A Healing Ministry For The Modern Church
Sermon
Sermons on the Gospel Readings
Series II, Cycle B
The mission and ministry of Jesus was preaching, teaching, and healing. Preaching and teaching were about the imminent kingdom of God -- Jesus called his hearers to be alert, and to live in anticipation of that great event. The healing ministry of Jesus focused on the miseries of sickness and disease. We moderns are not able to imagine the helplessness those people felt in the face of major and minor diseases afflicting them. They took great pains to search out charismatic healers, hoping for a cure. They yearned for healing. Healing became an important part of Jesus' mission and ministry, although there were other healers in the land.
Today, the Gospel Reading remembers Jesus in two healing stories. First is a Gentile woman from Syrophoenicia, whose daughter was troubled by a demon. Strangely, Jesus heals her daughter only after provocations by this woman. She is an outsider, not belonging to God's people of Israel. Does Mark suggest that Jesus had a limited scope of mission and ministry? Did Jesus refuse to concern himself with those outside his own people? This is an interesting question. But this woman's insistence overcame Jesus' reluctance to heal a Gentile woman's daughter. He pronounced the daughter's demon gone; and when this woman returned home she found her daughter healed.
The second healing story is about a man who was deaf, and had a speech impediment. He, too, came to Jesus to be healed. Mark says Jesus took the man aside, put his fingers into the man's ears, spit, and touched the man's tongue. Then Jesus looked to heaven and cried out, "Be healed!" At once the man could hear and talk plainly. Jesus tells the crowd not to tell of this healing, but, of course, they did not obey. They marveled at his ability to heal, to make a man who had been a mute, hear and speak.
Our Modern Uneasiness Of Spiritual Healing
We may have our difficulties with the nativity stories, the atonement and the cross, the authority of scripture and the resurrection; but we are often more skeptical about any insistence that prayer and anointing are effective in healing disease and sickness. We are not totally skeptical about all of this. We may admit that in certain unusual instances, spiritual healing happens. And we believe that a certain temporary effect may come from healing services; yet we do not see this happening in sufficient numbers to have spiritual healing become a central part of our faith.
Part of our difficulty in believing in spiritual healing is the many showbiz healing services held in large auditoriums, outdoor stadiums, and many large sanctuaries. Often the television cameras are there, making the service a spectacular event where the emphasis is on the wonderful skills of the healer. We know that a large amount of deception in such services with some desiring a large offering for the bank account of the healer. So, we moderns have many difficulties in embracing a spiritual healing ministry.
Yet, with all these reservations, many of the books of worship in the modern church make an effort to affirm a ministry of spiritual healing. In them we find liturgies for services of healing and anointing. Many churches hold regular healing services using these somber and carefully nuanced liturgies. While done with dignity and sincerity, these services largely have been abandoned. It seems they could not survive.
Recent studies also have taken their toll on the church's ministry of spiritual healing. A few years ago, a prominent surgeon, Dr. William Nolan, researched the healing ministries of several popular healers, including a psychic surgeon. While he allowed for temporary psychological relief in many of those claiming to be healed, he found no evidence for the healing of diseased tissue. He lamented that when these healers claimed to heal or retard the growth of tumors or diseased tissue, it often resulted in giving up standard medical treatments and medications, hastening deaths. Nor do we have serious studies showing any positive effect of intercessory prayer on hospitalized patients. An undeniable and important result is that the person praying often becomes more sensitive to the needs of the sick person. However, such prayers do not seem to have any medical benefit to the person prayed for.
All this hesitation about spiritual healing disrupts our trust and affirmation of spiritual healing. Of course, there are diseases and afflictions beyond the reach of modern medicine, but we must remind ourselves how we are wonderfully blessed by the gift of modern medicine. There was a time when pneumonia was a death sentence. Tuberculosis hospitals were numerous and polio was the dreaded disease of the hot summer months. Most infections were life-threatening before the arrival of antibiotics, and surgery on the heart, or the brain, or the lungs was unknown. Emotional diseases have given way to antidepressants and other drugs, as they have become available in the last three or four decades. Modern medicine has brought us blessings of health beyond the imagination of any earlier time. The result is that usually we do not think of opting for spiritual healing when we have a serious medical problem. Instead, we head for a trustworthy doctor, surgeon, or psychiatrist. Our belief in the ability of modern medicine to heal, increases our doubts about the effectiveness of spiritual healing.
Another Form Of Spiritual Healing
Before we abandon any form of spiritual healing, let's consider an alternative form of healing. In his study of Jesus, Roman Catholic New Testament scholar, John Dominic Crossan, offers an interesting possibility. He says that healing comes in two forms -- healing of disease and healing of an illness. Crossan notes that in the scriptures, Jesus is credited with healing of disease -- paralysis, demons, fevers, epilepsy, blindness, and deafness. There is also a record of Jesus healing illness -- conditions and circumstances making life miserable and despairing. Illness is a religious, social, political, or situational condition bringing on alienation from others, being marginalized by cultural or political systems, and creating unrealistic guilt that separates one from God. Illness brings terrible suffering to millions. Crossan thinks the healing ministry of Jesus should be centered on the healing of illnesses, rather than on the healing of pathological diseases.
In Jesus' treatment of women, he healed them of their social illnesses -- of being secondary and subordinate to men. In his healing of lepers, he did not roll back their leprosy, but Jesus did heal their illnesses -- inviting them back into religious and social community, free of the quarantine and isolation they were experiencing. Jesus healed Zacchaeus when he invited Zacchaeus back to honesty. He healed the woman at the well, overcoming the religious traditions that divide. He healed his peasant followers by elevating them beyond the low opinion they were forced to have about themselves. In these instances real healing took place. The church's healing ministry can concede the healing of disease to the medical profession. But in the healing of spiritual-cultural-political illnesses the church can provide us with a meaningful ministry of spiritual healing.
Spiritual Healing In Today's Church
In one church, a prominent member, convicted of being involved in an illegal financial deal, was sent to prison. During his incarceration, members of the congregation regularly went to see him. When his sentence had been served, a crowd from the congregation greeted him as he walked out of the prison. They surrounded him, gave him their hugs and welcomed him back. Imprisonment could not be changed, but the congregation healed his illness -- his guilt, shame, and alienation from those that had been part of his life and who were disappointed in him. Churches can heal like this.
Another church found itself in the midst of a large urban neighborhood with many gay and lesbian people who purchased many of the large, old homes in a once-prestigious neighborhood. Even though the church's denominational policy condemns gay and lesbian sexuality, the church decided to welcome these people into the life of the church. Now the congregation is a thriving, diverse fellowship, effectively healing illness suffered by the sexually different. Churches can heal like this.
Led by their pastor, a church from a conservative denomination began to teach and reinterpret Christian doctrine in nontraditional ways. This church offers an alternative understanding of various Christian doctrines so many have found intellectually unacceptable in their traditional form. Little by little, many troubled Christians began to find a spiritual home in this church. Eventually, the denomination took away the ministerial credentials of the pastor. However, the congregation voted to leave the denomination, retain the pastor, and to frame a believable and challenging Christian theology. Now the church has a large congregation. Three or four times each year, the church hosts some nationally known scholar who leads a weekend devoted to theology for twenty-first-century Christians. Quite wonderfully, this congregation heals the rift felt by so many modern people longing to be serious Christians, but finding traditional teachings and interpretations of Christian doctrines unsatisfactory. Churches can heal like this.
In fact, most churches are already involved in serious healing ministries. When church members visit the sick and hospitalized, they heal the loneliness and isolation that illness brings. Such visits do nothing to overcome their physical ailments. But it is serious healing. Or when people have made bad choices in their lives, feeling quite shameful and remorseful, they may discover in the church a rich forgiveness and an encouragement to amend their lives. This is serious healing. Such people now feel welcome in spite of their past, for no one is condemning them. They cease being cut off from the love and concern of others. This is serious healing. Many people show up at church after the death of a loved one, feeling that life is empty of meaning or purpose. They sometimes feel angry or guilty because they didn't always act lovingly toward the one now gone. Grief and sorrow have disrupted their lives. In church they discover that God walks with them in the illness of their grief. In church they receive the solace and sympathy of the congregation, many having been where they are. These people hear the message of everlasting life preached from the pulpit, and in all of this there is healing.
So in many, many ways there is an unnoticed healing experience going on in church. This is not healing of tumors, fractures, psychoses, or other serious pathologies. We must be honest here. But at church there is healing, a healing that happens even when medical science can do nothing about the disease. A dying, terminally ill person or someone with a serious chronic ailment may be healed by those who offer regular friendship, gentle conversation, nourishment, expressions of hope, times of reminiscence, and a listening ear. They offer healing regardless of the persistence of the underlying disease.
To someone who inquires if our church has a healing service, we can say, "Yes, it happens all the time in our fellowship, our activities, in our classes, and our worship. We are a healing congregation."
Today, the Gospel Reading remembers Jesus in two healing stories. First is a Gentile woman from Syrophoenicia, whose daughter was troubled by a demon. Strangely, Jesus heals her daughter only after provocations by this woman. She is an outsider, not belonging to God's people of Israel. Does Mark suggest that Jesus had a limited scope of mission and ministry? Did Jesus refuse to concern himself with those outside his own people? This is an interesting question. But this woman's insistence overcame Jesus' reluctance to heal a Gentile woman's daughter. He pronounced the daughter's demon gone; and when this woman returned home she found her daughter healed.
The second healing story is about a man who was deaf, and had a speech impediment. He, too, came to Jesus to be healed. Mark says Jesus took the man aside, put his fingers into the man's ears, spit, and touched the man's tongue. Then Jesus looked to heaven and cried out, "Be healed!" At once the man could hear and talk plainly. Jesus tells the crowd not to tell of this healing, but, of course, they did not obey. They marveled at his ability to heal, to make a man who had been a mute, hear and speak.
Our Modern Uneasiness Of Spiritual Healing
We may have our difficulties with the nativity stories, the atonement and the cross, the authority of scripture and the resurrection; but we are often more skeptical about any insistence that prayer and anointing are effective in healing disease and sickness. We are not totally skeptical about all of this. We may admit that in certain unusual instances, spiritual healing happens. And we believe that a certain temporary effect may come from healing services; yet we do not see this happening in sufficient numbers to have spiritual healing become a central part of our faith.
Part of our difficulty in believing in spiritual healing is the many showbiz healing services held in large auditoriums, outdoor stadiums, and many large sanctuaries. Often the television cameras are there, making the service a spectacular event where the emphasis is on the wonderful skills of the healer. We know that a large amount of deception in such services with some desiring a large offering for the bank account of the healer. So, we moderns have many difficulties in embracing a spiritual healing ministry.
Yet, with all these reservations, many of the books of worship in the modern church make an effort to affirm a ministry of spiritual healing. In them we find liturgies for services of healing and anointing. Many churches hold regular healing services using these somber and carefully nuanced liturgies. While done with dignity and sincerity, these services largely have been abandoned. It seems they could not survive.
Recent studies also have taken their toll on the church's ministry of spiritual healing. A few years ago, a prominent surgeon, Dr. William Nolan, researched the healing ministries of several popular healers, including a psychic surgeon. While he allowed for temporary psychological relief in many of those claiming to be healed, he found no evidence for the healing of diseased tissue. He lamented that when these healers claimed to heal or retard the growth of tumors or diseased tissue, it often resulted in giving up standard medical treatments and medications, hastening deaths. Nor do we have serious studies showing any positive effect of intercessory prayer on hospitalized patients. An undeniable and important result is that the person praying often becomes more sensitive to the needs of the sick person. However, such prayers do not seem to have any medical benefit to the person prayed for.
All this hesitation about spiritual healing disrupts our trust and affirmation of spiritual healing. Of course, there are diseases and afflictions beyond the reach of modern medicine, but we must remind ourselves how we are wonderfully blessed by the gift of modern medicine. There was a time when pneumonia was a death sentence. Tuberculosis hospitals were numerous and polio was the dreaded disease of the hot summer months. Most infections were life-threatening before the arrival of antibiotics, and surgery on the heart, or the brain, or the lungs was unknown. Emotional diseases have given way to antidepressants and other drugs, as they have become available in the last three or four decades. Modern medicine has brought us blessings of health beyond the imagination of any earlier time. The result is that usually we do not think of opting for spiritual healing when we have a serious medical problem. Instead, we head for a trustworthy doctor, surgeon, or psychiatrist. Our belief in the ability of modern medicine to heal, increases our doubts about the effectiveness of spiritual healing.
Another Form Of Spiritual Healing
Before we abandon any form of spiritual healing, let's consider an alternative form of healing. In his study of Jesus, Roman Catholic New Testament scholar, John Dominic Crossan, offers an interesting possibility. He says that healing comes in two forms -- healing of disease and healing of an illness. Crossan notes that in the scriptures, Jesus is credited with healing of disease -- paralysis, demons, fevers, epilepsy, blindness, and deafness. There is also a record of Jesus healing illness -- conditions and circumstances making life miserable and despairing. Illness is a religious, social, political, or situational condition bringing on alienation from others, being marginalized by cultural or political systems, and creating unrealistic guilt that separates one from God. Illness brings terrible suffering to millions. Crossan thinks the healing ministry of Jesus should be centered on the healing of illnesses, rather than on the healing of pathological diseases.
In Jesus' treatment of women, he healed them of their social illnesses -- of being secondary and subordinate to men. In his healing of lepers, he did not roll back their leprosy, but Jesus did heal their illnesses -- inviting them back into religious and social community, free of the quarantine and isolation they were experiencing. Jesus healed Zacchaeus when he invited Zacchaeus back to honesty. He healed the woman at the well, overcoming the religious traditions that divide. He healed his peasant followers by elevating them beyond the low opinion they were forced to have about themselves. In these instances real healing took place. The church's healing ministry can concede the healing of disease to the medical profession. But in the healing of spiritual-cultural-political illnesses the church can provide us with a meaningful ministry of spiritual healing.
Spiritual Healing In Today's Church
In one church, a prominent member, convicted of being involved in an illegal financial deal, was sent to prison. During his incarceration, members of the congregation regularly went to see him. When his sentence had been served, a crowd from the congregation greeted him as he walked out of the prison. They surrounded him, gave him their hugs and welcomed him back. Imprisonment could not be changed, but the congregation healed his illness -- his guilt, shame, and alienation from those that had been part of his life and who were disappointed in him. Churches can heal like this.
Another church found itself in the midst of a large urban neighborhood with many gay and lesbian people who purchased many of the large, old homes in a once-prestigious neighborhood. Even though the church's denominational policy condemns gay and lesbian sexuality, the church decided to welcome these people into the life of the church. Now the congregation is a thriving, diverse fellowship, effectively healing illness suffered by the sexually different. Churches can heal like this.
Led by their pastor, a church from a conservative denomination began to teach and reinterpret Christian doctrine in nontraditional ways. This church offers an alternative understanding of various Christian doctrines so many have found intellectually unacceptable in their traditional form. Little by little, many troubled Christians began to find a spiritual home in this church. Eventually, the denomination took away the ministerial credentials of the pastor. However, the congregation voted to leave the denomination, retain the pastor, and to frame a believable and challenging Christian theology. Now the church has a large congregation. Three or four times each year, the church hosts some nationally known scholar who leads a weekend devoted to theology for twenty-first-century Christians. Quite wonderfully, this congregation heals the rift felt by so many modern people longing to be serious Christians, but finding traditional teachings and interpretations of Christian doctrines unsatisfactory. Churches can heal like this.
In fact, most churches are already involved in serious healing ministries. When church members visit the sick and hospitalized, they heal the loneliness and isolation that illness brings. Such visits do nothing to overcome their physical ailments. But it is serious healing. Or when people have made bad choices in their lives, feeling quite shameful and remorseful, they may discover in the church a rich forgiveness and an encouragement to amend their lives. This is serious healing. Such people now feel welcome in spite of their past, for no one is condemning them. They cease being cut off from the love and concern of others. This is serious healing. Many people show up at church after the death of a loved one, feeling that life is empty of meaning or purpose. They sometimes feel angry or guilty because they didn't always act lovingly toward the one now gone. Grief and sorrow have disrupted their lives. In church they discover that God walks with them in the illness of their grief. In church they receive the solace and sympathy of the congregation, many having been where they are. These people hear the message of everlasting life preached from the pulpit, and in all of this there is healing.
So in many, many ways there is an unnoticed healing experience going on in church. This is not healing of tumors, fractures, psychoses, or other serious pathologies. We must be honest here. But at church there is healing, a healing that happens even when medical science can do nothing about the disease. A dying, terminally ill person or someone with a serious chronic ailment may be healed by those who offer regular friendship, gentle conversation, nourishment, expressions of hope, times of reminiscence, and a listening ear. They offer healing regardless of the persistence of the underlying disease.
To someone who inquires if our church has a healing service, we can say, "Yes, it happens all the time in our fellowship, our activities, in our classes, and our worship. We are a healing congregation."
