Redefining Health and Disability: Embracing Shalom and Holistic Healing

The episode explores the connections between disability, health, and the biblical concept of shalom, urging a reevaluation of how these ideas intersect with personal and communal relationships. Through a healing narrative from Mark and a focus on holistic wellness, the discussion emphasizes the importance of relational healing and community.

• Shalom is a holistic concept encompassing peace and right relationships 
• Disability and sin should not be conflated, as neither equates to divine punishment 
• Jesus' healing narratives showcase relational restoration beyond physical healing 
• The language used in scripture reveals deeper meanings surrounding health and healing 
• Interdependence is a vital aspect of community and God's creation 
• Misinterpretations can lead to stigma, reinforcing harmful narratives around disability 
• Engaging with scripture can transform personal and communal views on health

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Disabling the Church is a production of the Center for Disability and Ministry at Western Theological Seminary. This series amplifies the voices, giftedness and perspectives of disabled people to enrich the ministry and witness of the church.

Speaker 2: 0:27

Hello all and welcome back. This is Disabling the Church podcast, and I am your host, dr L S Carlos. This episode we are picking up the conversation where we left off with health and healing. This episode we're going to focus on sort of engaging and critiquing the relationship between disability and sin, but in relation to this idea of shalom. So shalom is this overarching concept of holistic, far-reaching, all-encompassing peace.

Speaker 2: 1:08

And as you listen to this episode and enter this conversation, keep in mind the holistic nature of the person, the way in which God seeks to, in relationship with God, restore every aspect and layer of the person, and that there is such a key component to that that is fundamentally relational. We are, like our maker, fundamentally designed to be relationship. Think about the fact that the triune God who, in a great act of love, creates the cosmos to share God's self with a created being or set of beings or thing or created order. In the Orthodox Church there's a tradition that says God created out of love and God redeems and restores that beloved creation out of the same love. And God exists before anything else exists in relationship, in the Trinity. And so, as God creates us, god creates us fundamentally to mirror in the image of this same God. And so at the core of what it means for us to be healthy and whole is this drive to be relationally rightly connected to God, to ourselves, to one another, to the cosmos. And when that right connection exists, this is shalom and sin. Sin is fundamentally a breaking of relationships, and so as God comes to redeem the world, god comes to restore this broken relationship. Disability is not factoring in to Christ's healing action in the way that our culture in the 21st century West wants to make it seem, 21st century West wants to make it seem.

Speaker 2: 3:25

So when you think about the previous episode, you think about this episode. Keep in mind that the key here is reframing some of how we engage the biblical text, the concept of the person and the concepts of health and healing and the concept of what God understands to be the holistic ideal for us. If we can grasp these new ways of framing these rather ancient ideas and let the Bible speak first, then the way that we relate to one another and relate to our call and relate to our embodiments fundamentally shifts. Friends, I'd like to invite you to this before the conversation gets fully rolling, as we look at some of the biblical text in the previous episode and sort of reflect a little bit again in this one. Keep in mind, anyone void of the Spirit can listen to the text being read to them, can read the text themselves, perhaps can watch something that expounds the text. Anyone can engage the text, read the text in some fashion. It requires the engagement of the Spirit upon the mercy of God for the text to transformatively read us. That is what we're being invited to as we rethink and revisit some of these concepts.

Speaker 2: 4:56

So allow me to lay out some words that are going to show up in the text that we're reading, and if you're listening and you want to open your Bible in this space, feel free to open up to Mark, chapter 5, and we'll read verses 25 through 34. Mark, chapter 5, verses 25 through 34. Now in the Bible there are five words used for health and six words used for healing. In the New Testament, five words used for health, six words used for healing, and in the narrative we're about to read today you'll see two words that are used for health and you'll see two words that are used for the verb to heal or healing. Sotazo means to save or to rescue. In the holistic sense. This is a word that in the Greek New Testament gets at an aspect of shalom and in many ways is translatedto-one to shalom in the Old Testament. And we see this word in this text, but it's not in a simple bodily sense. It's referencing the holistic healing that Christ is inviting the person into.

Speaker 2: 6:18

In this healing narrative, a biblical studies scholar who does a lot of work around medical anthropology and biblical studies, john Wilkinson, in his classic text from the 90s, explains that this word so-to-so is comprehensive in its scope person, not just the person's physical body being restored into this concept of relational salvation, and even the soul in relation to sozo, is never understood as only spiritual, but it's this word that points to the combination of the total person, physical and spiritual, and relational. The other word that's going to come up is ilmai, and it means to heal physically. St Luke in Luke's gospel uses this word the most often, but Wilkinson, who we just talked about, states that St John and St Luke appear to use this word, appear to use this word as a synonym for a word terapuyo. Terapuyo is a word that points to the comprehensive idea of physical healing from illness or deliverance from demonic possession, but it's always in connotation with either interacting with Jesus or the disciples. Only one time is it used in reference to an interaction between a person and a physician. Only one time. So every time that these words are used, including words that reference physical healing, it's in the context of something much bigger than a person's physical body. Now there are two more words that you're going to hear when we read this narrative that are simply translated from the word health. One is hegeis, and that means essentially wholeness, or soundness of one's whole being. It's a holistic reference to bringing the whole person back into union with themselves, with God and with others. The second is irene. Irene is a reference to absence of war or strife, but it's not simply physical war or physical conflict. It's the absence of tension and strife relationally, in every aspect of the person, and this word can often then be used to describe the absence of the destruction that occurs during war or strike. So one quick review. Let's read the passage together and we'll break it down a bit as we try to relate this back to remembering that healing is synonymous with Shalom.

Speaker 2: 9:23

Friends, listen for the word of the Lord from the gospel according to St Mark, chapter 5. And a great crowd followed Jesus and thronged about him, and there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was no better off but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind Jesus in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, if I touch even the hem of his garment, I will be made well From the word sozo. And immediately the flow of blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed from the word Iomai of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said who touched my garments? And Jesus' disciples said to him you see the crowd pressing in around you and yet you say who touched me? And Jesus looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before Jesus and told Jesus the whole truth. Jesus said to her Daughter, your faith has made you well from the word solito, go in peace from the word irene and be healed from the word heges of your ditties. Friends, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Speaker 2: 11:25

In one passage we see four separate words used to reference aspects of wellness, wholeness, peace and healing, or health. All of these words, when you look at them together, in the concepts that they denote or point to draw out aspects or layers of shalom. Many of these words so to so in particular, in particular, are often translated one-to-one from shalom. So what does this help? Us see by paying a little bit more attention to the language that's used. Okay, let's walk through this.

Speaker 2: 12:11

The woman has been suffering in isolation and ostracization alone for 12 years because she is bleeding uncontrollably. Remember the purity system that this culture is embedded in. This woman is considered spiritually unpure and untouchable and unapproachable because she is bleeding. Read the Mosaic Code and the purity laws and what you arrive at here is as long as someone is bleeding, whether it's a cycle or a longer period of time like this, as long as a woman is bleeding, she is considered impure. So to be out in a crowd around other people is absolutely frowned upon, because any person who is then around her and touches her also becomes spiritually impure and can't go to the temple for worship or be in the presence of God. So she is isolated, alone, socially cut off from her communal body and she knows this because of the purity laws. And she goes to Jesus and knows that she shouldn't be there, and so she tries to do it in anonymity and seeks total healing. So to go, absolute deliverance and total healing in every aspect of what makes her a person, that's what she goes to Jesus seeking.

Speaker 2: 13:44

But the text says immediately after touching Jesus, the flow of blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was physically healed, physically healed of her disease. She did not receive the holistic healing that she sought by simply receiving the deliverance from quote, her disease. After Jesus stops and says who touched me? In a crowd full of people, where people are pressing in around him, jesus notices the touch of one person with an intent, with a desire to be near him for the purpose of being transformed by him. Jesus notices that one person and in that moment remember shalom is primarily right relationship. In that moment Jesus calls this woman out of anonymity into a place where her identity can be restored and he says daughter, your faith has made you well. So does O, your faith has made you well. So does O.

Speaker 2: 14:53

After Jesus interacts with her and relationally calls her close to him. In that interaction she receives the holistic healing that she came for. That is relational in scope. Go in peace, be free of the strife and the tension that has divided you socially and physically and spiritually in a name and be healed physically of your disease, but healed heges is of your whole being. Be healed in your whole being. After she engages Jesus not by simply being in proximity with Jesus, but by engaging Jesus as God she receives the holistic healing in every aspect of her person that she initially sought in the first place. Shalom is something that Jesus invites her into. That then restores every aspect of what makes her a person, and then she is sent back into the very social context that has rejected her because she's impure, and she is sent back into a context where she can worship God at the temple because the Holy of Holies with flesh on Jesus has beckoned her back into relationship with God. And then she is also returns to her family context and her body is restored to her.

Speaker 2: 16:24

When you see these kinds of things in scripture and slow down a little bit to pay attention to shalom at work, healing looks very different. When we make healing something that is primarily about the altering of someone's bodily state. We actually cheapen the work when we make disability about something that is simply about fitting in or fitting the norm, or the presence of evil is proven by the presence of disability and the presence of deliverance is proven by a normate body, and we map that onto scripture. We miss so much of what God is doing and what Jesus is demonstrating for us. This is one passage and it's a beautiful example because the language gives us an explicit picture, but it is one passage.

Speaker 2: 17:18

When you take this framework and map it onto the healing narratives, it all fits. It all fits. There's been a number of works that I have done and others have done that help to kind of stretch this out a little bit. I can include portions of some of my graduate work that works through the healing narratives and if you're interested, you can click the link below this episode and read a little more. Just keep in mind that it is biblical studies in nature and so it may take some work to get through it.

Speaker 2: 17:53

But this framework can be applied faithfully to the biblical text in general and what it shows for us is that God is bigger than the normate assumptions, biases and frameworks that we map onto a first-century, individualized way of being. When Christ speaks restoration to us, it doesn't remove dependency from us. It recalibrates our way of being so that we can be healthily and rightly interdependent with God and others. This is why disability being equated with evil doesn't make much sense. Friends, it's good to be with you. I'm praying for you. May God bless you. May God keep you. May God cause his face to shine upon you and bring you shalom.

Speaker 1: 18:45

This has been a Center for Disability and Ministry production. Join us next time for another insightful episode.