A hallway of Mary Washington Hospital, Fredericksburg, Virginia. Photo by The Rev. Dana Caldwell.
I could use a miracle right about now. How about you?
Would you like a miraculous healing? If so, I hear you. Just last Monday a longtime friend of mine told me that her husband is suffering a resurgence of cancer; and here at St. Paul’s we have a long list of people in need of physical healing. How about we just magically take care of all that?
But resuscitation from death is another miracle I’m interested in, like the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Now, I know that the raising of Lazarus is a deeply symbolic story that taps into mystical truth, not concrete, scientifically observable truth. And I know that mystical truth — the truth we discover on our journey of faith in God — is in many ways more important and more valuable to us than the facts we might learn from a news report. And I know that if the raising of Lazarus actually had been a literally factual story, nobody asked Lazarus how he felt about having to die twice. I know all of that. But I’m still a fan of literal returns from the grave. In fact, I would like to order, let’s see, one two three four five… How about ten of them, just to get started?
Or how about a political or electoral miracle — who’s with me? If we could only magically, I don’t know, change the district maps in all fifty states so that everyone gets equal representation, I would love that. And I confess I have some dark dreams about magical justice being served on politicians who invade countries and kill or starve innocent people. So, about miracles: I’m a fan. And like many of us, I harbor compelling daydreams of miracles as magic, miracles as wondrous supernatural fixes that we so desperately need in this war-torn, grief-infused world.
But the miracles we encounter in Holy Scripture are, at once, both disappointing by comparison to magical events, and more valuable and inspiring than the kind of magic we would experience in a fantasy world where all of our problems just go away. So let’s delve more deeply into the initially disappointing, but ultimately inspiring miracle stories in the Gospel, the Good News, of Jesus Christ.
Today we hear about a miracle in the healing category, an encounter in which Jesus lays his hands on a woman suffering a spiritual ailment with physical symptoms. In our time, we would probably just diagnose her with osteoporosis. After eighteen years of painful bone fractures that stooped her over, she now stands tall. (Sidebar: eighteen years: this is a nod to the eighteen people, mentioned earlier in the chapter, who died in a freak accident. At this point in Luke’s narrative, eighteen means a lot — a lot of victims of accident; a lot of years to suffer chronic pain and limited mobility. Think of it this way: oppressive injustice these days is eighteen times worse than it would be in a peaceful, ethical, comfortable era of history, if such an era has ever occurred.) But back to the healing miracle: this woman can look across at people now, not just strain to look up to them. She can raise her eyes to the stars.
She was already in the synagogue, mind you. This is not a story of synagogue exclusion. She is a woman in a patriarchal culture, but she belongs in the synagogue. She is bent over with a physical ailment, but she belongs in the synagogue.
But she is not reliably seen in the synagogue. Luke is careful to write that Jesus first sees her (seeing her is, all by itself, wondrous) and then touches her with his healing hand. We can relate to overlooking this woman. Real talk, all of us, from time to time, look over and around people, for one reason or another. This woman is bent over, and she’s been that way for years and years. Does she matter? Is she a leader? Is she interesting? Is she gifted? We might never know, because she’s all too easy to overlook.
Years ago, the priest Pete Strimer (may his memory be a blessing) gave me some advice. “When you look out at the congregation,” he said, “Try to see who isn’t here.” This is a step further than the prophetic act of Jesus seeing the bent-over woman. Father Pete suggests an even higher standard: train your eyes to learn the miraculous skill of seeing who isn’t here, particularly those who aren’t here because they lack a certain privilege, or because they know they aren’t really welcome.
But, again, maybe it’s just disappointing, the idea that it’s wondrous, perhaps even a miracle simply to notice someone who, in our stratified, judgmental culture, is all but invisible. It’s understandable to want more drama, more magic in miracles: the disabled man gets up and walks; Jesus rubs mud into their eyes and they see; Lazarus comes out of the cave. It’s not enough, for many of us, to say that these are just stories and parables, that they are symbolic vignettes that are written not because they literally happened, but because we’re supposed to learn something meaningful about Jesus.
We want more.
We can almost get there when we point to stories of wondrous healing that happen in our own time. I have one from my days as a chaplain at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, Virginia. A young man was found at the bottom of a swimming pool, having been under water for maybe ten minutes. He arrived at the trauma unit as good as dead; but he woke up. This is a true and startling story of wondrous recovery. The patient himself interpreted it as a second chance in life, given to him by the Holy One.
But what about the many hospital patients (and their survivors) at Mary Washington, or at the University of Washington, who tell distinctly different stories of loss and grief? Why does the patient in, say, room 1502 get a second chance, but 1504 and 1506 do not?
And anyway, we all know better: life is hard; if magic is more real than a children’s fantasy story, it is not reliably, predictably real for us. I will not see my parents again in this life. I bear a few psychological wounds that I sense will never fully close. I will never preach to you the lie that what hurts your heart today can magically go away, if you just pray hard enough. That is an emotionally abusive thing to say to someone.
But we can say — we can clearly say, this:
If miracles are wondrous, restorative events that can hardly be believed, then our lives are full of them, and we are all empowered to perform these wondrous acts in our ordinary lives. This week, one of our pastoral caregivers visited a member of the parish who was experiencing severe physical pain. The visit was ordinary: a rung doorbell, an embrace, a gentle conversation, a prayer, and that was that. But the visit somehow relieved much of the pain. Is this a miracle? Well, no: if miracles are magical healings, that didn’t happen. But, yes: if miracles are unexpected — and sometimes unbelievable — occasions of God’s grace, then this counts as one, and everyone in this room, and in the hospital, may experience it.
Note well: the synagogue healing in Luke we hear today is more like this kind of healing encounter than a story of magic. When Jesus called the woman in the temple to come over to him, he didn’t then wave a wand or chant a spell. There was no flash of light, no theatrics or drama. He simply saw her, noticed her, and invited her to come to him. Then he gently put his hand on her, and told her that she was “set free” from her ailment. Not magically healed; not wondrously zapped into robust health. Free. He proclaimed freedom: freedom from isolation, from being ignored; freedom from never being touched with care by another person; freedom from a constant downward gaze.
This is all extraordinary. Yet it all happens within this physical, tangible universe. When we pray together here, and break bread together here, we do not escape the world and its many heartbreaks. My mother coped with lifelong chronic pain — at one point, in her late thirties, she was bent over and bent sideways. The man I cared for in Virginia who recovered from near-drowning did not return to a problem-free, risk-free, pain-free life. And in all of our contemplations, we must remember the danger — even the wickedness — of ableism, the idea that physical health is a sign of God’s favor, or the idea that physical limitations or physical disease is a sign of God’s judgment, or evidence of a personal failing. No. No, no, no.
The woman in the synagogue: nothing was wrong with her, in her essence. She had every right to be where she was, and everyone knew that, for there she was in the synagogue, and no one was moving against her. She did not need a magical healing that would change her body into something everyone else prefers. And she was not deficient in God’s sight, for any reason.
But Jesus did wondrously relieve her of isolation and loneliness; and he relieved her of the physical impact of that loneliness, which had deepened the severity of her osteoporosis. And he demonstrated that meeting this woman’s needs mattered more than the community’s need to do other important things on their holy day.
All of that is wondrous, miraculous: it is news of a difference; it is surprising. In that place and time, it was shocking. Perhaps the woman herself found it almost impossible to believe. Her body responded, at least for a while, with increased ability. Raised up and rescued from isolation, she praised God, joyfully. She truly had a most miraculous day.
Here we are, on another holy day, and while it is not Saturday and we are not Jewish, our rituals on the first day of the week descend from those at the synagogue of that ancient unnamed woman. We are about to pray for everyone in need… indeed, for the whole world. To pray for them, we must notice them: we have to see them. And then, later, we will embrace each other in a sign of the risen Lord’s peace. We will touch one other in a healing, restorative way.
I am convinced that more than a few of us are desperate to receive these mercies.
See and touch; pray and embrace: are not these ordinary, easily overlooked things actually, well…
miracles?