It’s hard not to be thinking about health care in our country right now. It is dominating the airwaves and cyberspace. It has prompted me to get out my own policy and try to figure out what my coverage is; I’m still figuring. The debate has certainly heated up conversations around dinner tables and civic meetings; and it is all so very complicated: to what extent should the government play a part, if any; will costs really be controlled and who controls them; how much in fact will it cost over the long haul. I’m having trouble sorting out the pros and cons, the wisest path; but I feel strongly about a few things: everyone needs access to health care; there should be no uninsured in this the wealthiest country in the world; health care should be affordable for all; and everyone should have equal benefits. The other thing that seems clear to me is that this will not be solved in a partisan manner. Such major reform will require colleagues of both parties and interest groups working respectfully and imaginatively toward the good of the whole. I have to believe that’s possible. Now is not the time for intransigent posturing of interests.
Jesus had a lot to say about health and healing. Healing stories dominate the four Gospels, and they are told in the context of salvation. In our modern western world we have come to believe that salvation is a personal thing, the disposition of our souls earning us a heavenly reward, but salvation in the early church had to do with community living in the now, and even more to do with those alienated from community, principally: the sick, the naked, the homeless stranger, the illegal alien, the shamed. The healing stories in the gospels largely take place among the marginalized of our world…those on the outside… the unincluded…salvation in the ancient world had everything to do with the dignity of the community and the dignity of those the community welcomes; salvation comes when all are made whole… wholeness with dignity, the face of salvation….and salvation is impaired until all experience it.
To experience healing one is restored not simply to good health, but restored to the community that loves and nurtures, restored to dignity. Think how alienating an illness can be. In fact, there used to be Rites in Judaism and in the Christian church which welcomed the one healed back into the community. My father died early on Sunday morning in the hospital in 1984; then there was no Hospice where we lived. We got to the hospital just after he died. A nurse told me that he died with dignity. I’ve thought about what that might mean over the years, and in the context of the present day it may mean that he died amid loving and skilled care…his pain minimized as best possible…and not alone….Salvation has everything to do with our dying in dignity and our living with dignity…that makes the issue of health and wholeness a gospel issue…Let’s hope that whatever is decided on our behalf is something ALL of us can live with…and die with.
