With Authority!

Several years ago, Martin Garcia seriously considered sacrificing some aspects of what he describes as his "nice, suburban lifestyle" in order to buy health insurance. Garcia was prepared to switch to a cheaper family car and reduce unnecessary spending to take on $680-a-month premiums to provide insurance for himself, his wife and their 8-year-old twins.

The 38-year-old warehouse manager was on the brink of signing when he learned that the policy would exclude all pre-existing conditions.

"They were the only ones willing to cover us, but basically it was a scam," said Garcia, who was diagnosed at age 24 with diabetes, the disease that has caused virtually all his health and financial problems.

Since abandoning his quixotic search, Garcia sought cheaper medical care next door in Juarez, El Paso's Mexican sister city, but the questionable treatment he received there and the disease's unrelenting progress forced him to have both legs amputated and saddled him with over $300,000 in medical bills.

His plight is tragically typical in El Paso, the metropolitan region that is believed to have the nation's highest proportion of residents lacking health insurance.
Nationally, about 1 in 7 U.S. Americans is without health insurance; the El Paso equivalent is 1 in 3.

Democratic state senator Eliot Shapleigh said,

"El Paso is ground zero when it comes to the health-care crisis in America. On health coverage,
El Paso portends what is to come."

The growing number of uninsured U.S. Americans is emerging as one of the major domestic issues of the 2004 presidential campaign. 1

Health Access Foundation reports more than 43 million people lack health-care coverage in the U.S. 7.3 million Californians, including more than 2 million children, have no health insurance. That number is growing at the rate of 23,000 per month. This sermon is first of four addressing these concerns.

When Jesus lived, there was no health insurance. In fact there was a different understanding about disease and illness.
Anthropologists distinguish between disease: a biomedical malfunction afflicting an organism – and illness: a disvalued state of being in which social networks have been disrupted and meaning lost. Illness is not so much a biomedical matter as it is a social one. 2

Persons with leprosy, epilepsy, skin diseases and so on, were excluded from the community because of their disease. Their illness became marginalization from the community. The ill person wanted to be restored to community.

The Gospels all have accounts of Jesus healing people, restoring them back into the life and friendship of the human community. One of the ways Jesus was controversial was that he encountered the social custom of exclusion and offered healing by restoring the person back to the community.
But that didn’t mean the community necessarily wanted them back!

Naturally, persons who upheld the norms of the community objected. By what authority would Jesus restore someone to fullness and wellness in the community? Today’s Gospel text asks that question.

The church that grew up in response to Jesus’ teachings, his life, death and resurrection, has always embraced a ministry of healing of some kind.

The church has always seen itself to have authority in terms of people’s wellness or illness. That’s why the church is involved in AIDS ministries. That’s why the church is involved in homelessness and hunger ministries.

That’s why there are hospitals named Arcadia Methodist or St. Johns’. United Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Jewish and other faith communities have built hospitals, assisted living facilities, homeless shelters, and retirement homes out of the belief that restoration to a state of wholeness is a function of the faith community.

Of course, we don’t believe it’s only the faith community that does that. God gave us brains and abilities to create medical technology that is amazing.

But if we put all our faith in medical technology, we move down the slippery slope of idolatry.

The church claims, with authority, that matters of health are matters of faith and are something where we should be pro-active.
Pro-active like George Burns who said,

"If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself."

Why would people of faith be pro-active in health-care issues?

OK, Jesus was involved in healing and restoration in his ministry, and the next few weeks in worship will continue to focus on what he did and what we do.

The founder of Methodism, John Wesley was highly engaged in healing and health-care advocacy. Because so many people couldn’t afford medical care, (some issues are timeless), he himself wrote a book entitled "Primitive Physick; or An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases."

In it he tries to give advice for people who would never be able to see a doctor. He advises for a head cold, "Pare very thin the yellow rind of an orange. Roll it up inside out, and thrust a roll into each nostril."

Maybe that’s really why we have Methodist hospitals…keep the preacher in the pulpit!

As we look at this huge topic of health care crisis, we first have to admit it is a far bigger topic than I can cover in a few sermons. I can really only touch on some of the issues. But I do want to say that the two evenings of dialogue with church members about the concerns and issues were immensely helpful to me and confirm again what a tremendous resource folks in the church are.

Please turn to the end of the order of worship, and after the listing of cast of characters, you will find a page titled "Faith-Based Values for Health Care Concerns" which I pulled from a document from the California Council of Churches.

This is a good summary of what faith values drive our commitment to healing and wholeness. Let’s take a few minutes to look at these:

Health Care is a ministry – we believe that helping those who are ill and dying expresses love of God and neighbor. It is one way to live the Great Commandment. Therefore it is not simply a business. Health Care serves all kinds of needs in a community, and cannot be reduced to being a commodity purchased for profit. It is service to persons in need.

Every human person has inherent dignity – Each person is a special child of God with inherent value which cannot be reduced to a price or ranked in order of importance. Our current situation undermines human dignity by being fragmented and provider-centered.

Individual needs and the common good – The faith community places the dignity of each person in its proper social context. While we value each individual person as a divinely created being, we also affirm none of us live as isolated beings. We are part of a greater community. Each of us relies on the care and support of those around us, and we are able to work and thrive because of the efforts of others around us and of those who have gone before us.

Our current health care system does not value the community. The moral framework of health insurance – that the financial risks of illness should be spread as widely as possible across a community – has been destroyed. Insurers have segmented the market place, providing low cost insurance to the healthy and pricing the sick out of the market. It is a moral breakdown of the health care system that particularly victimizes the poor and vulnerable.

Social Justice – The prophets of our faith cried out for social justice. Judgment, they admonished, would be based on how we care for the least well off such as widows, orphans, and those who are marginalized. That was the foundation for Jesus’ ministry of advocacy for the poor and powerless.

It’s not our own rising co-payments that drive our passion, it’s the realization that those without health care will be sicker, die sooner and they need a neighbor.

Stewardship – You may think stewardship means money, but in fact it is the assertion that the natural world is a gift from God, given to us all.

We are to be good, wise and faithful stewards of the gift of life, of creation, of health, of resources on behalf of all.

Waste and excess, then, are not simply economic flaws, they are offenses against responsible behavior and acts of ingratitude for the gift of creation. Health care providers must use resources with wisdom. 3

How much more in resources could be channeled to prevention and education and reduce the amount we use on cures?

Resources are finite. There is only so much in terms of people, technology, money, time and knowledge.

There is something else people of faith bring to the table. While technology has made major advances in restoring health and life, it has also at times prolonged what appears to be life but turns out to be a nightmare.

Technology can keep a body functioning long after life was present, which is a real trap if a person has not accepted death as part of life. If one’s faith is in technology rather than God, then one can end up kneeling before the almighty ventilator weeping lamentations for the life that already left.

We were stunned years ago when Sheila was diagnosed with lung cancer. She didn’t smoke.
No one in her house did. But it was bad, and she declined so quickly. She had two children, young teens – and the three of them were active in the church. The father and husband was not.

In her last days she was comatose in the hospital. Her husband and children hovered around her while she continued to receive blood transfusions.
One day when I was there alone, the doctor came to me, the pastor, and asked if I could please talk to the husband and convince him to stop transfusing blood and allow her to die. Blood is a precious gift, but it would not help her. The doctor understood the issues and came to the right person – a representative of the faith community.

Yes, of course, the husband was clinging and holding on. Who wouldn’t? But he needed help to see that it was only prolonging that which he couldn’t bear – and prolonging the inevitable was draining life from everyone. So she got her last transfusion, and the kids and the husband and I stood around her bed and said goodbye, and she quickly slipped into God’s waiting love.

With authority, the church and medical care joined hands and helped a family cross a threshold that was the hardest thing they had ever done. And even though she died, restoration and wholeness did result.

Medical and faith communities have so much in common, yet in recent years the church has withdrawn and deferred to technology and a growing bureaucracy of life-denying practices. We have abandoned our responsibilities.

Health care for all of God’s children is a faith issue, a moral issue, and one which needs our voice and advocacy. Jesus taught his disciples to care for the neighbor, the vulnerable, the hurting. Jesus restored people to wholeness and fullness with their sisters and brothers. That is our calling.

Whose authority do you need to offer such restoration by your engagement in these tough issues?

It’s already been given to you by your baptism and through the one who offers healing and hope to us all, Jesus Christ.

1. The Chicago Tribune, January 21, 2003
2. Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 1992 Augsburg Press.
3. from A Vision of Wholeness – Responding to America’s Health Care Crisis." California Council of Churches, www.calchurches.org