There is something terribly wrong with America’s healthcare system.  There are now 45,000,000 Americans without health insurance, more than ever before.  And many of those who have health insurance can’t afford to actually use it – the out-of-pocket expenses for any serious medical procedure are just too high.  People are taking bus trips to Canada because they can’t afford to buy their prescription drugs here.  Insurance companies have known for a long time that 10 percent of patients account for 70 percent of medical expenditures.  Therefore, as the Commonwealth Fund’s website* puts it, “Insurers have tremendous incentives to employ market segmentation techniques to achieve favorable selection.”  That’s favorable to their bottom line, of course, not to the well-being of the patients.

The United States spends more than any other nation on healthcare – well over twice the per capita average among industrialized nations.  And the United States is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide healthcare for all of its citizens – the only one.  Just listen to this quote from Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund:

The greatest problem in the U.S. healthcare system – the one that sets the United States apart from every other industrialized nation – is its failure to provide health insurance coverage for all. Forty-five million Americans are uninsured, and one-fourth of adults under age 65 are uninsured at some point during a given year. The Institute of Medicine has estimated that 18,000 lives are lost each year in the United States as a direct result of gaps in insurance coverage, at an economic cost between $65 billion and $130 billion annually from premature death, preventable disability, early retirement, and reduced economic output.**

That a nation as wealthy and privileged as the United States, and one that spends as much money on healthcare as the United States, does not provide healthcare for everyone is inexcusable.  There is no other word.  Inexcusable.
 
[Balls up first page of sermon and tosses it over his shoulder.]   Thus ends the righteous indignation, social justice portion of the sermon – because there is another story to tell.  It is the story not of a broken institutional system but of the health of the people who make up this system.  This is our story.

For a moment, let’s jump to the end of the story to see how it’s turned out.  We’ll do so with a step on the bathroom scale and a look in the mirror.  Many of us won’t like what we see: 23 percent of us are obese, and 58 percent are either overweight or obese.  Not only that, but we are dramatically fatter than we were just 20 years ago.  Even our children are fatter:  Twice as many children and teens are overweight today than just 20 years ago.  And along with this weight comes significantly more hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and many other health problems.

To see how we got here, we can look at how our typical American lives have changed in those 20 years.  It’s no secret that we are busier than ever before.  We are working far more hours than we used to.  We are constantly running from one place to the next, one activity to the next, one appointment to the next.  We make our phone calls on the run.  We eat on the run.  And in spite of all the “running”, our lives have become more sedentary – most of our activity takes place while seated at a desk, in front of a computer, in the car, or on the sofa.  Because we don’t take the time to pay attention to our bodies, we have become out of touch with their needs.  We don’t get enough exercise or enough rest.  We often get too much food with too little nutrition.  Our relationship with our bodies has become increasingly strained and dysfunctional, even abusive.

Our on-the-run lifestyle extends to our minds as well.  We are constantly bombarded – and bombard ourselves – with information and entertainment.  The TV and radio have become our constant companions.  And what we see and hear there has become increasingly antagonistic and violent.  Sitcoms and variety shows have given way to reality-show competitions.  Politics has gotten dirtier.  The news is now composed almost entirely of fighting among people, corporations and nations.  This has all taken a toll on our minds and hearts.  It’s not just our physical health that’s gotten worse.  In just the past seven years, the use of anti-depressant drugs has increased from 29-124 percent, depending on age group.  Part of this may be a reduction in the stigma attached to depression, but these numbers are not a good sign.  Americans are more depressed and anxious than ever before.  We have come to see the world as an unpleasant, unhappy, dangerous place that needs to be avoided.  And so our relationship with our hearts and minds has become distant, alienated, and aversive.

The places we look for solutions to our health problems also has a chapter in our health story.  It turns out that anti-depressants are not the only drugs seeing more widespread use.  Forty-four percent of Americans reported using a prescription drug sometime in the last year, and 17 percent reported using three or more prescription drugs in the last month.  Americans use a lot of medications, and the amount has increased significantly from just a few years ago.  More and more often, when something goes wrong with our bodies, we turn to drugs for relief.

My point in telling this story is that America’s healthcare crisis is also a health crisis.  And the moral of the story is this:  Our lifestyle is making us sick.  We can blame the healthcare system for costing too much and not providing for all of our health needs, and we can find plenty of reasons why we’re right.  But it’s only part of our story.  The Humanist side of our heritage teaches personal responsibility.  It teaches that we are not merely controlled by outside forces, but that we play an integral role in how our life unfolds.  It means that we need to look at the role we play in our own health.

What it really comes down to is a question of values, and by “values” I don’t mean some hot-button religious and political issues like gay marriage, abortion, or preemptive war.  I’m talking about what we truly value based on how we spend our time and how we spend our money.

America’s weight problem provides a perfect example of this.  Many people want to lose weight, but they want it to be easy and they don’t want to have to give anything up in the process.  Diets like Atkins promise easy weight loss without strain and without giving up our favorite foods, and we rush to these fad diets in spite of the many doctors who raise concerns about the long-term health risks.  Whatever happened to the age-old – and well proven – method of a sensible diet and exercise?  Fifty-eight percent of adults today report that they never engage in vigorous leisure-time activity, and only 26 percent engage in vigorous leisure-time activity at least three times per week, the minimum we need for good health and fitness.  Everyone wants to be fit, but very few of us are willing to work for it.  What does this say about the value we place on our health and fitness?

Our eating habits and other lifestyle choices also say a lot about our values.  We favor the speed and convenience of fast food and prepared foods over the health and satisfaction of cooking for ourselves.  And in doing so, we also lose the deepening of relationships and connection that comes from sitting down to eat with friends, with family, or even by ourselves to savor a meal, without the TV, without the radio, and without a book to read.  Clearly we place a great deal of value on food – we eat so much of it.  We eat to fit our busy schedules and to fulfill our nearly endless cravings.  And we are left both unhealthy and unsatisfied.  Our relationship with food has become corrupted to the point that it’s causing us harm.  Our actions show that we have made the fulfillment of desire and achievement of pleasure our highest value.

The other side of the desire coin is the way we deal with pain and other feelings we don’t like.  Just as we have come to believe that our desires should always be fulfilled, we believe that we should always be able to avoid pain.  So when we experience something unpleasant, we look for a quick fix.  In healthcare terms, that often means medication.  If  we have a headache, without much thought about why, we take a pill.  Have high blood pressure or high cholesterol?  There are pills for those too.  Feeling depressed?  Want to quit smoking?  Want to lose weight?  Very often, we quickly reach for a drug.  We even medicate our children because the constant activity in their lives has made it difficult for them to sit still.  Just as we have made fulfillment of desires a value, we also place high value on the avoidance of pain and difficulty, again to the point that it causes us harm.

This constant state of activity and motion points to what may be the biggest problem with our lifestyle.  The human mind and body were not meant to go full-tilt 24-hours a day.  It is simply not good for us.  This is where our spiritual health suffers the most.  When we do so much, we cannot possibly absorb the experience; and it is in the full experience of our thoughts, feelings, and actions that we find the joy, fulfillment, and wholeness of life. When we don’t take enough time to center ourselves and rest in the present experience, we become confused about what will fulfill us.  We lose touch with our mind, our body, and our heart. We lose touch with those around us.  And we lose touch with God.  And so, we end up placing value on the wrong things.

If we need any more examples of our misplaced values, consider this: 22 percent of  American adults report that they are current smokers, and 23 percent are former smokers – nearly half of all American adults have smoked or do smoke on a regular basis.  In less wealthy populations and countries, the numbers are even higher.  Smoking claims the lives of 2,000,000 people worldwide every year.  Two million.  That means that in just the last 30 years or so, smoking has killed more people than all the wars in human history.  What does this say about what we value?

There is still another side to the story of health and healing.  In Mark 2:1-12, we have the story of a group of men who are so desperate to get healing for their paralyzed friend that they dig a hole in the roof of a house so they can bring their friend to Jesus for healing.  When they do, his words and actions surprise them:  Instead of healing the paralytic, as they know he can, Jesus says to him, “Your sins are forgiven.”

We don’t talk much about sin here.  And we certainly don’t share the belief of the people of Jesus’ day that physical illness is God’s punishment for sins.  Or do we?  Look at it this way:  A sin is a mistake we make.  It’s a mistake that wrongs someone or causes harm.  And like all of our actions, sins have consequences.  The consequences of a sin are not some kind of divine wrath but are what follows naturally from the way the universe is set up.  It is not anger, wrath, or punishment, but it is the way God works.  Sin means being out of harmony with the way God works.  And very often, we sin because we have placed value on the wrong things.

What are your sins when it comes to your health?  Is work causing you too much stress?  Do you try to pack too much into each day?  Do you care for your body with proper nutrition, enough exercise, and enough rest?  Do you fill your mind with too many harmful sounds and images? Are you patient with your healing?

In our day, we have no miracle healers like Jesus who can say to the paralytic, “Stand up and take your mat and walk” and make it so.  But this is not the important message in this story.  Jesus meant what he said the first time:  Your sins are forgiven.  I’m here to tell you the same thing. Whatever you may have done to negatively impact your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health, your sins are forgiven.  This does not mean you will be instantly healed of what ails you; what it means is that you have permission to let go of your past sins and begin the work of healing.  This is the meaning of repentance, which Jesus knew as t’shuvah, the Hebrew word that literally means “turning” – turning to pursue a different course.  A healthier course.  A less sinful course, more in harmony with the way things are.

The biggest challenge you will probably face with sin and repentance is accepting that you are forgiven.  Whatever we may say we believe about sin and punishment, we are so hard on ourselves that if something goes wrong for us, we tend to believe that in some way we are at fault.  And then we compound the problem by becoming angry at ourselves, which never leads to healing.  To let go of the anger and begin the healing process, you need to forgive yourself. However you may have sinned in the past, you can let it go and turn to a new path in the future.  It often takes a lot for us to do this.  In the story, Jesus had to perform a healing miracle for the onlookers to believe that the paralytic was forgiven.  What will it take for you to accept those simple words – your sins are forgiven?

I don’t know how to fix America’s ailing healthcare system.  What I do know is that healing needs to begin with ourselves.  We need to find forgiveness for the sins of system and for our own sins.  Can you pay attention to your body and know what you need for physical healing?  Can you listen to your heart and discover where you need emotional healing?  Can you sit in silence with your spirit and become aware of what you need for spiritual healing?  When enough of us can do this, our consciousness will change.  Our values will change.  Our relationships with ourselves and others will change.  And a healthy system will emerge to support our newfound health.

* http://www.cmwf.org/

** http://www.cmwf.org/usr_doc/803 _davis_presmessage_2004.pdf