Amy, Healing and Creation
Healing and Creation
Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
The Gospel readings for the last two Sundays have given us powerful accounts of Jesus’ miraculous healings – the man with the unclean spirit (Mark 1:21-28 ) and Simon’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-39).
I have from time to time felt uneasy about Jesus’ healing ministry as it is often presented. To acknowledge that I’m in need of healing seems to require an acknowledgement of my sickness or illness or brokenness, and in the world as it is, to be sick or ill or broken is to be somehow defective. Less than. In need of “fixing.”
The language of healing is especially complicated for those of us who have received negative messages about who we are in our bodies from faith communities, parents, schools, or influential adults.
Messages that suggest there is something fundamentally wrong with who we are in our bodies.
Messages that use the language of “healing” or “unclean spirits” or “casting out demons” to coerce or oppress or suppress or exclude or condemn.
Messages that suggest we have to somehow change, cut off parts of ourselves, assimilate into whatever the dominant culture asks of us. That we have to behave differently, believe differently, think differently – be different - in order to be accepted and loved.
We might even get the message that we have to do all this “healing” – to change fundamentally - in order to be beloved by God.
What I have come to know in my relationship with God and in my relationships with my neighbors is that I, you, all people are beloved by God because God created each one of us. God created us out of the dust of the ground and breathed into [our] nostrils the breath of life…(Genesis 2:7)
God continuously creates each one of us - re-creates each one of us - with every breath we take. God’s creation of us takes place in our bodies, in every body, second by second with each life-giving breath.
God’s healing work is inseparable from God’s work of creation. The healing of God is not about fixing. It’s not about changing in order to be loved. It’s about connecting to the power and source of love itself, God’s love, with every breath. Amen.
In the day that the Lord[a] God made the earth and the heavens, 5 when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6 but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,[b] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:4-7)
