Healing Comes From Three Things - Listening, Empathy, And Touch

by Eric Elkin

“Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.”

— Mark 1: 40

The Jesuits of Britain asked an interesting question as I prayed with them this morning. Imagine yourself as the leper seeking out Jesus. How do you approach Jesus? And, what do you say? Immediately, my mind started pondering a different question: how do I get him to listen to me? This may seem like an odd thing to say for a person whose profession is speaking, but I do know what it is like to not be heard. It’s frustrating and as paralyzing as leprosy.

Jacob Haendel knows what it is like not to be heard. His story was featured on CBS Sunday Morning back in July of 2021. Jacob was rushed to the hospital with stroke-like symptoms. Once in the hospital, scans revealed something different was going on. His brain was disconnecting itself from the rest of his body. The medical term for his condition is called Toxic Acute Progressive Leukoencephalopathy, but doctors refer to it as Locked-In Syndrome. When brain waves disconnect from the body, it renders the person unable to move and speak.

Doctors, nurses, and families attended to Jacob’s needs for a year, assuming the worst. They assumed he was in pain, locked in a body trying to die, but could not. His stepfather gave him permission to let go and die. But something else was going on that no one could perceive. After almost a year in a vegetative state, Jacob’s arms started to twitch. Then his tongue began to move, and his eyes tracked movement.

Eventually, a therapist used a letter board to help Jacob communicate to the world. His first words were, “I can hear you.” As the world around him spoke about him, no one knew Jacob could hear it all. Unfortunately, he was locked into his own world. A world broken off from the rest of society. Jacob was not a leper, but he experienced the same isolation. How can he get people to listen to him?

“Listening is understanding. The skill of empathy is a must to be able to listen...One can listen better if one sees the whole.”

— Bill Drayton

No one could hear Jacob while he was locked in, but no one listened to him before, either. His condition was most likely brought on by his abusing drugs —opioids and street heroin. I imagine if people saw him using, the only thing they noticed was a drug addict locked into an abusive existence. If Jacob could speak his own truth, he would tell you he was self-medicating the pain of losing his mother. As I watched the story, I wondered how we get the world to hear our pain?

As I listened this morning, I was moved by the reading of verse 41, “Moved with pity, [Jesus] stretched out his hand and touched him.” We often think of miracles as something beyond our ability. They are something reserved for the powers of Jesus. Yet, this healing comes from three things we all can do — listen, have empathy, and touch. I am not suggesting this to be a reliable cure for skin disease. However, I believe these things can free people from many conditions, locking them into destructive ways of living.

Click to read Mark 1: 40-45