Bad things happen to good people

Sermon preached 12th July 2015 at St Michael's Flixton Summer Wholeness and Healing service. Based on Mark 6:14-19 and Ephesians 1:3-5

The section of Mark’s gospel that we’re reading through over the summer is so rich in scripture that helps us celebrate the ministry of Wholeness and Healing.

If we just remember back over the last 2 weeks we've had the story of the haemorrhaging woman and healing Jairus’ daughter. Last week the 12 disciples were being sent out in mission, and whilst it appears elsewhere in the gospel one of the few things Jesus directly commanded them to do was heal the sick. Spoilers for what’s coming over the next few weeks include feeding the 5000, Jesus walking on water and more miraculous healings, all of which would provide fantastic endless material for an uplifting sermon on Wholeness and Healing. These stories reveal to us God’s healing power, abundant love and give us clues to the relationship between Christ’s humanity and divinity.

But placed in the middle of all this miracle and wonder is a flashback to the Death of John the Baptist. A moment of defeat, and pain. A moment which caused Jesus to withdraw (when you look at the narrative in Matthew’s gospel). It seems out of place amongst these other tales of miracles- all these overwhelming displays of God’s love and power.

In John’s death we see frailty. We see a bad thing happening to a good person. We probably don’t remember that it comes in this section of Mark’s book, because of the narrative that surrounds it.

Why would it be in this part of the gospel? What purpose does it serve? And what can it tell us about Wholeness and Healing?

Whilst the stories either side of today’s reading are full of some of the most famous and miraculous events from Jesus’ ministry, it may be rare or perhaps even completely unimaginable that we would experience something even close to those miracles in our own lives. We may feel that whilst we hope for miracles, what we experience in our lives is much more mundane, and often the reality of the lives we lead is we’re faced with difficulties and sometimes sadness. It can be easier to relate to bible stories of people going through tough times, or the psalms which cry out in lament, than relate to the miraculous.

In stark contrast to the miracles pouring out from the gospel narrative, with this one story of sadness in the middle, If we watch or read the news the opposite is true- economic crisis in Greece, commemorations for lives lost in the 7/7 bombings, abuse inquiries within our own church. I think it’s safe to say that neither the miracles of the bible or the sadness in many of the media stories we read give the true picture of what we experience in our lives.

We can’t however deny that we do have to deal with difficulties more often that the miraculous, and at those times we may ask ourselves “where is God in this?”

Over the 15 years I’ve worked at The Christie I’ve prayed for hundreds, maybe 1000s of patients in my care. Some have got better and some haven’t. I’ve wondered if some of those who recovered, despite the odds, were miracles or simply the result of really good medical care and a lot of luck?  And I’ve wondered why were some not physically healed?

The church is very reluctant to claim healing miracles but there’s also no satisfying answer as to why God doesn’t intervene in the way we would want him to when we or someone we love is suffering or ill.

This must all sound a little bleak so far, not at all like “Good News” but John the Baptist’s death reminds us that even with huge amounts of faith bad things happen to us.

Yet sometimes the worst things we experience are often those which are the most important in forming the person we are or will become. During the ministry selection process one of the things I had to do was list the most significant events in my life up until that point.

When you look back at a lifetime of significant events you realise it’s often the things that have caused you pain, or caused you or those you love to suffer, that’ve had the most influence over the person you now are. The painful stuff shapes our faith, moulds our relationship with God and helps move us towards that wholeness we wish for. Would you be the person you are without some of the more difficult things you’ve experienced?

My friend Dave, who was a lay Methodist preacher, told me his cancer had given him the opportunity to talk to new people about God, making him feel he was drawing nearer to that relationship of Wholeness, despite his cancer not being treatable.

Something else we see in the Gospel reading is Herod’s brokenness. It’s too easy to see him as the pantomime villain, or a man manipulated into action, here what we see is a man broken by guilt. The reason the flashback to John’s death is here is because Herod, hearing about Jesus through the miracles and healing he'd performed, is driven by his uneasy conscience to think Jesus could be a resurrected John the Baptist. His murder of John wasn’t a great defeat or triumph, his marriage, to the wife who had wanted John dead, broke down and his own actions pushed Herod further away from being able to have a relationship with God. We see a man in desperate need of Healing and Wholeness but completely unable to ask for it.

There’s another purpose in recounting John’s death. It acts as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death, a reminder at the height of his active ministry that Jesus too will die, shattering the lives of those around him and causing them to believe that all is lost.

When I wrote my ministry application form, reflecting upon those significant but painful events, one thing I realised was that whilst in the middle of it all it was almost impossible to see where God was in it, or how it could ever bring me closer to a whole relationship with him.

Yet years later, writing it all down, God’s presence in each part of my life became clearer. I think it’s true that sometimes God is so close we can’t see him. The theologian Leonard Sweet describes this closeness as being like asking a bird to see air or a fish to see water.

If you’d asked the disciples the day after the crucifixion where God was in it all I doubt they’d have had an answer for you, but ask them later, in the light of the resurrection and how that shaped their lives and relationship with God, They would hopefully tell you that what had seemed like the worst day of their life was actually the greatest, even though each of them subsequently suffered for it.

The bible is full of stories of bad things happening to good people, what counts is how those people respond to what has happened to them and if they are able to keep trusting in God.

The good news teaches us that good things can come from bad, we’re reminded of this in the Ephesians reading-

“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.”

Our inheritance from God is through Christ’s blood.

Here we also see God’s plan for our healing, by making our relationship with him whole-

“He set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth”

God wants to gather us to him, maybe so close that at times we lose sight of him. He wants us along with all the things, good and bad, that’ve made us who we are. He wants our brokenness, if, unlike Herod, we’re able to offer it to him.

Our wholeness may not come in the form of a physical healing, a miracle, or the resolution of things which have hurt us, but from us being willing (during our good times and our difficult times) to let God gather us in and draw us nearer to him.