Compassion

There are two stories of healings recorded in successive chapters of Luke’s gospel (chapters 13 and 14) which teach us something absolutely foundational about Christian discipleship, namely compassion. Disciples of Jesus are people who care for those who are suffering. Let’s look at those two stories.

One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, he saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Dear woman, you are healed of your sickness!” Then he touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God!
But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the week for working,” he said to the crowd. “Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.”
But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don’t you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years. Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?”
This shamed his enemies, but all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did.

Luke 13:10-17 NLT

One Sabbath day Jesus went to eat dinner in the home of a leader of the Pharisees, and the people were watching him closely. There was a man there whose arms and legs were swollen. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in religious law, “Is it permitted in the law to heal people on the Sabbath day, or not?” When they refused to answer, Jesus touched the sick man and healed him and sent him away. Then he turned to them and said, “Which of you doesn’t work on the Sabbath? If your son or your cow falls into a pit, don’t you rush to get him out?” Again they could not answer.

Luke 14:1-6 NLT

When we read these stories, it’s easy for those of us who work in healthcare to be distracted by clinical questions: what was the diagnosis in each case? Ankylosing spondylitis? Heart failure? We can also be puzzled by Luke’s willingness to perpetuate a supernatural worldview since he was purportedly a doctor. How could a doctor, being a scientist, accept that disease could be caused by satanic bondage? Yet Luke’s worldview was very different from ours, and he does not question the contemporary understanding that here was a woman “crippled by an evil spirit.” But what makes us so certain that our modern “naturalistic” scientific rationalism is superior to Luke’s worldview? There is no evidence, I hear people cry! But philosophically such a viewpoint is hard to justify. Our modern understanding of evidence is lacking in many areas. I could write a whole reflection on such questions.

But I don’t want to be distracted by such questions, because I believe that Jesus’s focus in these situations was not these questions was not medical or philosophical debates, but the teaching and demonstration of one of the most important attitudes of the disciple, namely compassion. 

The interaction between Jesus and the religious leaders serves to highlight the difference in their priorities. Jesus sees a woman who is suffering, and moved by compassion, heals her, without regard to which day of the week it is. The leader of the synagogue does not see the woman, or the need for deliverance from Satan. He sees only an infringement of Sabbath law. At a time when there were not medical practices and hospitals scattered through the community the synagogue was probably the natural place in the community to seek healing. But not on the Sabbath, because then the sick person would be asking the synagogue leader to work, since healing in their minds was work, not something for the Sabbath day. Jesus, however, did not see healing that way. For him, physical healing was as much a thing of the Spirit as of the body. And such things belonged to the Sabbath as much as to any other day. Jesus was not plagued by the Greek idea of separation of body, mind and spirit. He understood that a person’s sick body could be as much a malady of the spirit as of the flesh, and the healing of the body was as much a spiritual thing as the healing of the body. Furthermore, he understood that there were laws of the Spirit that were over and above the laws of the Sabbath.

How easy it is for all of us, like the religious leaders, to ignore suffering when we focus on the wrong thing, or when we ignore God’s priorities. How important it is for us, like Jesus, to keep our focus on the people around us and the mind of God, rather than getting preoccupied wth our own agendas, whatever they might be. 

Jesus is hard on the leader of the synagogue, pointing out his hypocrisy. He knows that this very same person would not hesitate to “work” on the Sabbath if one of his own children or animals was suffering. Jesus confronts him so bluntly because the man is not prepared to treat an ordinary person in the same way. Jesus is angry because this religious leader places rules above compassion, thus showing his misunderstanding of the nature and character of a loving God. His message is clearly not intended for this one individual synagogue leader, but for all the religious leaders who had been watching him, trying to find fault, trying to catch him out. Jesus’s response, according to Luke, “shamed his enemies.” 

In the second story, the Pharisees are more circumspect. They are simply observing as Jesus is faced with a similar situation, and Jesus is very aware that they are watching him closely, looking for some legal infringement for which they can condemn him. Jesus knows their thoughts and their intentions and this time challenges the Pharisees before he acts. He puts the ball in their court, asking them what is right to do, since it is the Sabbath, when there is a man suffering from a disease in front of them, and Jesus has it in his power to heal him. Having learnt from the previous experience, the Pharisees this time say nothing. Jesus heals the man. He gives his onlookers the same advice, presenting his onlookers with a question: “which of you doesn’t work on the Sabbath?”

What do we learn from all this? It would seem that there are two laws, two principles, which govern our behaviour as people of God. There is the law of the Sabbath, set down in the Old Testament, a law given to Moses by God – remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Do no work on the Sabbath, just as God did no work of the seventh day. Jesus never contradicts this law. But there is also the law of compassion, the law of love. You shall love your neighbour as yourself. 

Jesus seems to imply that there is a hierarchy of laws, and that there will be times when the Sabbath law will need to be put aside for the more important law of compassion. I wonder if this is what Paul the Apostle was thinking about when he wrote the following words, many years later:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

Romans 8:1-2 NIV

The Pharisees were all ready to condemn Jesus for his apparent infringement of the Sabbath law, but Jesus invokes the “law of the Spirit who gives life,” which sets us free from the “law of sin and death.” It was this “law of the Spirit” which the Pharisees did not understand, and the outworking of the law of the Spirit in this case was the attitude of compassion, leading to acts of mercy. In the mind of Jesus, the law of compassion trumps the law of Sabbath. Both laws come from the heart of a loving God, but it is love and compassion which is supreme.

The Pharisees had not yet come to understand that they were enslaved to the “law of sin and death.” They did not understand that there was a “law of the Spirit” that could set them free. One Pharisee, namely Paul, would come to understand that some years later, and would spend the rest of his life expounding the concept.

As I examine myself I find that I am often more like the Pharisees than like Jesus. There is something about black and white rules that I like, and perhaps that is the nature of humanity. We prefer the “law of sin and death” to the “law of the Spirit,” because it is easier to manage. When we think of something as vague and fluffy as compassion and mercy we get tied up in knots, and find ourselves starting to wonder who is worthy of mercy, who deserves it… and there it is again, our defaulting back to the law of sin and death. But we can’t help wondering to whom we should show mercy. Is the person who has smoked all his life worthy of an operation to cure his lung cancer? Is the person with hepatitis C worthy of a very expensive treatment to cure him when his disease is the result of iv drug abuse. Is the murderer or rapist or pedophile worthy of compassion and mercy?

For Jesus, the demonstration of mercy is nothing to do with the worthiness of the recipient. Compassion is simply an integral part of Jesus’s nature and character. He can’t help himself. It is simply who he is. Perhaps this is the crux of the matter, and it is the take home message from these stories in Luke’s gospel. If we are to be disciples, followers of Jesus, compassion and mercy need to become part of our very nature, part of who we are. Working out who is worthy of this treatment or that treatment will be far down on our list of priorities. 

The Pharisees saw Jesus healing on the Sabbath and saw a sin being committed, a sin that was worthy of punishment. Jesus’s actions imply that what he did was not a sin. In fact he implies that the attitude of the Pharisees was the greater sin in this situation. Here we are confronted with this idea of situational ethics: what is a sin In one context is not a sin in another context. But that is a philosophical and ethical minefield, creating all sorts of dilemmas. It is almost a frightening concept if it is carried to its logical conclusion. 

Such discussions must always come back to the two laws that Paul writes about, the law of sin and death, and the law of the Spirit who gives life. Working out what that means in each situation that we face is the ongoing challenge of our lives. I believe that our focus must always be to understand the law of the Spirit, which can only happen as we allow the Spirit of God to control our minds as well as our hearts. Compassion is not just a feeling, but a way of thinking. It is the way of Jesus, the way of God.

Hidden

A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding, having spent everything she had on doctors, and she could find no cure. Coming up behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately, the bleeding stopped.
“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.
Everyone denied it, and Peter said, “Master, this whole crowd is pressing up against you.”
But Jesus said, “Someone deliberately touched me, for I felt healing power go out from me.”
When the woman realized that she could not stay hidden, she began to tremble and fell to her knees in front of him. The whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and that she had been immediately healed. “Daughter,” he said to her, “your faith has made you well. Go in peace.” Luke 8:42-47 NLT

Hidden. That one word describes this woman’s problem, and in a sense describes her. She had a problem that she hid from the world, and so in a sense, she was hiding her true self. Vaginal bleeding was not a subject that people talked about openly in that culture and age. Furthermore, when a woman was bleeding she was regarded as ceremonially unclean, and so therefore could not engage in the normal religious activities that were an integral part of the society and culture. If she was bleeding continuously, she could never engage in such activities. Twelve years is a long time to be on the outside of the normal social life of the community. It is a long time to be regarded as unclean. It is a long time to be avoided by others, for according to the rules of Leviticus, any person who touched her would also be regarded as unclean (Leviticus 15).

So this woman was an outsider. She was likely unmarried, since a man would not want a woman who he could not touch. If she had been married then she may have been abandoned. I like to think she had a husband who loved her and who stood by her side regardless of her awful affliction. But I know that may be wishful thinking. The likelihood is, therefore, that this woman was lonely, poor, and depressed. Not to mention very tired. She must have felt that God had abandoned her.

But she had heard about Jesus, the healer. Perhaps she had seen what he was doing with her own eyes. Perhaps someone had told her about the miracles he was performing. And for some reason faith grew within her. It is hard to imagine why. After all, she had spent everything she had on doctors, and they had not helped her. She could be forgiven for thinking she was a hopeless case. But something about Jesus sparked hope in her, and her hope grew to faith.

There was one problem. Jesus was a rabbi, a holy man. Some were saying that he was the Son of God, but she hardly knew what that meant. Whatever, she knew the rules: her affliction made her ceremonially unclean. How could she expect a rabbi to touch her? If she walked up to him and begged him for healing, as she had seen other people do, he might ask her what the problem was. There was always a crowd around him. She would be forced to reveal her uncleanness to everyone and she wasn’t sure she could cope with the embarrassment. And she was not quite sure how Jesus would respond.

She was worried for him too. She didn’t want his reputation to be tarnished. She feared what people would think and say about Jesus if he did indeed touch her, and heal her. Would they shun him for touching her, when they realized his compassion had made him ceremonially unclean? Would they be angry at her for spoiling it for everyone else?

But she longed for his touch. She had not been touched by anyone for years. She believed his touch might heal her, might free her from her prison of loneliness. She suspected that the power that was in him could heal her, even if he was not conscious of it. So she came up with a plan. “Coming up behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately, the bleeding stopped.”

Of course her plan misfired somewhat. Jesus knew, immediately, that the touch he had experienced from this woman was intentional, not accidental. He stopped and turned and sough her out. Suddenly all the attention was on her, and her problem, much to her distress. Jesus could have said nothing. He could have kept that knowledge to himself, knowing that confronting her would bring embarrassment. But he didn’t. He called her out. Why?

Jesus knew the rules too. He had read Leviticus, had it taught to him from childhood. He wanted people to know that sometimes rules had to take second place to mercy, that there was no medical problem that would prevent him reaching out and touching a person who was suffering. He wanted people to know that sickness would never be a barrier between people and God. He wanted people to know that even things that had always been thought to make a person unclean were not a barrier to them receiving his healing touch. Jesus was not afraid of menstrual blood, any more than he was afraid of leprosy or any of the multitude of other illnesses that could make a person unclean. His touch neutralised the power of such things to separate a person from God.

I think Jesus was making another important point too, that women, in a society that regarded them as second class citizens, were equal to men, regardless of gynaecological realities. He loved them and valued them as much, not less, not more. He did not differentiate between them in the way that society did. He made a point of affirming this woman’s faith, in contrast to the somewhat disparaging remarks he had made about his own (male) disciples’ lack of faith just a short time before (during the storm on the lake). Jesus was setting an example, showing us the divine order of things, an order that humanity has so often forgotten, both then and now.

The faith of women is a strong theme in this chapter of Luke’s book. Though Jesus had chosen his “apostles” from among men, Luke is careful to point out that Jesus had female followers too. These were women from the extremes of life: from a young Mary Magdalene, previously demon possessed but liberated by Jesus, to a scorned prostitute whose life was transformed by Jesus’ acceptance and forgiveness, to a group of wealthy older women from the higher social classes who gave generously of their time and money. Then there was this woman, ostracised for years because of her chronic gynaecological problems, and a twelve year old girl, dearly loved but deathly sick, restored to life even as death had its claws in her.

The men in the chapter, apart perhaps from Jairus, do not come up as beacons of faith. The disciples, caught in a storm on the lake, were characterized by fear, not faith. The Pharisees, in their self righteousness smugness, were shamed by a sinful woman’s devotion.

The woman of this story could not stay hidden, and she could not hide her problem. In a sense she is no different to all of us. We go to great lengths to hide our problems, our sins, from the world, afraid that we will be ostracised or judged by our communities. None of us want our sins, our failures, our dirty little secrets, to be made public for the world to see. We are expert at hiding our bad side and only presenting the scrubbed up, squeaky clean version of us to the world.

But when we come to Jesus we cannot stay hidden. We are forced to confess our failures, our sins, as much to ourselves as to Jesus. We are set free, released, healed, and we can go on our way rejoicing. But acknowledging what we really are, who we really are, is important if we are to grow and develop into the people he wants us to be.

A lesson in demonology

… a man who was possessed by demons came out to meet [Jesus]. For a long time he had been homeless and naked, living in the tombs outside the town… This spirit had often taken control of the man. Even when he was placed under guard and put in chains and shackles, he simply broke them and rushed out into the wilderness, completely under the demon’s power. Luke 8:27-29 NLT

What is this? A man possessed by demons? We live in a world which is sceptical about such things. When we see a person who is homeless and naked, apparently supernaturally strong enough to break physical shackles, who rushes around behaving in bizarre ways, we do not explain the phenomenon by saying he is demon possessed. We say he is crazy, suffering from a psychiatric illness. What would the modern psychiatrist say about this man who lived among the tombs in the region of the Gerasenes? That he was psychotic (disconnected from reality) is not in doubt. Severe mania definitely. Paranoia also evident. And no doubt DSM IV has a description that precisely fits this man.

The thing about modern psychiatry is that it is largely a descriptive discipline. It describes patterns of behavior, thoughts and emotions of people who are sick. Different constellations of abnormalities are given different names. Psychiatric research has also described biochemical and neuroanatomical abnormalities that are associated with such syndromes, changes that can be observed through sampling and analysis, or with various imaging techniques such as MRI or PET scanning. But what causes these changes? What is the underlying problem?

While neurological diseases are attributed to a multitude of factors such as physical trauma, infectious or toxic insults to the brain, circulatory insufficiency, or lack of oxygen supply, the main aetiological factors that are suggested for psychiatric disease are genetics (it runs in the family) or severe emotional trauma or deprivation. But why are some families seemingly cursed by psychiatric ill health? And why does emotional trauma and deprivation cause the problems that seem so common today? Why can we not just shrug it off and get on with life? Why do we get so crushed, so broken, and develop so many destructive or bizarre behaviours as a result?

I suspect it is because like the ancients we have a sense of the supernatural. It is built into the human condition. The evolutionists no doubt have an explanation for that but as a Christian I believe it is because we are in fact spiritual beings as much as we are physical beings. I believe that there is a reality that cannot be seen, experienced, measured or analysed according to scientific method, which only works with the physical world. The sceptics may say that I have succumbed to the attractions of magic, which is not real, and “hocus-pocus.” But my worldview is different and comes from the Bible, which is the most objective account of the supernatural worldview that I have to hand.

It is certain that there are many other accounts of the supernatural, the spiritual, which are not “Christian,” not least our own experiences, which can be quite bizarre, eerily other worldly, and for which we search for explanations. There are many other explanations of the nature of things that come from other ancient religions and traditions, from Hinduism and Zoroastrianism to the Viking gods and European paganism. So why do I believe the Judea-Christian account?

Simply because of Jesus, the man who lived two thousand years ago and who apparently ascribed to the Jewish worldview. Jesus, of course, was very different in many ways to the Jews of his time (and ours), somehow outside Judaism at the same time as being a part of it. He criticised and interpreted the traditional Jewish laws and practices in what was an often controversial and confronting way. But he did not challenge the worldview of a universe created by a God who was outside it, at the same time as being a part of it, above and beyond it at the same time as subjecting himself to its natural laws, the very laws that he had himself written.

But why should I believe the account of this wandering Jew who saw himself as the Son, and indeed the essence, of this creator God? In modern psychiatric terms he would be seen as at best quietly delusional, at worse, dangerously psychotic. But I believe in him for one reason only, and that is that he rose from the dead. He defeated the natural order of things, and thereby made himself credible.

Of course, by now the average psychiatrist, not to mention modern secular scientist, has written me off as much as they have Jesus, for my professed belief in the impossible. But to believe in the supernatural is in my mind no less rational than to not believe in the supernatural. Much of our existence comes down to belief, and that is a choice that God has given us. God created us with the potential and the ability to reject him, to write him off as fantasy, to disbelieve. But he wants us to believe, which can lead to us knowing him. An extraordinary idea.

So the idea of demons and angels becomes less crazy than we might have once thought. It doesn’t change the fact that understanding this whole supernatural dynamic and how it impacts human beings in their daily lives is difficult. But as a human being, and as a doctor, it give me a broader and richer view of things than my secular atheistic colleagues and friends.

So this story of the demon possessed man who lived in “the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee,” becomes a fascinating study, both of the psychological and behavioural disorders that can afflict humans, and of the power of Jesus to heal and deliver people from such afflictions.

Is Jesus the One?

John’s two disciples found Jesus and said to him, “John the Baptist sent us to ask, ‘Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else? At that very time, Jesus cured many people of their diseases, illnesses, and evil spirits, and he restored sight to many who were blind. Then he told John’s disciples, “Go back to John and tell him what you have seen and heard—the blind see, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.” And he added, “God blesses those who do not fall away because of me.” Luke 7:20-23 NLT

Most of us, from time to time, have reason to give an account of ourselves. For me lately that has been part of the process of applying for various jobs. I have a curriculum vitae (CV), an outline of my working life, what I have done, where, when, and with whom. As the years have passed the list of things and places and people has grown longer, but at the beginning of the document there is a paragraph that summarises my professional life, so that those who read it can get a snapshot of who I am and what I have to offer.

This little paragraph in Luke’s gospel contains the same kind of summary for Jesus. This is what I do, Jesus says. He was answering a question of John the Baptist, but he could just as well be answering ours. Who are you Jesus? Are you the one? The answer to all my questions, the fulfilment of my hopes and dreams? Are you God? Can you save the world?

John had met Jesus, he had talked to him, he had seen something of what Jesus was up to. He had seen him perform miracles, and he had heard Jesus say that he had come to set captives free. But now John was in prison, and he was beginning to wonder. His circumstances did not measure up. He had acknowledged Jesus as “the One” and now he was facing death. How could that be?

It can be the same for us. We “meet” Jesus, we put our faith in him, then things go wrong. Things happen that shouldn’t happen. We find ourselves the victims of a world that hates God, and we wonder where Jesus went when we needed him most.

John was having second thoughts. Had he got it right? Was Jesus a fraud? He was faced with a decision. Would he continue with Jesus or not? Sometimes we are faced with the same decision, when our circumstances suggest to us that he has forgotten us. How will we respond to Jesus? Will we continue with him, or abandon him? Are we going to testify to his goodness, or grow bitter because we feel he has failed us? Will we “fall away,” as Jesus says?

Perhaps circumstances, and the feelings they bring, are the commonest reason to doubt Jesus, the most frequent reason people fall away, turning their back on him. It certainly came close to that for me, when I was 18 years old and my best friend was killed in a motorbike accident. I was angry and sad, and doubts flooded in. I had to decide. Would I continue to believe in Jesus, or would I abandon him?

How did Jesus answer John? He simply related what he had been doing: healing, raising the dead, preaching. He presented, in a sense, his CV. Then he left John to make up his own mind. He did not explain to John why he was in prison. Jesus must have known what was going through John’s mind. But he didn’t refer to that struggle. He said simply, look at me. He directed John’s attention away from his own circumstances and tried to refocus him on Jesus’ words and acts, preaching, healing, resurrecting.

Our generation is not very impressed by preaching, but healing and raising the dead never fail to impress, though reports of such in our day routinely produce a response of scepticism. But these things were happening in Israel (and even then there was no shortage of scepticism), an outpost on the periphery of the Roman Empire. The man Jesus was in the centre of it all. His extraordinary actions, and confronting teachings, were turning Israel upside down. Eventually they would turn the whole of the Empire upside down, and then the whole world.

This then was Jesus’ answer to John’s spoken question (“Are you the Messiah?”), but implicitly also to his unspoken question (“Why am I in jail?”). I feel sure that Jesus knew what John was really struggling with, just as he knows each of our struggles. I have a Christian friend for whom everything seems to have gone wrong. While discussing her situation with a mutual acquaintance, the question came up, where is God in all of this? Why do the righteous suffer? Is God real? Is Jesus really who he says he is?

Often it seems Jesus does not answer such questions directly. He says to us what he said to John: look at what I am doing, listen to what I say, and decide for yourself. At the same time he is often silent about what he is not doing, why he is not rescuing us (or others) from painful or frightening circumstances. He challenges and encourages us: “try not to fall away because of what I am not doing,” even though that may be foremost in our minds. He doesn’t say that it will be easy, but I believe it is the only way we can survive the temptation to abandon Jesus when things go wrong.

John’s response to what Jesus said is not recorded. Luke recorded Jesus’ answer to John so later generations – you and me – could make their own assessment of Jesus. What will your response be? What is mine? For those of us who were blind but can now see, who were deaf but can now hear, who were wracked by disease but are now whole, it is hard to ignore Jesus. For those of us who have allowed the “good news” of the kingdom to answer the deep longings of our hearts, our answer is clear.

But Jesus is aware that not all of us will be in places of happiness and wholeness, as he was aware of John’s suffering. Even then we are faced with a decision, how to respond to Jesus. Will we base our answer to that on our circumstances, or his actions and deeds? Our answer to that will decide whether we become people of faith, or unbelievers.

Jesus was, and is, more than just words. He was a man of action. He lived what he spoke. He showed by his actions what he claimed to be true in his teaching. Often the things he said were hard to swallow, often he didn’t do what people thought he should. The result, then and now, is that some are more offended than challenged, more indignant than amazed. Some then, and now, look at their circumstances or the circumstances of others, and decide that Jesus is not real, is not trustworthy. Jesus said however, that “God blesses those who do not fall away because of me.”

What will you decide? Will you believe in him?

Compassion

When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion. “Don’t cry!” he said. Luke 7:13 NLT

There is a story about Jesus coming to a village called Nain, in Galilee. There was a funeral procession coming out of the village as he approached, and the man who had died was the only son of a widow.

There is nothing to indicate that Jesus knew this woman. She was overwhelmed by her grief and was probably only slightly aware of the crowd coming into Nain as she and her friends made their way in the opposite direction, to the burial place.

Jesus may well have asked the people around him who she was. He may well have been told her story, and he thus became aware of her plight. To be a widow in ancient Israel could not have been easy. For at that time a woman’s value in society was so often determined not by herself, but by the men in her life. She had already lost her husband, who had given her both social standing and economic security. Now she had lost her only son, whom she loved.

Who was this son she had lost? The text says he was a young man. There is no indication that he was married or had his own family. There is no indication of what he did, or what he was like, or what had happened to him, only that he was dead. Presumably he lived with his mother and provided for her from whatever work he did. Presumably his death was not only a deeply distressing blow for her emotionally, but also economically. The future she was faced with was one of loneliness and poverty.

When Jesus restored her son to life he was addressing both her emotional needs and her economic needs. It is easy sometimes to think that Jesus is only concerned for our spiritual needs, our eternal salvation. But this story challenges that notion. He did not challenge her spiritually, he did not invite her to put her faith in him. He simply responded to her need and her pain. With compassion.

This story says so much about Jesus. It says that he saw and cared deeply for the plight of women in a society that saw them as second rate citizens. We live in a world even today where many women feel that they are undervalued simply because they were born female.  We live in a world where if women are valued it is often because of their youth and beauty, or sexual potential, rather than for their humanity. Jesus was not like that. He valued women as highly as he valued men, not for how they looked, or what they could be used for, or what they produced, but simply because they were people. He paved the way for the feminist movement that has changed our world over the last hundred years.

The story also says that Jesus cared both about people’s physical needs and their emotional needs. He knew the implications of this boy’s death for the older woman. He knew that there was little chance she would find another man to be with her or provide for her at her stage in life. He knew she would be lonely. He knew she needed her son. He responded to that need. He is still the same. He sees our needs, and he cares about them, and he intervenes in our lives to help us, if we let him.

Doctors are faced every day with both the physical and emotional needs of people who present to them. Traditionally it is physical illness that is our thing. But in my day to day work it seems emotional and psychological needs are often the bigger burden for people. I live and work in a society where physical illness is still a huge threat to people’s sense of wellbeing, and I have an arsenal of medical interventions to help them fight those battles. Partly because of that, in this age of human history we live longer and healthier than ever before.

But there is an epidemic of emotional and psychological illness which is harder to address. Yet such illnesses affect people’s wellbeing just as deeply, perhaps even more, than their physical maladies. Sometimes it seems that this is the most depressed and anxious age that humanity has ever known. In a few weeks I will attend a day long workshop on suicide prevention. Depression is killing young and old in our society, and anxiety is paralysing many, holding them in bondage.

Jesus cares about this. He will intervene, if we allow him. As doctors we have limited resources to respond: medications to try to alter our patient’s brain chemistry, a referral pad for psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, to provide more specialised therapies. But as a doctor who has grown up in the knowledge of how Jesus can change our outlook and response to our psychological and emotional burdens, I am often struck by how much more I have to help me through the struggles of life than the many people I meet who have no faith.

However, I live in an age and a social context that frowns upon, even forbids me in many cases, from telling people of the hope and healing I have found in knowing Jesus, and this is a struggle for me. I am told that to share my faith is unprofessional, and an abuse of the trust people place in me, unduly applying pressure on people to change their belief system. It is because Jesus is seen as a religion, and not as a person. Religion can be so divisive, and has done so much damage, so the thinking goes. I could say Jesus is not a religion, but a person… but that is a difficult discussion.

In my context the main thing for me to do is treat people in the way Jesus treats me, and then leave the rest to him. I cannot heal people miraculously, or raise them from the dead, much as I would like to. But I can, like Jesus, treat all people with respect, regardless of sex or ethnicity or age, regardless of wealth or appearance or achievement, regardless of their “goodness” or “badness” in the eyes of society.  For every one I can be as concerned for their emotional, economic and psychological needs as I am for their physical illness, even if I often feel powerless to “fix them.”

The key, I believe to being like Jesus in my job, it not to follow his example in raising people from the dead, or miraculously healing the sick, as much as I would love to be able to do so. The key lies in adopting the attitude of Jesus toward the people he met. This story tells us that Jesus’ heart “overflowed with compassion.” “Don’t cry,” he said. This is the example I need to follow, for this kind of attitude changes lives. Yet it is so easy not to care, but simply to go through the motions. To do what I have to, without any emotional involvement on my part.

There is a song of Keith Green’s that I have been listening to lately as I drive to work each day. It says simply this:

The end of all my prayers, is to care like my Lord cares
My one and only goal, his image in my soul…
We are his workmanship, created for good works in Christ…

This story teaches us the good work we are created for as Christian doctors and nurses, to have hearts that “overflow with compassion,” and to speak gentle words of comfort. “Don’t cry!”

Gentle words are a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit. Proverbs 15:4

The affirmation of God

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed. Turning to the crowd that was following him, he said, “I tell you, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel!” Luke 7:9 NLT

Imagine having Jesus say something like that about you. The greatest faith in Israel? Isn’t this the kind of affirmation so many of us crave?

The extraordinary thing is that Jesus didn’t say it about one of his disciples. He didn’t say it about some religious leader like a Pharisee. He didn’t even say it about John the Baptist, who he gushes about a few sentences later in this chapter.

This person who Jesus said had the greatest faith in Israel was not an Israelite at all, but a Roman officer, a centurion. It is true that he was a Roman who liked the Jews and who sympathised with the Jewish religion. He may have even converted to Judaism, and he had certainly made large donations to the building fund of the local synagogue. But he was still a Roman, and therefore a pagan by birth, a representative of what many Jews saw as “the evil Empire.”

Jesus did not see the Roman centurion as an enemy. He did not see him as a foreigner, or a soldier, or a wealthy man of influence. He was not impressed by his standing in the world, nor was he afraid of him as an Imperial official.

So what did Jesus see? There is no indication that the two men met at all, so Jesus’s formed his impressions from what he heard about him and from him. He had the testimony of the Jewish elders, whose admiration for the Roman was clear to see. He heard the request they brought, for healing, a clear indication of the Roman’s belief that Jesus was able to heal. He heard the soldier’s own words, communicated to him by some friends:

“Lord, don’t trouble yourself by coming to my home, for I am not worthy of such an honor. I am not even worthy to come and meet you. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed. I know this because I am under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say, ‘Go,’ and they go, or ‘Come,’ and they come. And if I say to my slaves, ‘Do this,’ they do it.”

Jesus was unaffected by how the man looked, by how old he was, by his ethnic background, his professional standing, his wealth, his influence. But he was deeply impressed by his faith. A faith that was expressed in a willingness to acknowledge his own need, his own powerlessness, as well as to publicly speak of Jesus superior authority and power, and then to invite Jesus into his life to minister to his needs, expressing trust and dependence, recognition and humility. This representative of the greatest power on earth recognised in Jesus a power that far surpassed his own, or even that of mighty Rome.

That is what it means to have faith. To recognise Jesus for who he says he is, to believe that Jesus is the ultimate healer, to be ready to stick your neck out for Jesus, risking ridicule from friends or enemies, colleagues and strangers, in order to acknowledge Jesus, honour him, and allow him to change both your own world and the world of those around.

We learn much about faith from this story. But we also learn much about God, as we look at Jesus, God’s “final word” about himself. We learn that God’s heart is not just for “the chosen”, but for all peoples. We learn that God’s love is not limited to those who are “like us” (unlike our love), but extends even to our natural enemies. We learn that God gets excited when he sees faith expressed so freely and openly, and freely and generously affirms those who express it.

Maybe I’m just a little boy at heart, but I crave that affirmation from Father God. What could give any of us more pleasure than that, to know that God gets as excited about our faith as he did about the Roman’s?

Encounters: Luke 7

A Roman officer, a poor widow, a spiritual leader, a Pharisee, a prostitute: in one chapter Jesus encounters each of these. It is a broad cross section of society, and it is interesting to see how Jesus reacts to and treats each one of them. Often when I read the New Testament I find myself wondering what people thought about Jesus, but in this chapter I am challenged by what Jesus thought of the people he met.

I am a doctor, and my particular specialty is that of general practitioner, so in a way, my daily fare is not dissimilar to that of Jesus. I too meet a broad cross section of society, from rich to poor, from high society to low, from powerful to powerless.

As a follower of Jesus, I see him as my perfect role model. Jesus was a healer. If I could think about people the way he thought about them, and treat them the way he did, perhaps I would be a better healer. Perhaps the Jesus model of meeting people is more healing than the standard medical model.

I wonder sometimes if the healing that people experienced at the hands of Jesus was as much because of his attitude to them, as it was because of his supernatural power. As Christians we can get very much preoccupied with the power of Jesus to heal. We find ourselves wondering how we can access the same source of power. As doctors we seek knowledge and wisdom accumulated through centuries of scientific research and accumulated experience. Since medical training in the Western world is secular, Jesus is not a focus of our studies when it comes to knowledge and wisdom, though perhaps he should be.

But possibly the most important key to healing lies neither in miraculous power or scientific knowledge, or even carefully honed skills, as important as these may be, but in the attitudes we have to the people (patients) we meet. Perhaps the key to healing lies in the way we receive people, the way we listen, the way we care. Ultimately, it is the way we love the people we meet that is most important in healing. Jesus’ greatest challenge is always to love: “faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love.”

Not all of the encounters in Luke 7 are about healing, but all of them are about love. What is more, although healing occurs in every encounter, the focus of each story is not that healing, nor the person who is healed. In the first encounter it is the Roman centurion who is the focus of the story, not the servant who was healed. The second story is primarily about the widow of Nain, not her son, who was the one raised to life. In the third the focus is on John the Baptist, not the many who Jesus had healed as testimony to his own identity. The focus of the last encounter is as much on Simon the Pharisee as it is on the sinful woman who Jesus received and forgave.

Luke 7, then, paints some wonderful pictures of how Jesus related to the people around him. My work as a GP involves relating to many people every day. My goal is to be like Jesus as I do this, for that is the best key to healing that I know. It is a struggle to have the attitude of Jesus every day, it is a challenge to follow his instructions. But it is surely worth the effort. The sermon of Jesus that is recorded in Luke chapter 6 contains the instructions. In chapter 7 we see Jesus putting his own words into action. Reflecting on these encounters gives a strong foundation for being the kind of doctor that Jesus wants me to be.

To hear and be healed

They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those troubled by evil spirits were healed. Luke 6:18

Healing and deliverance
Why are people drawn to Jesus? This verse answers that question and in so doing says something about human need. We long to hear Jesus because we need an explanation, we desire to understand the world we live in. We long for healing because we are afflicted by every kind of sickness, of the mind and the body.

What does it mean, to be troubled by evil spirits? We understand “disease” – usually thinking of it as sickness of the body. But even now, thousands of years later, sickness of the spirit is hard for us. There seems to be so much more moral judgement associated with sickness of the spirit. As if sickness of the body is something we fall victim to, while sickness of the spirit is somehow our fault, a sign of weakness, or failure.

Oddly enough, this was perhaps not the way people thought of spiritual (or psychological or emotional) sickness back in Jesus’ day. Then there was much more talk of demons – evil spirits – than there is today, at least in the Western world. And people seemed to fall victim to demon possession in much the same way as they fell victim to physical illness: often without explanation. Not only that, they seemed equally powerless to free themselves of demons as they were to heal themselves of disease.

I have often wondered if what people of those days thought of as demon possession is what we think of nowadays as psychiatric illness, ranging from depression to psychosis. Whether it was or not, there seem to be a notable lack of judgement of the victims of either physical or non physical illness in the New Testament. Sometimes they were seen as the result of sin – but everyone was sinful and only some people ended up sick. Why? Both were things that oppressed them, and both were things from which they longed for freedom. Freedom to live healthy, happy lives.

Jesus healed them them of their diseases, and delivered them from their evil spirits. Is there any wonder that crowds flocked to him?

A different worldview
The understanding of things in Jesus’ time was very much bound up in a supernatural world view, a spiritual worldview. Everything was connected – body, mind and spirit. What could be seen and touched and measured was not regarded as the sum total of reality. The devil – Satan – was regarded as a real person, a fallen angel, who had set himself up in opposition to God. Angels were regarded as real, spiritual beings that sometimes appeared in physical form, and which sometimes interacted with people in one way or another. Evil spirits – demons – were also seen to be a real part of the fabric of life, a force opposing God and all the good things that he intended for humanity, a force aimed as separating people from God and from each other. Such demons could enter and possess people, with profound and unpleasant effects on their wellbeing.

The modern, scientific, rationalistic mindset that most of us have grown up with is very different to this. We have come a long way in understanding and responding to both physical and psychological illness. Although if the truth be told, our understanding is still limited to mechanisms rather than underlying causes. We can explain how a bacteria or a cancer invades the body, but we don’t undertand why. We have notions of the biochemical changes that occur in the brains of depressed or psychotic persons, but what lies behind those biochemical changes, what causes them in some people, remains a mystery to us.

Perhaps that is where a spiritual worldview is still needed, as much as the atheists believe it isn’t. It helps us understand the causes, not just the mechanics. Of course, as Christians we don’t think of a spiritual worldview as simply something that is needed, but as something that is true. But that is a faith statement. We can’t prove a spiritual reality, because proof in our age is largely understood to be something that can be seen, touched and measured. But neither can anyone disprove a spiritual reality.

Of course, many traditional cultures around the world have not turned their backs on the supernatural or the spiritual. Even in the modern Western world there is a deep longing for such things, as seen in the growing “New Age” movement, not to mention people’s fascination with the supernatural in fictionalised forms: popular movies, books and art. Some have tried to dismiss such longings as chemical reactions in the brain, but why should such chemical reactions happen? Could not people’s intuition that there is something beyond the visible be just because there is something beyond the visible?

Being a Christian doctor
For ordinary people, doctors seem to play a similar role in modern society to that which Jesus played in Israel 2000 years ago. People come to the doctor to be healed of their diseases, and the “evil spirits” that trouble them. But they also come to hear what doctor’s have to say, to hear the doctor’s explanation, interpretation of things, just as people came to “hear Jesus”. We are modern day healers, but another of our roles as doctors is to explain to people why things are the way they are, to interpret events – usually sickness or sadness – for those afflicted. Another part of our role is to give advice about lifestyle in order for people to experience the healthy, happy lives they desire.

The passage that follows the verse quoted above contains Jesus’ teaching on these things, Jesus’ advice about how to live a healthy happy life. It begins with the so called Beatitudes and continues through a series of radical ideas about how we should live our lives. Not many doctors I know use Jesus’ teachings as the basis for the advice they offer patients. But perhaps as doctors who follow Jesus, that should be foundational for us.

How can we as Christian doctors model our advice and our healing on that of Jesus? Few of us have the gift of miraculous healing. Few of us have the wisdom of Jesus. But we can study and seek to apply Jesus’ teaching to all that we say and do.

Jesus’ teaching was based on a worldview and value system which he called the “Kingdom of Heaven.” It is that worldview that he begins to teach in the passage that follows this verse. When he taught it he claimed to be speaking the words of God. The teachings were based on his understanding of the deepest reality and revelation of that to him by the Creator of the Universe. Jesus claimed direct access to that Creator. He claimed oneness with the Source.

As Christian doctors we need to base our healing and our teaching (the understanding and advice we offer) on this very same “Kingdom of Heaven” that Jesus taught. In much of the Western world it is frowned upon to speak to patients of our own personal faith. It is seen as unprofessional. But if we believe the teachings of Jesus to be universally true and applicable to all, regardless of their faith or lack of it, then we can pass on those teachings without demanding that people follow Jesus or put their faith in him. Much of what Jesus suggested is difficult, some would say impossible, unless a person has faith in Jesus and the power of God in them. But that doesn’t stop us from sharing with people the wisdom of God, even if we never challenge them with believing in God.

People were drawn to Jesus because he healed and delivered. They were also drawn to him because he seemed to understand the way things were. His ideas about how to live were radically different to the verbally accepted wisdom. We need to be unafraid to offer the same ideas to a thirsty world.

Which is easier?

I have been reading the story of the paralysed man whose friends brought him to Jesus (Luke 5:17-26), and how Jesus surprised everyone by forgiving him (usually, it would seem, he simply healed people and sent them on their way). The man hadn’t even asked for forgiveness. Jesus’ words caused a stir. But perhaps not for the reason we might think. Most of us would have felt Jesus’ response to the man’s need was inappropriate and uncaring. Surely Jesus could see the real problem. The man couldn’t walk. What did he care about forgiveness. It was his health he wanted back, not some airy fairy promise of “pie in the sky when I die.” Perhaps people saw it as a cop out by Jesus. He had finally met his match – a paraplegic! So instead of healing him he “forgave him.” As if that could compensate for the man’s disappointment!

Jesus knew what people around him were thinking. This was his response:

Luke 5:23 NIV
Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?

Which is easier to say?
Seems like a bit of a no-brainer. Of course its easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” Because the results are invisible, impossible to prove or disprove. You can’t see if a person is forgiven or not. He or she still looks the same. But you can see if a person is healed or not, especially if he was paralysed before and he is not paralysed anymore. If a person says to a paraplegic, “Get up and walk,” and nothing happens, then the speaker is discredited, shamed. But if a person says, “Your sins are forgiven,” it is hard to see whether anything has happened or not.

Jesus’ question highlights the tension here is between the invisible and the visible. This tension existed in the first century. It still exists today. We value the visible over the invisible, or perhaps it could be said, we believe the visible more readily than the invisible. We believe that if something is visible it is true, but if it is invisible it is impossible to prove. The physical has become more important than the metaphysical – the spiritual. Physical healing is prioritized over spiritual restoration. We value physical beauty more than inner beauty. We focus more on sex than love. The examples can go on and on. We believe in what we can see, and feel and touch, the evidence of our eyes and ears.

Jesus, in contrast, at least in this story, seemed to be saying that forgiveness was more important than physical healing. Faced with a paralytic he spoke out forgiveness of sins without healing him, at least initially. As if he was saying to everyone, “you may think that this man’s problem is paralysis, but his much deeper problem is his sinfulness.” So the solution was not physical healing, but forgiveness. Jesus knew that forgiveness is forever, but physical healing is only temporary; that physical wholeness is fleeting, whereas spiritual wholeness is eternal. In short, that the invisible is often, perhaps always, more important than the visible.

But Jesus also knows that we are usually more impressed by what we see than what we can’t see. So for the sake of the Pharisees, the onlookers, and for us (whom he knew would be reading about it centuries later) he healed the man’s physical disability too. He demonstrated his supernatural power in the visible realm to help us understand his supernatural power in the invisible realm.

Which is better, forgiveness or healing?
This event then, explores two phenomena, both of which are important to us, even if we tend to value one over the other – physical healing, and forgiveness of sins, one visible, and the other invisible. Jesus seemed to see the invisible – forgiveness – as more significant, more important, than the visible – healing. The Pharisees seemed to see Jesus’ words of forgiveness as more offensive than his act of healing, which suggests that they too thought forgiveness of sins was more important than physical healing. They saw forgiveness as the realm of God, whereas physical healing was possible by any skilled healer. They were angry because they saw that Jesus was claiming an authority only possessed by God, making himself equal with God. But was that Jesus’ intention, to simply use the opportunity to claim some sort of divine right? Or was there more to this encounter than that?

I believe that Jesus was making a point about the absolute necessity of forgiveness as a foundation for life, that as important as physical healing is, forgiveness, spiritual cleansing, is even more important. Jesus knew that forgiveness of sins is foundational to relationships, and for Jesus relationships were and are more important than anything. First and foremost our relationship with God. But also our relationships with each other. Without forgiveness, relationships founder.

In fact, forgiveness grounded in love is the foundation of all relationships that exist in a broken world. And we live in a broken world, that is easy to see. The solutions to that brokenness lie not in physical healing, even when it is miraculous. The solutions lie in forgiveness. Without love there is no forgiveness. Without forgiveness relationships break down. When relationships break down, all manner of suffering are the result. Jesus came into the world, not primarily to heal broken bodies, but to provide a way of healing broken relationships. His strategy was and is forgiveness.

Which is easier to do?
And although “Your sins are forgiven,” might seem easier to say, it is not at all easier to do. Forgiveness is the hard thing, much harder than healing. Anyone who has been sinned against knows that. Especially anyone who has been habitually and serially sinned against. Think of the abused wife or child. Think of the woman (or man) betrayed by an unfaithful partner. Think of the person who has seen their whole family murdered by evil men. Think of the person who has been serially exploited, raped, tortured.

No, forgiveness is not easy. It is not natural. It goes against all our sense of justice. Forgiveness is just as supernatural as miraculous healing. Perhaps more so. It is something that comes only from the heart of God. Spoken out of the mouth of Jesus:

Luke 5:24-26 NIV
But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

Jesus knew that people would doubt his authority to forgive sins because forgiveness is invisible. He performed a visible miracle to prove his authority to perform an invisible miracle.

But he knew, like the Pharisees, that forgiveness of sins was the greater miracle, and the key to life, far more remarkable than the healing of the body. He knew that forgiveness of sins was a God thing, and he wanted to introduce a new way of making that possible even in the human realm. He knew that the only solution to the world’s problems was forgiveness, and he came to the earth as a man to make that possible. That is why Christmas is so significant, because it introduces God’s ultimate solution for a broken and hurting world. The solution lies in forgiveness, and the only true source of forgiveness is Jesus.

Which is easier? Physical healing. Which is better? Forgiveness of sins. When we are sick we can go to the doctor. But if we want forgiveness there is nowhere to go but Jesus. For in this story Jesus says not only that forgiveness is the most important thing for a better life, a better world, but that it is available. From him.

Leprosy and love

 

Luke 5:12-13 NIV
While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him.

I am a doctor and sickness is my business. When I see a person afflicted by a disease in the Bible I am naturally interested. Questions come automatically to mind. What was this man’s problem? Did he have the infection we now know as leprosy, which damages nerves and results in tissue damage and deformity? Or was it some other skin affliction? Luke says that he was “covered with leprosy.” Leprosy certainly has dramatic skin manifestations but it is more than a “covering disease.” The diagnosis is always important because it dictates the treatment. So what disease did this man really have?

But neither the man nor Jesus was interested in the diagnosis as such. Nor its treatment. Luke was a doctor and had no doubt seen many cases of leprosy over the years. Diagnosis and treatment was his business too. But beyond the qualifying statement that the man was “covered” in leprosy (which is not specified in the other gospel accounts of this meeting) he makes no medical comment.

I suspect this was because Luke had come to a place in his life where he was more interested in people than disease, and more interested in Jesus than medicine. He wanted to record the man’s words, because they said something about the person, and Jesus’ response, because it showed something about Jesus. The disease was the least important part of this story, even if for doctors it can easily become the most important.

Perhaps we Christian health workers can learn something from this. We meet people every day, and while diagnosis and treatment is what we do, we should never forget that the person before us is the most important thing, and, dare I say it, in every encounter we should be as interested in what Jesus can do for the people we meet as we are in what our own expertise and treatments can do for them.

So what do we learn about this person with leprosy, and what does this encounter teach us about Jesus?

Unclean
Interestingly, this man seemed not to see himself as sick, but as unclean. So when he came to Jesus his request was not for healing but for cleansing. Jesus responded to the man’s felt need. He did not say, “be healed,” but “be clean.” And the leprosy left him. He was, in other words, healed. He was no longer ashamed. He was no longer outcast. Instead, he was clean and acceptable, and life could take a whole new direction.

We doctors can learn much from this. We may understand the disease, we may have wonderful treatments at our disposal. But unless we can discern the person’s perceived need and address that, even if we can eradicate the illness, they will not be thankful, nor will they be healed. People are fascinating. A disease can be cured and the person can feel just as sick. A sickness can be uncured and the person can feel restored, cared for, loved, clean, healed. Health is more than the absence of disease, and, as important as the eradication of disease is, treating the person is even more important.

Feeling unclean is a common human experience. In the past this was often expressed as a burden of sin, but sin is no longer a popular concept. Juest the same, though modern secular people reject the idea of being sinful, the feeling of being unclean is no less a part of the human condition. Today it is expressed more often as a feeling of inadequacy, of being not good enough. We are not smart enough, not attractive enough, not successful enough. We feel like failures. We don’t make the grade.

We do all kinds of things to deal with such perceptions of ourselves, in order to make ourselves better, good enough. You could say that we do all sorts of things to make ourselves “clean.” But just like the leper in this story, we feel trapped in our selves, unable to escape. We are desperately worried what other people think, what they see when they look at us. We feel like this man “covered in leprosy,” “unclean.”

In our desperation, we come to Jesus. We come as messed up failures. We come as people who feel rejected and inadequate. We hear him speak, we see what he has done for others, and we find ourselves hoping beyond hope that maybe he will do the same for us. “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

The willingness of Jesus
Jesus is willing. I love that. He wants to meet our need. He wants to make us clean. Jesus has our deepest anxieties, our greatest needs, in his heart. He cares. He loves. For every one of us, every individual person on the planet. He sees our struggles and our suffering and he is moved to tears by compassion. He reaches out and touches us, and says, “I am willing.”

It is this seeing, this caring, this compassion, that changes people. We doctors can learn from Jesus. We need to be like him. We need to express our willingness, like Jesus. Our focus needs to be on our patients, not just their diseases. We need to engage primarily with them, not their symptoms and signs, which are important but secondary. We need to listen to them to learn what their problems are, rather than try to redefine their problems to be something that we feel more comfortable or secure with. We need to respond to their felt needs.

Touching people
“Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man…”

Why did Jesus touch this man with leprosy? Surely he could just “speak healing to him.” Why did he touch him? There is much that could be said about that, but perhaps the thing that occurs to me when I read it is that touch is the thing that this man had lacked for years, and was perhaps his greatest need, his greatest longing. He had not been touched for years. People were afraid to touch him, because they might be infected, contaminated, unclean. This man had become “untouchable.”

But is it not touch that we all long for? How does it affect a man when he is never touched? Certainly he begins to feel unclean. He feels rejected. He feels unloved. He feels that life is empty and meaningless, not worth living. Jesus know all this. He reached out and touched the man. He said, “be clean.”

There is healing in physical touch. There is power in this kind of connection between two human beings. That is one of the drawbacks of remote medicine, where doctors and patients connect via telephone, or email, or Skype. Touch is missing. We know the value of touch in diagnosis (listen, look, feel). But I believe that touch is also part of the treatment, and it is a tragedy when that is removed from the doctor-patient relationship.

Seeing the person beyond the disease
How tuned into people are we really? How well do we see them, hear them, understand them? How good are we at seeing beyond the disease to the person? How willing are we to touch people, to show them that we care, to be moved to tears with compassion, to engage with people at an emotional level? How good are we at communicating to them the words and power of Jesus? How convinced are we that Jesus has anything to offer those who are aware of their own “uncleanness”? How much do we love them?

This word love is so misused nowadays. It is not a word that is often used in a medical context because it is mistakenly understood as an emotion, and emotions are unprofessional.

But love is so much more than an emotion, though emotion is an important part of love. And who decided that emotion and professionalism do not go together?

We need to rediscover the true meaning of love, and for that we need to look at Jesus. Then we will see what love is really like. We see it here in the story of the leper. We see it in so many of the encounters that are recorded between Jesus and the people he met. We see it in the final “work” of Jesus – his self sacrifice on the cross.