Mennonite Weekly Review

Healing played an important role in Jesus’ ministry. Many of the miracles Jesus performed involved healing the sick and lame — the paralytic brought through the roof, the Roman centurion’s servant, the widow’s only son, the woman who touched Jesus’ cloak.

Alexander

Healing was perhaps the most immediate way Jesus demonstrated God’s grace and God’s love.

There were no big hospitals in Jesus’ time. No antibiotics, no chemotherapy, no MRI machines. A major illness was often a death sentence. A chronic condition frequently meant banishment from the community. Jesus restored health so people could return to their community and lead full lives.

How do we model Jesus today? What are the obstacles that hinder those who are sick from leading full lives? Doctors, nurses and others work to restore health and care for the sick. Those of us not in the health profession can still extend a healing hand — by working to reform our broken health care system.

There is a lot of fear swirling around the health care reform debate. Some of the fears are understandable. Those who have good health care coverage don’t want to lose it. People who depend on their insurance to continue treatment of a chronic condition don’t want to lose access to medicines and doctors.

But when we operate only from a place of fear, when we hold on so tightly to what we have and are unwilling to risk letting go just a little so that others might have more, then we are not modeling Jesus.

Millions who can’t afford health care go without, or wait until their con- dition is so severe they have to visit an emergency room. By that time, treatments are often less effective and more expensive. They wait. They suffer. They lose their jobs, their savings, their homes.

Those of us with insurance are one pink slip away from losing it. When we get sick, we spend hours on the phone arguing with insurance company representatives about what’s covered and what’s not.

Out-of-pocket expenses are rising so high that they bankrupt working families. People with chronic illnesses can’t get insurance. Small business owners struggle to cover their employees. Is this the situation we’re so afraid of losing?

And why is it that to sell something to the American people, we have to be told it won’t cost us anything? Why can’t those of us who are able to afford it be asked to pay a little more so that the young teacher or the disabled firefighter can get the care they need?