Remember [Not!]

The Healer
by Michael Phillips

2Sam. 1:1, 17-27; Mark 5:21-43)

There is a site named Holywell in north Wales where an artesian spring gushes up an estimated twenty-four tons of water every minute. The water comes up beautifully clear and sparkling from the depths of the earth. In the spring time, pilgrims seeking healing of body, mind, and spirit pray and bathe themselves with the water. There is a holy meeting of deep need and an abundance of water, a symbolic portrayal of the frailty of human life reaching out to the riches of God’s gracious provision.

The legend of Saint Winefride begins with her tender childhood, when she felt a strong attraction to Jesus Christ and desired to lead a holy life. She began to study scripture with her uncle, Saint Beuno. She grew into a woman known for a quality of beauty both without and within.

One day a local prince, Caradog, saw Winefride and was immediately overcome with a desire to have her as his own. He sought her company, but she courteously refused. This went on for some time until Prince Caradog, enraged by what he could not possess, slew her by cleaving her head from her body with his sword.

Just then, Winefride’s uncle, Saint Beuno, came upon the scene. He immediately knelt, replaced her severed head, and prayed for Christ’s healing virtues to restore the young woman to life.

The legend goes on to say that as his prayers were heard and answered, from the ground where her blood had been spilled, a holy well sprang up gushing with water granted for life and healing.

Saint Winefride is often depicted with a fountain at her feet and a red ring around her neck – the scar from her wounding. In her life the scar becomes both a sign of the wounding and a sign of the healing. The red ring connects her both to Caradog, the agent of violence, and to Saint Beuno, who served as an instrument of grace.[1]

The story of Saint Winefride speaks to me of instances where life seeks to possess us, rages against us, and cuts us off from hope, faith, and love. Chronic illness can be one of those times, like the anonymous woman in Mark’s story. The death of a loved one can be such a time, like Jairus, who has both a name and a position. Perhaps Mark sandwiches the two stories to remind us that just as the ravages of life respect no persons, God’s grace knows no boundaries. The young girl of twelve, child to a wealthy, respected family, and the woman who had suffered 12 years – both were recipients of God’s gracious outpouring of new life in the face of no life – the woman, cut off from life by the ravages of her uncleanness, and the young girl, cut off from life by the ravages of death – both are healed.

Joretta Marshall of Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO wonders if too many times, too many people focus too greatly on the aspect of miracle in these stories. She remarks on the empty counsel often given folk in terrible circumstances, such as, “If only you had enough faith, you could be healed / saved / restored,” or “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle,” or that “God wants us to learn something from our troubles.” She questions whether or not the emphasis should be on something other than the miracles – for example, on our ability to seek wholeness and healing from God’s gracious hand in spite of our human limitations.[2]

I think at some level, that’s what the Welsh legend of Saint Winefride is trying to impart to us. Winefride was unable to stand against the violence that was hurled at her – in fact, she succumbed to it. Yet, the violence and the death that came in its train did not have the last word. Yes, it left its mark – much like the stigmata of the crucifixion on the Christ, but it is the very evidence of the wounds themselves that convince us of God’s power – much like Thomas needing to touch the nail prints and see the wound in Christ’s side before he could believe. In like fashion, when our own lives and / or dreams lie crushed and broken, some around us will only smell the odor of death, yet, before God in heaven, wafts the fragrance of eternal life.

Is it impossible that a woman’s severed head could be reapplied to her bleeding frame and life restored? Yes, certainly it’s impossible. It is just as impossible as Jesus, pressed all about by a huge crowd, could have known that a single bleeding woman had touched the hem of his clothes – indeed, the disciple and the crowd berated him for even stopping to ask. It is just as impossible as a young girl being raised from her death bed to life – indeed, the crowd of mourners mocked Christ when he stated she was only sleeping.

Are you facing impossible circumstances in your own life? Do you find yourself being cut off from the fullness of life by the circumstances confronting your marriage, your household, your finances, your body, or your mind? Do you find yourself withdrawing a bit from others as you face things that only you are facing, that only you can feel the very real pain of? If so, perhaps our story is less about the miraculous than it is about the ordinary act of reaching out, of reconnecting to the wellspring of life that testifies both to the wounding that life visits us all with, and to the healing that Christ freely offers to any who will reach out to him, whether they are somebody or nobody, clean or unclean, praised or despised. Perhaps the miraculous that Mark is trying to convey is not so much the healing, but the healer – that Jesus knows no boundary of holy and secular, of welcome and unwelcome, of deserving or undeserving – all are welcomed; all are healed.

Of course, this is not to be heard as a simple, easy saying. After all, Christ was saved, but only after his crucifiers had their way with him, only after death had sealed the doors of the tomb. Saint Winefride was healed, but only after she had fallen victim to the violence of the world about her. Both Christ and Winefride carry the marks in their bodies of the war waged against them by life – a war they were unable to win in and of themselves. Yet, in the dying and resurrection, a far greater victory is attested to – the victory of God over all that threatens to kill, steal or destroy. This is the miracle that Mark ultimately attempts to bring to light.

The poet Tennyson says it this way:

Be comforted;…

The face of death is toward the Sun of Life.

His shadow darkens earth; his truer name

Is “Onward,” no discordance in the roll

And march of that Eternal Harmony

Whereto the world beats time, tho’ faintly heard

Until the great Hereafter. Mourn in Hope![3]

 

Indeed, life is filled with loss and mourning; some of it too grievous for us to overcome. Yet, as the Psalmist attests (Ps. 30), God will turn our mourning into dancing, and exchanging our ashes and sackcloth for joy. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. May you “be comforted” by this, as Tennyson says: The [Son] is Life Eternal.

So what, then, is the preacher saying? Are there no such things as miracles? May we not expect to pray and to be healed if we are wounded? No, this is not the message. The message is that too often we attempt to limit God’s miraculous workings to the miracles we wish to claim for ourselves. In other words, we can be so focused on the blood of our life being spilled and poured out on the ground that we fail to bear witness to the holy well that bubbles up beneath our feet.

I remember a retreat I undertook at a Monastery in Arizona. I was meditating in a small stone chapel, a single candle for light. I remember praying to God, entreating God that I was being crushed and bruised by forces beyond my control, by friends, by those I loved with all my life. Whether I dreamed, I do not know, but an image came to me of a white flower, a lily, crushed and broken. A question then appeared – in being crushed and broken, what does the lily offer to those who trample it? The answer then arose from the lily itself, as its fragrance wafted through the silent chapel, offered at the very feet of those who had bruised it. “Be like the lily,” I heard a voice say deep within me. Indeed, that is the greatest miracle of all, the greatest testimony of all to God’s gracious power – that we might be overwhelmed by the vagaries of life and still bear silent witness to the love of God that fashioned us from dust, and loves us for eternity.



[1] Mary C. Earle and Sylvia Maddox, Praying with the Celtic Saints, @2000 by Saint Mary’s Press, pp. 81ff

[2] Lectionary Homiletics, Vol. XVII, No. 4, @2006 by Lectionary Homiletics, Inc., p. 43

[3] Lesson and the Arts, Lectionary Homiletics Vol. XVIII, No. 4, @2006 Lectionary Homiletics, Inc., p. 44

(Comments to Michael at mykhal@epix.net.)