GOD INTENDS HEALTHCARE FOR ALL -- YES, SHE DOES!!!

GOD INTENDS HEALTHCARE FOR ALL – YES, SHE DOES!!!

            This week’s blog continues on the subject of healthcare as filtered through the 3^rd and 4^th chapters of Acts.  As we saw last week, through the power of God, Peter and John channel both healing and curing to a man who has been crippled from birth.  It is an amazing story, and the Lukan author of Acts lets us see the joy of the man and the astonishment of the people in the Temple, as they see this “unclean” man welcomed into the community.

            Not everyone is pleased, however.   The political and religious leaders do not believe that God intends healthcare for all.  They prefer to believe that God should ration healthcare out only to those who are deserving, and of course in their belief system, they and their allies are the “deserving.”  So, rather than celebrating this miraculous healing and curing, they do what the powers always do – they arrest Peter and John and threaten them with torture, a little water-boarding in the name of God.  After a few days in jail with no bail, Peter and John are brought before the court. 

            The judge tells them that they will be granted probation on the condition that they stop talking and acting like God intends healthcare for everybody.  In the past, Peter has yielded to this pressure.  On the night of the arrest of Jesus, he denied that he knew who Jesus was, even as he strained to hear what was going on in the home of the high priest.  Here, however, the Spirit has moved in Peter and in John – they tell the judge that while they recognize his civil authority, they cannot agree to the conditions of the probation – they must continue to speak about and act on what they have seen and heard.  It is the second miracle of this long story – first the man is healed and cured, and second Peter and John now become bold witnesses to the truth that God intends healthcare for all.

            In today’s political climate, this story resonates throughout the corridors of our hearts and the halls of power.  The four gospels all testify that the majority of Jesus’ actions are healing and curing.  There is no one – and I mean no one – who comes to Jesus who is not healed and/or cured by him.  We see evidence of Peter’s healing in this story.  Mary Magdalena, the PRIMARY witness to the resurrection, is healed of seven demons.  And Paul, the originator of the idea of the “urban” church, has a dramatic healing on the road to Damascus.  God intends healthcare for all because we are all in need of healing and curing. 

            One of the arguments against this universal healthcare is that such a system would mean rationing of healthcare, but that rationing already exists strongly in our current money-based system.  Those with access to money can get healthcare – those without have a LONG wait or get no healthcare at all.  So, the issue with universal healthcare is that the rationing will be spread to all of us instead of falling on those who have little or no money.   It is striking to me that in this story in Acts 3 & 4, the crippled man asks for money, and Peter’s response is that he has no money to give him!  BUT, Peter indicates that he can share with him the power of God to provide healthcare for all.  And Peter and John do that.  It is the first public act of the church, to believe in and to act for the idea that God intends healthcare for all.

            So, how can Christians be against universal healthcare?  The answer is the same as the answer to the question:  “How can Christians hold people as slaves?”  We have believed the American propaganda that money is the center of life and that life is an individualistic enterprise.  We often are like Mary Magdalena at tomb of Jesus in John 20 – we are so captured by the power of death that we cannot recognize the risen Jesus standing right in front of us.  The task of the church on the issue of healthcare for all is to help ourselves and to help others to hear our names being called, just as Mary heard her name called in that tomb of death:  “Mary.”  When she heard her name, her eyes were opened, and she ran to tell the other disciples that she had seen the Lord, that she had been healed yet once again.  May that happen to us too, so that we may be the witnesses.