Creating a Healing Environment
How did Jesus and his disciples create a healing environment?
Have you ever noticed that people's mental attitudes and emotional states create environments? Have you noticed that a room full of angry people feels different than a room full of happy people? Or that a room full of anxious people feels different than a room full of calm people? Or that a room full of unfriendly people feels different than a room full of friends? Angry, anxious, unfriendly people emanate an atmosphere of stress. Calm, happy, friendly people emanate a healing atmosphere of faith, joy and love.
Jesus and his disciples carried a healing atmosphere with them by their attitudes of faith, joy and love. Jesus sent out his disciples to the villages of Galilee to preach the Kingdom of God, to "cast out demons and heal the sick." By taking their consciousness of love, faith and the presence of God with them, they carried a healing environment with them.
What else did Jesus and his disciples take with them to create a healing environment? According to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10, they did not take anything but the tunics on their backs; no money, no bag, no sandals, no staff and no extra tunic. According to Mark 6, they took a tunic, a staff and sandals, but nothing else. Luke 9 agrees with Matthew's version, but doesn't mention whether or not they took sandals. Taking these passages literally, Jesus and his disciples wore sandals and carried staffs and yet did not wear sandals nor carry staffs. This was a much overlooked miracle.
I don't think it makes much difference whether or not they wore sandals or carried a staffs. The point is, Jesus and the disciples took nothing but their consciousness of the presence of the Kingdom of God and with that they created healing environments.
In Luke 10, which tells of Jesus sending out the 70 disciples, there are more explicit instructions for creating a healing environment. In addition to carrying their consciousness of peace and proclaiming the presence of God, the disciples were instructed to stay in a home and eat whatever was given to them. In other words, he told them to be good guests, as if to say, "Don't be picky about your food and don't pick at your food; eat it."
The suggestion to travel without luggage, wear simple clothing (sandals are optional) and eat without being picky is good advice for hitch-hikers, but does it have anything to do with creating a healing environment? I believe those instructions do have something to do with creating a healing environment.
Jesus sent his disciples out as ambassadors of a Kingdom. It was usual then, as now, for ambassadors of great nations to go first class, with a large entourage and impressive ceremony. It was almost a parody of the usual ambassadorial pomp for Jesus and his disciples to dress as simply as beggars, to stay in village homes and eat whatever fare was offered. God's ambassadors intentionally putting themselves on a level with the least privileged rather than the most privileged was a great leveling of status. It was, in effect, an elimination of social status.
In human consciousness there is status according to skills, offices, wealth and a host of other criteria. Consciousness of status tends to produce competition, envy, arrogance, indifference and sometimes even hostility.
There is only one status in the Kingdom of God: we are all God's children. God's Kingdom is spiritual: truth, life, love and peace are our inheritance and nature as children of God. From the consciousness of God's Kingdom, we see all human beings at the most essential level, as spiritual beings, without consciousness of status. Without consciousness of status, there is no stress of competition, envy or hostility. Ignoring human ideas of status and remaining conscious of the omnipresence of God is the ultimate way to create a healing environment.