When Science Runs Out
“Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.” When Jesus heard that, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
I read this passage last night and began to ponder that our Lord spent much time around the sick, healing them, ministering to them and loving them. In Luke 4:40, we see that people from all across the region brought their sick and suffering to Jesus for healing: “and He laid His hands on every one of them and healed them.”
In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” we see the Prince Prospero socially distancing during the great plague, walling himself inside a lofty castle in “defiance” to a contagion that depopulated his land by one half. His plan: to create a barrier between himself and the disease meanwhile distracting himself with buffoons, improvisatory, ballet-dancers, musicians, beauty and wine. “All these and security were within,” Poe says, “Without was the ‘Red Death’.”
Sickness is not new. Illness and pestilence have been with us since the beginning of time. Jesus knew this and had compassion on those who came to him. Since Christ, man has endeavored to conquer disease through avoidance, distractions, herbs, rituals, medicines and vaccines. As mankind became enlightened, modern science replaced God as healer.
Today, our doctors can fix many problems of the body and we’ve trusted science with our health. Rarely are we concerned with contagion and disease. We’ve grown accustomed to antibiotics, vaccines, Tylenol and other modern approaches to infirmity.
Yet, here we are suddenly faced with a new sickness that we do not understand. Like the Black Plague it is derived from animals. It attacks the weak and the old and sometimes the strong and the young. It is highly contagious. It has interrupted or destroyed the economies of most countries in the world. It has displaced 90% of all students from their classrooms. It has no cure.
Suddenly, we are back to the time that Christ walked the earth. Like Lazarus, we are no better off in our current pandemic than any other man or woman who came to Jesus for healing. We have no more ability to heal this disease than what our own immune systems provide and the faith we exhibit.
How then do we go forward?
We look to the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda. According to John Chapter 5, great multitudes of sick, blind, lame and paralyzed waited at this pool for an angel to stir the waters. Whoever entered first upon this stirring would be made well. Jesus saw the paralytic waiting at the pool for the waters to be stirred. Knowing already that he had waited thirty-eight years, Jesus asked, “Do you want to be made well?” The man responded, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” We all know how this story ends: Jesus says, “Rise, take up your bed and walk."
So, how does this story speak to us?
We keep our faith in a circumstance that seems hopeless. The paralytic kept believing for 38 years that someone would place him into the pool. At just the right time, the paralytic didn’t even need to go into the pool for healing. Jesus said, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.”
We are not afraid. The man at the pool wasn’t afraid that he would never be healed. The man continued to go day in and day out to the pool, knowing that eventually One would help him.
We walk in faith that Jesus Christ is the source of our health and healing. The paralytic at the pool, departs and tells the Jews, “it was Jesus who made him well” (John 5: 15). At some point, science runs out. Even if we have spent a lifetime of eating well, exercising and avoiding harmful vices, science will fail when we are faced with a life-threatening disease. If we have a faith that undergirds all our paradigms about health and life, then we know that we are absolutely and completely in God’s hands anyway.
As Christians, we hold to a faith that transcends science and technology. We can remember that Lazarus, like us, was just a man who needed healing from a deadly sickness. We can overcome the debilitating stress of our current situation by surrendering to our faith and reorienting our lives toward Jesus as the great healer and provider of our needs.
“Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.”
