The Wisdom of Healing Healthcare
Proverbs, Chapter 9:

1 Wisdom has built her house; 
she has hewn out its seven pillars.
2 She has prepared her meat and mixed her wine; she has also set her table.
3 She has sent out her maids, and she calls from the highest point of the city.
4 “Let all who are simple come in here!” she says to those who lack judgment.
5 “Come, eat my food 
and drink the wine I have mixed.
6 Leave your simple ways and you will live; 
walk in the way of understanding.
13 The woman Folly is loud; she is undisciplined and without knowledge.
14 She sits at the door of her house, 
on a seat at the highest point of the city,
15 calling out to those who pass by, 
who go straight on their way.
16 “Let all who are simple come in here!” 
she says to those who lack judgment.
17 “Stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious!”
18 But little do they know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of the grave.

In the Old Testament, Wisdom is a woman. To the Greeks she was called Sophia. And here at Our Savior Lutheran Church, we also know her as Sophia. Wisdom is a person to follow. Wisdom is a path and a way of life.

Wisdom is not knowledge; Wisdom is not to know everything. My friend, Grace, knows everything and I know nothing. The other day we were driving down the highway when I got into a lane with a sign: EXIT ONLY. Grace, who knows everything, exclaimed: “How can that sign say EXIT ONLY? I know that you can get back on this road going the other way!”

I, who knows nothing, said: “You can get back on; that’s true, but if you’re in this lane, you can EXIT ONLY!” That is knowledge but not Wisdom. A wise man would know better than to argue with a “knowledgeable” woman!

Two women came before wise King Solomon, dragging between them a young man wearing a long white coat.
“This young doctor agreed to marry my daughter,” said one.
“No! He agreed to marry MY daughter,” said the other.
And so they haggled before the King until he called for silence.
“Bring me my biggest sword,” said Solomon, “and I shall hew the young doctor in half. Each of you shall receive a half.”
“Sounds good to me,” said the first lady.
But the other woman said, “Oh, Sire, do not spill innocent blood. Let the other woman’s daughter marry him.”
The wise king did not hesitate a moment. He proclaimed, “The doctor must marry the first lady’s daughter.”
“But she was willing to hew him in two!” exclaimed the king’s court.
“Indeed,” said wise King Solomon. “That shows she is the TRUE mother-in-law.”
In the Bible, while Wisdom is a woman, the Old Testament figure known best for his Wisdom was King Solomon.

Telling mother-in-law jokes is not very wise.
Lutherans, Wisdom is calling you today. She is calling you who are simple and inviting you to turn in here to Our Savior Lutheran Church. If you don’t have any sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink the wine I have mixed.” She is inviting you to lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight. Find wisdom and live.
Today I need you to find wisdom and be wise about health care. I need you to be very wise about it because I have no healthcare save what I can pay for out of my own wallet and what I can get Jesus to give me free of charge. I believe what the Gospel says that if I eat the body of Jesus I will live forever but I want to live a little longer of forever here on this beautiful earth.
I need you to help me get healthcare. For the last five years I have had no health care insurance. I am a 62 year old, obese man with diabetes living without health insurance. The last time I could afford health insurance was when I was working for Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque New Mexico which provided its employees with 80% health coverage after a five hundred dollar deductible. I could go to the doctor for a physical and I could get a colonoscopy.
When I finished the year long chaplain residency, I was able to keep my health care through COBRA, a government mandated program that provides 18 months of care at a reasonable price I could afford. But when my COBRA ended I no longer could afford health insurance.
It was about that time that I was diagnosed with diabetes. So far I am able to afford going to the doctor four times a year to have my blood sugar checked and have medications prescribed. Thanks to Wal-Mart I can afford my blood pressure and diabetes medications. That’s about all I can afford. My only hope really is that I can make it until I’m 65 when I can get Medicare but even then paying 20% of the ever increasing medical costs will likely break my bank if my kidneys fail or I get the big C or my ticker needs a jump start.
If I were alone I wouldn’t bother you with all this but I am not alone. There are 47 million people who are like me. 75% of all people who have had to declare bankruptcy during this economic recession, whether they have health insurance or not, have significant unpaid medical bills. My guess is that as affluent as you are and as insured as you are, you are running into some serious problems related to the cost and quality of your healthcare.
I go to a weekly coffee hour in the town of Meriden where we get into some fascinating discussions about various topics. One day we got onto the issue of health care. Now these people are older, not poor people and there was not one of them not griping about the cost and quality of care they were receiving. Each one had a horror story to tell and many of them had significant bills they were struggling to pay off. I was completely surprised by this. I thought only poor people without any insurance would be suffering. But that is not at all the case.
My horror story began when my doctor told me five years ago that I should get a sleep study to find out if I had sleep apnea, a disease that disturbs your sleep and is correlated to depression which I was suffering periodically. I went to the hospital for a consultation and was told that I needed a $2,000 study done. Now I knew that I had sleep apnea already and I didn’t see why I needed to pay $2,000 I didn’t have to learn what I already knew.  So I went without. I am sure that happens all of the time with people who have no insurance and cannot afford the care they should have. They do without and pay what other bills they can.
Last winter my depression got really deep. I got desperate and bought a machine used to treat sleep apnea on the internet where you can get one without a prescription and for 20% of what they cost new. I tried the machine on my own and it seemed to be working but I was afraid that the pressure might be set too high and I might harm myself. So I stopped using it and my depression remained. I began spiraling down and down and finally, in desperation, I went to the doctor.
“You never got that sleep study did you? You had better get it or you will not get well.”
So I scraped half of the money together and the hospital agreed to accept the remainder by monthly payment. The study was done, the diagnoses was made, the machine was calibrated the depression lifted and here I am another example of the wonderful accomplishments of the American medical system!
Of course, if I had been able to afford and get coverage five years ago I might have had five happier years instead of five more miserable years but no one seems to care about that except me. And if I had received earlier treatment, my family would have benefitted and my church would have benefitted but as it turns out no one benefitted that I can think of. If I lived in Germany or Sweden I could have had healthcare. Germans and Swedes wonder in amazement that Americans can be so satisfied with such a disingenuous and debilitating system that sometimes makes death look good.
Now I am appealing to you to be wise about my health and yours because I believe that you have touched and been touched by the great healer Jesus, a man of wisdom for whom healing was his greatest gift. I am hoping that if you have been touched by this Jesus you will have some compassion for me and all of the others who want to be well.
Jesus did three things in his life and all of them were remarkable. He fed people. He healed people. And he taught people to be wise. That’s all that he did. These three things are so basic and so elemental and foundational that we should think about these things and become wise about them. Without food and without health and without wisdom there can be no life. Take these things away from people and they die. Jesus knew this and he made it his business to provide these basic necessities of life to people because without them they have no life. And so the Gospels are filled with nothing but feeding stories and healing stories and stories about how people can become wise. That’s all there is. Jesus was a carpenter by trade but he built nothing that we know of. He didn’t play a musical instrument. He didn’t fish. He didn’t have much of a family life. His life was consumed by feeding and healing and teaching wisdom.
Jesus was no fool. He knew that if a person’s belly could be full instead of empty and if her body could be whole instead of broken then there was some possibility for joy in life. Hungry and diseased people are not joyful people and Jesus knew that.
And we know that too. That is why the followers of Jesus have been some of the world’s greatest feeder and healers and teachers. That is why there are so many soup kitchens and Head Start classrooms housed in churches. That is why there are so many hospitals with names like Presbyterian and Baptist and Catholic. That is why so many educational institutions were founded by Christians. That is why Albert Schweitzer healed at Lambarene in Africa and why Dorothy Day fed men and women in the bowery and Eleazar Wheelock in his wisdom founded Dartmouth College.  Without feeding and healing and wisdom, there is no joy in life- only hunger, disease and folly.
The prophet in Jesus knew that if people were fed and healed then the entire community and the whole of society would benefit. The prophet Jeremiah cried “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored? Jesus Became Jeremiah’s physician undertaking a mission to bring in the kingdom of God where the poor would be fed and the sick healed.
His feeding and healing were not only for the benefit of the individuals who were touched by him. The entire world benefits from the fact that people are full and whole and wise. If you are well then I am well. If you are fed, then I am full. If you are wise then my life is made beautiful by being in the presence of such wisdom. If a child is fed and cared for and taught in his infancy then that child will not be a burden on the world but will lift the world and carry it on his shoulders. Be wise about this! Think of your own welfare and the welfare of your children and of the people in your town! The issue is not about you as an individual it is about you in the context of the community in which you live.
Now I began with wisdom calling to you to leave your simple ways and live, to walk in the way of understanding. But we also know that further on in the ninth chapter of Proverbs the woman Folly appears. And I caution you to be on the lookout for her. It is interesting to know that the Woman Folly is loud. Watch out for those who are shouting. She is undisciplined and without knowledge.  She too sits in high places and calls out to those who pass by. She calls to those who lack judgment and lures them in saying. “Stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious. And little do you know that the dead are there and her guests are in the depths of the grave.
I am begging you not to follow the Woman Folly which is the way to the grave but to receive the invitation of Wisdom, the way of Jesus. You will walk in the way of understanding and you will live.
Brothers and Sisters, I need your help! Millions of people in your own country need your help. We need your wisdom!

To the Glory of God for the congregation of Our Savior Lutheran Church. Hanover, NH

August 19, 2009

Gregory W. Marshall
Sabbatical Pastor

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