. Written sometime between 65-75 C.E., Mark is the earliest of the written gospels. In many ways, Mark’s simplicity and directness define what a gospel should be; not an exact chronological account, complete description, or objective report of clearly datable events, but a theological document, similar to a sermon, whose purpose enables people to understand, experience, and be transformed by encountering the good news of Jesus Christ and God’s reign of Shalom or wholeness. The Gospel of Mark and its successors (Matthew, Luke, and John along with the non-canonical gospels) are intended to create and sustain faith in Jesus and enable readers to experience the power and grace which comes from a relationship with God’s beloved child. This is truly good news – to encounter the living Christ, still healing through his liberating word, welcoming actions, and healing touch.
Although we don’t know the identity of the author of Mark’s Gospel, many scholars suspect that it was a younger companion of either Peter or Paul. Mark drew his narrative of Jesus’ life from oral and written materials circulated among the first Christians.[10] No doubt, like the other three biblical gospels and the many extra-canonical accounts of Jesus’ life,[11] the author whom we call “Mark” emphasized certain aspects of Jesus’ ministry and placed others in the background, as a result of his theological perspective, understanding of Jesus’ identity and mission, and awareness of the needs of the communities he was addressing. Some scholars believe that Mark’s emphasis on the interplay of healing and suffering in the life and ministry of Jesus are intended to encourage and empower Christian communities undergoing persecution, primarily at the hands of violent Roman oppressors.
Mark, like the other gospels, gives us a glimpse of Jesus’ life and ministry, and not the whole story. Indeed, if we look specifically at the healing stories, none of them can be encompassed by the written word. How can we describe what happened to the woman with the flow of blood in the short paragraph included in the gospel? Her experience – or that of Jairus and his family – leap from the page into our hearts, hands, and imaginations, inspiring us to be God’s healing partners and good news bearers in our time. As John’s Gospel proclaims, “There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:24). God’s wisdom, embodied in the healer from Nazareth, is always more than we can imagine or fathom. No paragraph-long story can encompass the intricate tapestry of fear, hope, and amazement that characterize every gospel healing narrative or our own quests for healing and wholeness.
Mark’s intent is to invite us to experience the good news of Jesus by giving us a portrait of his acts and teaching. The heart of Mark’s gospel can be found in his description of the first days of Jesus’ ministry:
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” – Mark 1:14-15
For Mark, the good news involves Jesus’ healing of mind, body, spirit, and relationships and our openness to being transformed by God’s coming reign. It inspires turning from the ways of death to the path of life. Mark’s Jesus is truly a holistic healer whose teaching and touching changes physiology, social standing, and spiritual values. When Jesus cures someone, everything changes in her or his life – he or she moves from outcast to beloved friend; guilt is released and physical ailments spontaneously disappear; touch awakens life-transforming energies. Every cure points beyond itself to Shalom or wholeness, the primary characteristic of God’s realm and vision for our world, then and now.
Mark is a healing gospel, not just because it contains at least seventeen miracle and healing stories or because nearly half of the first eight chapters pertain to healing and illness, but because Mark intended his first listeners and their communities as well as readers like ourselves to experience healing in the act of reading and contemplating the stories themselves. Mark intended the gospel to be read imaginatively and with a sense of wonder. Every story in its brevity leaves out important details, not only by Mark’s intention, but to enable us to use our imaginations to see ourselves as characters in the story. Like every inspired author, Mark gives us space to shape the story itself for our needs and the challenges of our time. Every reader of Mark’s Gospel, without exception, and this includes Mark himself as he reflected on the oral traditions he received, needs healing in some aspect of her or his life and virtually every spiritual, physical, and emotional condition finds voice in Mark’s simple narrative. The Gospel of Mark is intended to reach out to every person and every spiritual, physical, emotional, or relational condition with the promise of God’s healing love.
Like the rest of the New Testament, Mark’s Gospel was meant to be read by communities and not just solitary individuals. Mark is clear that the realm of God, the embodiment of God’s values in everyday life, requires communities devoted to healing and wholeness; it also calls forth healing communities dedicated to transformed relationships at every level of life – individual, marital, familial, relational, congregational, communal, and planetary. We are to replicate in our congregations and relationships the healing circle that Jesus created to bring healing to Jairus’ daughter or the courageous faith of four friends who tore open a roof to seek healing for their friend. Communities need to hear and believe that they can experience good news, be transformed, and then transform the world. We need to hear Jesus’ loving words to Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” as an inspiration to reflection, confession, and bold petition for the healing of ourselves and our loved ones.
Although my focus is primarily the meaning of Mark’s healing gospel for people today, I also call upon the wisdom of John’s Gospel. The last of the four gospels to be written, probably near 100 C.E., John’s