One on One

The scriptures referred to are Romans 15:4-13.

I was watching this video for Compassion.UK in which Danielle Strickland asks why didn't Jesus just heal everyone at once. Why didn't he just snap his fingers and make everything right? We know he and the disciples often didn't have time to rest or eat because so many were coming for healing. (Mark 6:31) Why didn't Jesus just wave his hand at the crowds and say, “You are all healed”? Instead, he healed people one person at a time. How inefficient is that!

But Strickland points out that means just about every person whom Jesus healed had a personal encounter with him. He spoke to each person he healed as an individual. Sometimes he touched them. When Peter's mother-in-law was lying down, sick with a fever, Jesus touched her hand and the fever left her. (Matthew 8:14-15) A leper came to Jesus and he laid his hand on him and healed him. (Mark 1:40) How long had that man gone without any human being touching him lest they get his disease? But Jesus did. When Jairus' daughter died, we are told “But Jesus gently took her by the hand and said, 'Child, get up.' Her spirit returned and she got up immediately.” (Luke 8:54-55) When she returned to life the first thing she heard was his voice, the first thing she felt was his hand, the first thing she saw was Jesus.

There is actually one healing where Jesus healed a group at once. Luke tells us that as Jesus was entering a village, “ten men with leprosy met him. They stood at a distance, raised their voices and said, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.' When he saw them he said, 'Go and show yourselves to the priests.' And as they went along, they were cleansed.” (Luke 17:12-14) They were standing at a distance because that was what a leper was supposed to do, so as not to spread their disease. But the side effect of this rather impersonal healing was that they didn't feel a very strong connection to Jesus. Only one of them, when he realized he was healed, “turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He fell with his face to the ground at Jesus' feet and thanked him.” (Luke 17:15-16) People need a personal connection.

One time Jesus was actually stopped from healing someone in person. Matthew tells us, “When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him asking for help: 'Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible anguish.' Jesus said to him, 'I will come and heal him.' But the centurion replied, 'Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Instead just say the word and my servant will be healed.'” (Matthew 8:5-8) Jesus is astonished at the man's faith in Christ's power and authority. He says to the centurion, “Go; just as you have believed it will be done for you.” Here Jesus is responding to someone's personal appeal on behalf of another.

But Jesus would rather get his hands dirty. Sometimes literally. When facing a man born blind, John tells us, “...he spat on the ground and made some mud with the saliva. He smeared the mud on the blind man's eyes and said to him, 'Go wash in the pool of Siloam.'” (John 9:6-7) The man does and can see. Unfortunately the local religious leaders give the man a hard time for having anything to do with Jesus and expel him. When he hears this, Jesus goes to the man to let him know who he is and bolster his faith. Jesus does follow up.

He also follows through. Another time a blind man is brought to Jesus. Mark tell us, “He took the blind man by the hand and brought him outside the village. Then he spit on his eyes, placed his hands on his eyes and asked, 'Do you see anything?' Regaining his sight he said, 'I see people, but they look like trees walking.' Then Jesus placed his hands on the man's eyes again. And he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.” (Mark 8:23-25) Jesus didn't stop until the job was complete.

Then there was the time they brought him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. Mark says, “After Jesus took him aside privately, away from the crowd, he put his fingers in the man's ears, and after spitting, he touch his tongue. Then he looked up to heaven and said with a sigh, 'Ephphatha' (that is, 'Be opened'). And immediately the man's ears were opened, his tongue loosened, and he spoke plainly.” (Mark 7:33-35) What was Jesus doing? First, he moves him away from the noisy crowd. Jesus doesn't want the first thing the deaf man hears to be a crowd shouting and exclaiming loudly. Then he mimes what he is going to do. He puts his fingers in the man's ears and on his tongue. That's to indicate what he is going to do. Then he looks up to heaven and gives a big dramatic sigh to show that he is asking God to heal the man. Jesus adapted his healing to a man who could not hear him. Because he needed understanding and faith on the man's part.

These are all things you can only get with personal attention. One-size-fits-all solutions can't do that. We must tailor solutions to the unique needs of the individual. And since Christianity is about becoming like Jesus, we need to be ready to minister to people one-on-one when we can.

Danielle Strickland, speaking for her charity, says that while widespread solutions are desirable, one problem is that they let us stay disengaged with others. I could inundate you with numbers: an estimated 552,830 people are homeless in this country. 37.9 million people live below the poverty line in the US. 10.5% of American households are food-insecure. Every year 4.3 million children are referred to child protection agencies. There were 48,832 gun deaths in the US in 2021. But we can't imagine those numbers and they just wash over us. As some cynic said, a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. And if we don't see it with our own eyes or it happens to someone we don't know, the distance from us and our experience makes it that much harder for us to care.

So as much as I urge you to give to Episcopal Relief and Development, and Lutheran Disaster Services, and Feeding America, and the Native American Heritage Association, and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and others, I also urge you to get involved in a way where you meet and help individuals. Volunteer at the food pantry, at KOTS, at MARC House, or at one of our other local non-profits. Become a Guardian Ad Litum. Volunteer at the jail, a nursing home, or a hospital. I started as a Candy Striper.

Jesus said that whatever we do to the disadvantaged, we do to him. (Matthew 25:35-40) If you want to see Jesus face-to-face, help and get to know a person who's hungry, homeless, sick, suffering from a mental illness, working towards sobriety, trying to find a job, trying to start a new life after prison, or trying to start a new life in a new country. And in turn, you will be showing them what Jesus is like.

In today's reading from Romans Paul says, “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God.” When we come to Jesus, he welcomes us as individuals. We were baptized not as a group but one at a time. And the Holy Spirit bestows on each person their own gifts and abilities.

But that doesn't mean we are to be “Lone Ranger” Christians, working independently of others. Paul ties individuality to community in his metaphor of the body of Christ. Just as the parts of your body look different and have different functions, yet work together to keep your body alive and healthy, so also Christians use their various abilities to serve the mission of Christ and his church. So while Jesus welcomes us individually, he is welcoming us as citizens of his kingdom. We are baptized one by one but we are baptized into the body of Christ. The Spirit gives each of us gifts but that is so we may use them to minister to each other and to show God's love and grace to others.

Personalized service has gone the way of the dodo. Companies try to craft algorithms that seem suited to the individual with mixed success. Facebook thinks that if I like one picture of an old time movie star, I want to see nothing but pictures of old movie stars. Google thinks if I read one story about an event, I want to be flooded with every single story about that same event. And CVS still thinks that along with coupons for things I do buy from time to time, I also want 3 or 4 coupons for things I have never bought. Like Revlon makeup. It's there. Every. Single. Time.

And if you need help from a company or an agency, good luck trying to get a live person. You most likely will get an A.I. One artificial helper I got on the phone tried to sound like it was a real person looking up things on a computer. But having worked in radio I could tell the “person” was a recording made by a professional voice artist and the key tapping I heard was a sound effect. And if I get a call and it's a recording and not a live person on the phone, I hang up immediately.

In an impersonal world, where no one seems to listen, where people are increasingly being replaced by computer programs, just being a human being interacting with another human being is revolutionary. Being a human being who listens and is empathetic and understanding is radical. Jesus did his healing one on one for a reason. It's easy to say we should love everyone. It's harder when it means getting our hands dirty in the messy business of helping individuals, including those who don't seem lovable. But it's what Jesus did. As Strickland says, the kingdom is made up of people seeing and helping each other, one by one. So go and do likewise.