PENTECOST II: Warts and blisters

NORMAN COUSINS ONCE WROTE A BOOK in which he described the incredible restoration to health of a man whom reputable doctors had given up on (Anatomy of an Illness, 1979). Fortunately, the man found a wise physician who realized that health is the result of many forces – spiritual and emotional as well as physiological. The man was healed. No one knows how. 

Lewis Thomas, distinguished physician and microbiologist, noted in one of his books the perplexing fact that some people apparently can wish their warts away (The Medusa and the Snail, 1995). Equally astounding to him was the fact that the body can be “tricked” into thinking it has been burned, and will produce blistering, a complex physiological process. The mind is somehow involved in these things. No one knows how.

The great value of science is not that it answers all our questions about life, though it surely gives us information useful for living our lives. More important is the fact that it continually reveals to us how surprising and mysterious life really is. In that respect, contrary to what pious critics think, science is the best friend religion could have! 

ALTHOUGH YOU AND I KNOW MORE about the universe than even the greatest scientists of a hundred years ago, the paradox is that we increasingly are aware of how infinitely little we actually understand. Great and curious minds like those of Cousins and Thomas remind us that, in spite of how much we think we know, behind it all are mysterious forces at work beyond our understanding. As a wise United Methodist preacher, Ralph Stockman, once observed, “The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.”

For example, the resurrection of Jesus is not for those who want to know it all – or think they already do! As a mystery, it enters at the edges of our knowing and not-knowing and testifies to the infinite reach of God’s power. And, because it proclaims the resurrection of the body, it affirms the infinite goodness of life itself, including the breathing, aching, sneezing, throbbing, and tingling of our very flesh, bones, and blood!

No one knows how or why this should be the case, particularly those of us who have never succeeded at wishing a wart away or willing a sinus headache to vanish. God knows, I’ve tried!

BUT MY UNFOLDING EXPERIENCE IS THIS: The mystery of life only deepens as we grow older, including the mystery of our bodies in both sickness and health. Embracing the mystery, loving it actually, keeps despair at bay and leaves open the possibility of unexplainable healing. The alternative is to deprive our imagination of wonder and sap our soul’s capacity for joy.

By contrast, the story of Jesus’ life and resurrection seems to say (along with Norman Cousins and Lewis Thomas, whether they know it or not): “Don’t give up on life – or death. There’s more to it than you ever dreamed — or can dream! Embrace it. Taste it. Savor it. Rejoice in it! It all somehow works, even if we don’t always (perhaps mostly!) know how.”

Healing body and soul has everything to do with not giving up on life or death. So, too, I suspect, does the inexplicable disappearance of warts, blisters, and maybe sinus headaches. It’s wonderfully, wondrously, and blissfully unexpected. Like grace itself, it reminds us that we don’t know why creation and the Creator care about us at all, only that God’s ways are not our ways.

Warts, blisters and all, it seems we are beloved children of a loving mystery.

— Pastor Steve