Why Are They Upset at Someone Being Healed?

Sermon

Reflecting on the passage from Mark 3:1-6, why wouldn’t these religious people want someone to be healed?

When I came to faith as a college-age adult, that question perplexed me when reading this text. Specifically from a narrative perspective.

I mean, the Pharisees were like the pastors, the people who know the Scriptures inside out. Wouldn’t they want someone to get better? It’s not just the New Testament that talks about God as love and loving your neighbor as yourself; Jesus was just ripping off the Torah there! The religious Pharisees should have rejoiced at this healing.

Sure, it broke the Sabbath rule. But it seemed almost cartoonishly villain-like. This Sabbath, the day to honor the God who wants the healing of all things, would be your reason to kill a healer?

And when you bring in the historical context, it seems even weirder. The Israelites have been waiting hundreds of years for a Messiah-like figure to come and save them from imperial rule. The Pharisees KNEW their Scriptures inside and out, and they KNEW to be on alert for someone who heals and takes on their infirmities. The Psalms speak of a time when God would finally bring God’s people into rest, into Sabbath. A Messiah healing on the Sabbath is like Prophecy Bingo. They should have been thrilled.

But how could these Pharisees be so blind? Why wouldn’t these religious people want someone to be healed?

Around 2014, Drew Cortez had a secret to tell his father. His dad, the Reverend Danny Cortez, was a pastor at a conservative Southern Baptist Church that shared the common view among sister churches that same-sex love was wrong. But one day, Danny was driving his son Drew to school, and Drew, nervously but suddenly breaking the silence, said, “Dad, I’m gay.”

Danny says he remembers he just turned around and hugged him so hard. And he said, “I love you so much, son.”

And in those coming days, there was healing. Drew found unconditional love from his father. Danny, though he once shared conservative views on sexuality, was confronted with his own son’s reality and humanity, and he changed his mind and heart on the expansive nature on God’s love. Healing.

But then, according to the NPR StoryCorps story this comes form, the Reverend Danny Cortez knew he couldn’t let his son live in secret nor create a toxic, unsafe environment for LGBTQ folks like his son. So with his son’s blessing and his principles changed, Danny preached on acceptance and love of LGBTQ people to his church, knowing it could lead to his termination.

Danny said, even with the threat of losing his job, “I’m at peace because I know my heart has been enlarged.”

The response to his enlarged heart? Congregants called Drew an “abomination.” The church split, because what Danny and Drew saw as compassion and loving and godly, many saw as not “lawful” or “Biblical.”

Why wouldn’t these religious people want someone to be healed? Once I reread this passage in light of religious people in our time, it became all too clear to me how realistic this passage really is.

Look at the disturbing amount of LGBTQ youth living out in the streets or in the foster system because their “Christian” parents kicked them out. Look at adult Congresspeople using hearings on equal rights to berate doctors who dare acknowledge the realities of trans people.

To quote the Black Congressman Al Green in response to them, “You used God to enslave my foreparents. You used God to segregate me in schools. You used God to put me on the back of the bus. Have you no shame? God created every person in this room. Are you saying that God made a mistake? This is not about God. It’s about men who choose to discriminate against other people because they have the power to do so.”

It is important for us, especially those of us who call ourselves Christian, religious, faithful, to really reflect on why the Pharisees did what they did.

Because sure, you could say the Pharisees cared about the “rules.” But clearly, any even soft reading of the Bible could see they are being selective. Plotting to murder someone seems like a pretty big violation of one of the basic rules of the Bible, thou shalt not murder.

Yeah, sure, I suppose the Pharisees cared about the Sabbath—just like the officer who fired seven close range shots at Philando Castile in his own car in front of his girlfriend and his four-year-old daughter really cared that he may have smelled marijuana, or that the cop whose knee carelessly crushed George Floyd’s neck really cared about a counterfeit bill.

You see, I think stories about the Pharisees are not simply about how much they were a stickler for the rules, but they are about power and threat and upsetting the status quo. Jesus healing the man with the withered hand was a threat to their power. With the Sabbath rules, the Pharisees could control who was in and who was out of the temple. With the Sabbath rules, they could maintain the delicate balances they had with the Roman Empire, not fulling embracing Caesar but keeping the harmony enough that the empire wouldn’t become suspicious.

Jesus healing disrupted all of that. Note the last verse: the Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians, conspired with the STATE, on how to destroy him.

Why wouldn’t these religious people want someone to be healed? This is the question we all need to ask ABOUT ourselves.

What are the ways we don’t want people in our lives to be healed? Even more directly, in what ways do we feel threated by others being healed?

This is what I think is partially behind a lot of our biggest issues. For example, most people at face value would say, sure, “Black Lives Matter.” But if Black lives mattering means we need to change our views of policing, on how we build our neighborhoods, how we view our American history, how we structure who gets power in business and politics, that is a threat. Black lives being healed is a threat to the status quo.

I also believe this relates to our everyday interpersonal lives. There are people in our lives who are on paths to healing. But their healing looks differently than we want. Their healing feels like a threat to us somehow. A child who wants a different path than you expect. A spouse seeking more from you. A friend who is holding you accountable in a relationship. But there is some Sabbath rule-like thing in your mind that you are using to justify that person not being healed. Because it is perceived as a threat to you. And because it gives us some semblance of control.

What does it look like for you to let go of control? What does it look like for you to embrace the Jesus way of healing that truly heals everyone, including the religious Pharisee? What would it look like for you to deal with your own trauma and need for healing so that you don’t continue the cycle of hurt to others?

The Reverend Danny Cortez says, “I know whatever happens, compassion is giving me clarity. It’s giving me clarity in my purpose.”

People were so consumed by the threat of the status quo that they couldn’t see healing happening in front of their own eyes.

I pray letting go of the need for the status quo and control gives us compassion and clarity in our purpose. I pray that recognizing how we prevent others from healing brings healing for all of us. And I pray when someone gets healed in front us, we properly respond with praise and thanksgiving. Amen.