Little Nancy Square-Dances

On Spiritual Healing

Apr 5, 2010

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1 When Jesus came down from the hill, a large group followed him.2 A man with a skin disease came to Jesus. The man bowed down before him and said, "Sir, you can heal me if you wish."

3 Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. He said, "I will. Be healed!" Right then, the man was healed from his disease. 4 Then Jesus said to him, "Don't tell anyone about this. But go and show yourself to the priest and offer the gift the Mosaic Law teaches for people who are made well. This will show the people what I have done."

*Matthew 18.1-4, The Gospel of Jesus

Lonnie J. Edwards, a physical-education teacher, was describing square-dancing to his fifth-grade students, at Hooper Elementary School, Dekalb County, Georgia. He called the children to their places. Nancy, a little red-headed girl, replied she was not coming. She started crying and walked off, with a towel over her hands.

Edwards approached Nancy with caution. Nancy quietly told Edwards why she could not hold hands with boys. She had been born with only her pinkies and two other partial fingers. She had hid her deformity from teachers, but students knew about it and were cruel to her.

Edwards said, “Nancy, we can't do anything about that problem, but I can help you overcome it and become the best you can be. Now I want you to hold your head up. From this moment on, you will no longer use this as a limitation.”

Nancy slowly handed him the towel. He never returned it. Four days later, Edwards began the square dance as Nancy's partner. Soon, all the children seemed willing – even eager – to touch Nancy's hands.

That was in 1971. Over the next two years, Edward's continued to encourage Nancy.

Today, Nancy is over age 40. She can do almost anything she sets her mind too, including playing the piano and typing about sixty-five words a minute. She lives with her husband and two children in Orlando, FL.

Nancy says, “I grew up because of one man.”

*Story from an article by Doug Cumming in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Jesus' healing ministry was more than physical curing. Jesus embodied the justice and unity inherent in the best of Jewish teaching; while law, biblical and oral, had set legislation and tradition that cut off some persons from society and synagogue due to physical or mental limitations. To have a skin disease was to be “unclean,” “unfit,” to be part of the synagogue and larger citizenship. The unclean were untouchables: to touch them meant one would be ritually dirty.

For the man in our Scripture today to cry out for healing, was to cry out for equality and inclusion. Jesus touching him is counter-cultural, a radical act of religious and social defiance – a defamation of the existing standards of political compliance, be they strictly religious or more cultural.

The spiritual person is to be Christlike, and that means to be a healer. Lonnie Edwards reached out to an “untouchable” and changed her life. Edwards was being a Christ. Through his loving attention, an excluded little girl became included and touched. That is what Grace does; that is what Graceful persons embody and do.