Healing…without Money, without Price (Evil Geniuses Series)
Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash
This is the eighth in a series of posts where Dr. Brueggemann reflects on the book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History by Kurt Andersen. Read the previous posts here.
In his remarkable, important book, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History (2020), Kurt Andersen has traced the planning of a political party to take over the government. Near the end of his book, Andersen lists eight claims in the playbook that he believes generate their action. It is my intention in this and following weekly blogs to take up each of these eight claims and to consider how we may in good faith respond to them. I have no doubt that such a careful pointed response to each of these distortions is an effort worth making. I will take up each claim in turn.
The eighth claim is Universal healthcare is tyranny. This particular notion of “tyranny” is the simple recognition that good health care policy requires taxation so that there can be adequate public funding to serve all the people in our nation concerning a most basic human need. This verdict reflects the deep dread that, “somewhere someone undeserving will get something for nothing,” even though the funders and shapers of this movement have greatly benefitted from public funds for a very long time. Even beyond that greedy fear, there is an implicit assumption that “lesser” people—those who do not effectively participate in the market—are undeserving and unimportant, or they do not, like the rest of us, in fact need or require good health care. There is, in this advocacy against the needy, a deeply shared, albeit tacit notion concerning social hierarchy, social solidarity, and social responsibility.
As an easy and obvious counter to such pernicious thinking, here I will focus on the remarkable narrative of II Kings 5. The chapter is among the narratives concerning Elisha, a larger-than-life figure who, for a time in the ninth century BCE, dominated the biblical narrative and who offers in Israel a generative alterative to the failed and inept leadership of the royal dynasty in Northern Israel. At the outset we note that Elisha is completely uncredentialed. He has no notable background and no significant ancestors. Nonetheless, he has a reputation that must have been fostered by oral accounts of his inexplicable capacity to effect social transformations (see Walter Brueggemann, Testimony to Otherwise (2001).
By the time we arrive at II Kings 5, Elisha has already enacted transformations that must have contributed to his reputation. He has provided oil for a hapless widow (II Kings 4:1-7). He has raised from the dead the don of a wealthy woman (4-37). He has purified a large pot of stew (4:38-41). And he has fed a host of people with a modicum of food, with some left over (4:42-44). All of these narratives together constitute evidence that Elisha was gifted with an uncommon capacity for evoking wellbeing in a variety of difficult circumstances. His work is quite in contrast to the hapless unnamed king of Northern Israel who exhibits no capacity to generate wellbeing for his realm.
Now in chapter 5 the drama opens in Syria, the long-running adversary of Israel. We may presume that the action is in Damascus, the capitol city of Syria. The opening scene concerns Naaman, a high-ranking military officer in Syria who was a mighty warrior with an important victory to his credit. (Our Israelite narrator rather puckishly credits his military victory to YHWH, this anticipating the claim to be made for YHWH subsequently in the narrative (v. 1; see v. 15.) For starters, Naaman is smitten with leprosy (v. 1). The disease is not only a threat to his health, but is an isolating disease because it was known to be immediately dangerous to the entire community, and so marked as “unclean” in a way that required isolation. The general is about to lose his highly visible social standing! The narrative pivots on the welcome word of a young Israelite girl who was a war captive in Damascus. The young girl had, we know not how, heard of Elisha and his healing capacity (v. 3). Upon hearing the news of the general’s infection, the girl tells what she knows of Elisha. Upon hearing of Elisha, Naaman receives permission from his king to travel to Israel to meet the king of Israel, and so to receive healing for his dread disease from his enemy. Kings have a way of caring for each other in spite of hostility, as in the recent case of protection and care for the Shah of Iran.
The high ranking general did not travel lightly to Israel. He carried with him and his entourage silver, gold, and many garments, all rich treasures that might make his overture for healing more acceptable in Israel. He anticipates that the wealth he brings with him will ease his welcome in hostile Samaria, the capital city of Israel. He brings his wealth in order to secure his health! The King of Syria has anticipated that the King in Israel would assure the healing of the general, king-to-king! The nameless king of Israel, however, has no healing capacity, and regards the coming of the Syrian general into his city as at least an affront, if not a threat (v. 7). The king of Israel knows that only God can heal, and he himself possesses no God-given power to heal.
In contrast to the Israelite king who cannot heal, the next advance in the narrative is taken by Elisha who heretofore had not been permitted into this narrative. Elisha is unabashed. He directs his king to send the general to him (v. 8). Elisha does not doubt his own capacity to heal the general and his leprosy. And so the general, surely bewildered by the default of the Israelite king, surely dismayed to be sent to this nobody, makes his way to Elisha’s house (v. 9).
Elisha does not even get up out his chair to welcome the general. He simply directs that the general should submit to an old Israelite practice of healing in the Jordan River. The general is now fully affronted; he expected a better welcome that would have honored his preeminence. He had anticipated better medical service than this. That, however, is all that is on offer from Elisha, nothing more than the modest Jordan River that was surely dwarfed by the great rivers of Syria well known by the general. It is as though the general is being dramatically reduced in stature and in prominence. Nonetheless the general is persuaded by his aides to submit to the simple requirement of the prophet. He follows the instruction he had been given. And healing happens!
So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean (II Kings 5:14).
His diseased flesh was promptly clean and pure, as fresh as that of a baby! The narrator does not explain what happened, and exhibits no curiosity about it. We get only a matter-of-fact report that the prophet has effectively worked a healing for the general! Thus verse 14 is the conclusion of the narrative of healing.
But the narrative continues beyond the healing in a way that interests us for our topic. The general is exultant over his restored flesh:
Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant (v. 15).
He has been won over to the governance of YHWH, even at the expense of his own home-based gods. He utters the sweep of a doxology that only a new convert might utter. He takes his own healing as compelling evidence of YHWH’s governance and capacity to restore. And then, as one does in a doctor’s office, he offers to pay for his healing:”Please accept a present.” The general knows the generic requirement: “Payment is due upon service.” The general knows that medical care costs money. He is no cheapskate, but is both willing and able to pay whatever restoration may cost. “Spare no expense,” the ready affirmation of people of means.
We have already seen a prophetic wonder in the healing. And now in verse 16 is a second prophetic wonder:
As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing! He urged him to accept, but he refused (v. 16).
Elisha’s refusal of payment is part of his attestation that the healing is due to the wonder-working power of YHWH. He himself takes no credit, but gives full credit to the God who will take no payment. The narrative concerns the unambiguous delivery of free health care. The general makes one other request: to take back home with him some Israelite soil so that he, even at home, can properly worship the God of Israel whom he confesses to be the only “God in all the earth.” He allows to Elisha that his official duties as a “political general” will require him to participate in liturgies for the Syrian god, Rimmon, but he insists he will trust only YHWH; the rest is play-acting for the Syria public and for his king. Elisha has no quibble with the general’s public requirements: “Go in peace” (v. 19).
The final paragraph of the narrative, verses 20-27, exhibit the way in which health care is ambiguously connected to money. The servant of Elisha, Gehazi, is quick to grasp the opportunity for exploitation. But his effort to exploit health care for gain does not go well. His greed promptly runs afoul of the will of God for free health care and of the intent of the prophet. Gehazi ends, in the puckishness of the narrative, as the new carrier of leprosy of which the general had been healed. While both Gehazi, the servant boy, and Naaman, the Syrian general, assume health care is linked to money, Elisha insists otherwise. He is a champion of free health care!
Now I am quick to recognize that it is a very long stretch from this ancient narrative of Elisha to our current health care crisis. The narrative nonetheless is enough to suggest that we can easily trace out two practices of health care, just as we have heretofore seen two practices of bread (food). We have previously seen that there is the “bread of heaven” freely given, bread for all of God’s creatures, and bread wrought through market forces. Mutatis mutandis, we can readily see that there are two notions of health care delivery, one is the free offer of transformative care; the other is a calculating market-driven health care that is propelled by Homo oeconomicus and is designed for profit. Gehazi and Naaman together are prepared to participate in the latter, and assume that it is normal practice to be accepted. But Elisha is a carrier of and advocate for the former, that is, free health care.
It is some distance from Elisha’s free gift of health care to publicly financed health care among us, or as it is polemically termed, “socialized medicine.” Those who easily benefit from monetized health care are readily able to call a free offer of such care as “tyranny.” But to all others, such free health care, publically financed, is simply the practice of the community caring for its own, and mobilizing its common resources for that care for all.
The trajectory of healing from Elisha extends, in Christian tradition, to the health care ministry of Jesus. Indeed, Jesus may be seen in a stylized way, as a reiterating of the ministry of Elisha with the same readiness for good health care that is not monetized. The gospel narrative is saturated with testimony that Jesus was a healer among the common people. His reach was indeed “universal” without monetization, and none thought his work to be tyrannical:
So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them (Matthew 4:24).
Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. (9:35).
Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them, so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel (Matthew 15:30-31). See also 8:7-13, 12:15, 22, 14:14, 19:2, 21:14.
We may recognize that the dispute that Jesus faced concerning healing on the sabbath is disputed between two practices of health care, the one that is universal and free, the other that is controlled, managed, supervised, and regulated to advance the interests of the social leaders (Matthew 12:9-14). Just above, I wrote, “None thought his work to be tyrannical.” But that is not correct. The leadership surely thought that his health care was oppressive, because it disputed the monetary control they were able to exercise in health care practice. He had sent forth healing forces into the world that they found impossible to regulate or monetize. His readiness for transformative health care was unencumbered by their regulations.
Beyond that, we may also notice that Jesus extends his health care capacity to the work of his disciples as well. His disciples were to do the work of healing:
Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness… Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment (Matthew 10:1, 8).
In verse 8 it is to be especially noted that much healing work is “without payment,” thus an echo of the refusal of payment by Elisha. The narrative of Matthew, moreover, is honest to recognize that the capacity of the disciples to heal was limited by the measure of their faith, and their trust in the restorative powers of God:
When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly (Matthew 17:14-18).
It was the “little faith” of the disciples that is central to the episode.
In the narrative of the Book of Acts the healing work of the church is duly noted. Most spectacular is the healing of the blind beggar by Peter and John:
But Peter said, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God (Acts 3:6-7).
Indeed, it is reported that the man is given “perfect health” (3:16). This transformative act led to the arrest and imprisonment of the apostles. It is clear that the establishment is made nervous by the offer of free healing. That healing work of the apostles is nonetheless otherwise attested in the Book of Acts:
A great number of people would also gather from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all cured (Acts 5:16).
The crowds with one accord listened eagerly to what was said by Philip, hearing and seeing the signs that he did, for unclean spirits, crying with loud shrieks, came out of many who were possessed; and many others who were paralyzed or lame were cured. So there was great joy in the city (Acts 8:6-8).
It so happened that the father of Publius lay sick in bed with fever and dysentery. Paul visited him and cured him by praying and putting his hands on him. After this happened, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured (Acts 28:8-9).
The church believes and trusts that God’s restorative power is at work in the world. It attests, moreover, that that restorative power was singularly concentrated in the person and life of Jesus. The church does not doubt that beyond that, this same capacity and responsibility for restoration is its continuing work. It is for this reason that the church has steadfastly been committed to “medical missionaries,” and has long been invested in health care practice and delivery through hospitals and health care. As on every other front, the church resists the monetization of the delivery of basic services in meeting basic human needs, because monetization of such services as healing can and surely will lead to ranked service. Such service is predictably better for the well-off than for the poor and disadvantaged. Our current monetized health care system is yet another instance of “separate but equal” in which we have long since known that “separate” for the moneyed and for the poor is not and cannot be “equal.” It is unequal not only in expenditure, but in care, attentiveness, and in commitment to heal. It is time for the church to make a vigorous case that it is not “universal health care” that is “tyrannical.” It is exactly the opposite: monetized health care is tyrannical and ill serves the common good. The church, along with the synagogue, can gladly affirm:
Bless the Lord…
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the Pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good as long as you live… (Psalm 103:3-5).
This doxology is a catalog of God’s recurring acts of transformation of the world. But of course the church, as well as the synagogue, knows that God’s transformative work is at the same time human transformative work. It is faithful human responsibility to be about the task, as the Psalm says, of forgiveness, healing, redemption, crowning, and satisfying. It is a wonder (as well as a fact) that free healing is the human performance of God’s work. Elisha knew that. So did Jesus! So does the church and the synagogue. Indeed, the only ones who do not know this are the ones who have a monetary stake in doing health care otherwise. In the second “woe oracle” of the “woes” of Matthew 23, it goes this way:
But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 23:13).
The regulatory authorities serve those who benefit from control who “lock out” people from the kingdom of heaven, that is, from the common good of the community. (The same word, “lock out” is used in I John 3:17 with a question pertinent to our topic: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?”) Monetization is an effective mode of “lock out.” Such norms and requirements keep the disadvantaged from adequate participation in the blessings of the common good. A monetized health care system is an effective “lock out.” Those who do so are yet again and always addressed by the “woe” of the Lord of wellbeing who intends that none should be “locked out” of the basic resources for life and wellbeing.
Walter Brueggemann
August 13, 2022
Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann is one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is the author of over one hundred books and numerous scholarly articles. He continues to be a highly sought-after speaker.
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