The British Museum is one of the most comprehensive collections of culture in the world. That's an extremely broad statement, but one that is hard to contradict. It displays everything from ancient Roman and Greek statuary to South American jade jewelry to Egyptian mummies to precious pieces of British culture. Most of their exhibits are themed by region and era, keeping the Buddhas away from the Sphinxes. This makes each room a country to itself, helping you keep your head straight.
However, one room in particular is a themed gallery, meaning that it has exhibits from all over the globe and different times intended to represent a particular cultural phenomenon. In this room, the museum explores ideas about birth, life, healing, sickness, and death from a distinctly global view. All through the room are object-based descriptions of the ways different cultures deal with these human realities through faith, society, the arts, and medicine. The centerpiece of the room is an exhibit called "Cradle to Grave". It has two lengths of textiles, one representing the life of a theoretical average male and the other a corresponding female, containing the 14,000 pills prescribed to the average Briton. Alongside these pills, which are a life story in their own right, are a variety of photos and notes from real peoples' life stories, causing a compare/contrast of humanity and pharmacy.
The stated intent of this particular display is that "maintaining well-being is more complex than just treating illness". This, of course, is the drive of the entire room: culturally, we understand a healthy life to be more than the pills you ingest and the infections you defeat. Unfortunately, no matter how much we might know this to be true, we so rarely live it out in our lives. Instead of knowing that health has as much to do with family life, social connectivity, work-life balance, and especially faith, we tend to localize physical well-being to the realm of doctors and pharmacies. In fact, in America we don't even treat physical health that well, as easily evidenced by our poor attitude towards a right to health insurance.
Maybe it's therefore no wonder that references to healing in the Bible are passed off. We consider them a metaphor or something that doesn't happen any more. After all, if you're sick you take drugs - and those who pray instead of going to the doctor are crazy. In reality something in between seems to be a little more healthy. God's work in this world clearly has a lot to do with real, palpable healing on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level. Our care for these bodies God has given us goes deeper than antibiotics and asprin. Somehow, we have to realize that our responsibility to ourselves, to our neighbor, and to God also pertains to our bodies and how we care for them.
God our creator, you have given us bodies that are indeed very good. Good, but not perfect. When we suffer from disease and injury, we trust in the healing we know you can deliver. Be also present in those who give physical care - doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and all others who use their skills to help heal. Teach us also to care for our lives fully, not just in pills, but in everything we say and do. We pray this in the name of your Son, whose ministry taught us to heal the sick and embrace the outcast. Amen.
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