Thoughts about Healing

Posted by Webmaster on October 18, 2009 under Sermons |

Some of you may be wondering what I’m doing up here. I certainly am! However, it seems to have happened.

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” These are the closing words of this morning’s Gospel reading. In the verses that follow, Jesus angers those same citizens of Nazareth that he had just impressed and is driven out of the city. He goes to Capernaum and teaches there on the Sabbath. And then comes a series of three stories of healing…with more to follow in the succeeding chapters. Healing, whether psychological, physical or spiritual comprised a large portion of Christ’s ministry on earth.
We have all heard and read for ourselves the stories of Jesus healing those who came to him. And we have heard the instruction to us to pray for one another.

At today’s service, we will experience the Sacrament of Healing, the anointing by a priest with holy oil. This beautiful liturgy reflects biblical command, ancient church tradition, and Anglican practice. In our minds, it can be connected with serious illness or the approach of death…but using this sacrament in what is otherwise a “normal” Sunday service is a step towards acknowledging that there are many different illnesses that seek to be healed. The physical is only a part of the story of healing here at St. Paul’s.

We also offer the ministry of healing prayer, or laying on of hands. It takes place at the 9:15 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. services over at the healing station in the corner by the Lady Chapel altar. I want to focus on healing prayer for a moment, because for me, and perhaps for some of you, this ministry is difficult to understand and often misunderstood.

One of the hurdles that Anglicans have to overcome is the manner in which we see healing prayer most often portrayed.

I grew up in the ’50s and a regular feature of my Sundays was the various evangelists and faith healers on the radio.

This evangelism was not “my religion.” My parents had become Episcopalians in their late 20s. Now my father may have chosen Anglican liturgy and Anglican theology…but it deeply, deeply annoyed him to admit that the Baptists had gotten all the best tunes! He loved gospel music…and radio religion was the easiest and cheapest regular source.

As a family, we went to Morning Prayer three Sundays a month and on the fourth we had Morning Prayer followed by Holy Communion. But then for the rest of Sunday there was a whole different sort of faith coming over the radio…a faith of intensely emotional spontaneous prayer and the call to “step forward and be healed.”

The church people I knew would never act like that. My parents prayed for their relatives and friends and for themselves in illness and trouble, but it was a private, personal act done in the seclusion of their bedroom or in a quiet moment when no one else was around. This radio stuff was embarrassing. My brother and I laughed at and did quite good imitations of the faith healers. We knew it was a “performance.” We knew it was, intentionally or unintentionally, a “fake.”

And for a large part of my life those radio evangelists and faith healers remained my picture of healing prayer.

Perhaps this suggests one of the big problems that we non-evangelical Christians and that society at large have with “healing prayer.” Many of us have subconsciously accepted the evangelical image, the evangelical way of healing through prayer, as the only way healing prayer can work. So we either dismiss it totally or accept it as a possibility…”but just not for me” without realizing that there are other possibilities.

Healing prayer, as it is practiced here, is quiet prayer involving just two people and God, at the healing station. It is a way that resembles something more like a “joint-meditation”…a meditation shared by three participants, the one requesting prayer, the one praying aloud and the One receiving the prayer, our loving God who is closely with us at that time. Any result may remain unseen, hidden to both human parties, but seeds have been planted that will grow: sometimes quickly, sometimes only after a long struggle. What the change will be we may not know at the time.

What is Healing?
And this leads me to what I feel is another aspect of our difficulty with healing prayer. What do we really dare ask for? How one defines “healing” is crucial. In the laying on of hands, the prayer is for “healing,” the “highest possible healing available” we might say. We acknowledge that healing may, but does not necessarily include a physical “cure.” Healing can happen in body, in mind, in the heart and in the soul.

Now often when I say this, especially to someone outside the church, I can see in their eyes what I always think of as “the big, flashing, neon sign that says: “What a Cop-Out!!!!” Their unspoken thought is: “Deep down inside you know that you can’t heal anybody, so you’re changing the definition! We all know that the real goal is physical healing. Healing of mind is what counselling’s for!”

Here again, a part of this kind of reaction may be that the public imagination accepts the evangelical healer as the definition of what healing prayer is and is meant to be. If the lame don’t throw away their crutches and walk, then healing didn’t happen. Healing of the spirit becomes a sort of runner-up prize that you “settle for” because you have to.

We need to step back and consider: If as Christians we believe that our ultimate goal is union with God, then spiritual healing suddenly becomes not just “the consolation prize,” but the deepest healing possible. The balance of the scales has changed.

Why do I need you?
And now, a third question: why do I need someone else involved in my prayers to God for healing? It’s similar to the question: why would I need a priest involved when I confess my sins to God and ask forgiveness? And the answer is up to you. Your conversation with God in both of these situations is a deep and personal one. But I know, from my own experience, that there can come a time when one is so hurt and tired and overwhelmed that a “conversation with God “ seems impossible. All the words have been used up. The well is empty. Having someone else to share your burden and to speak for you can seem like a really good idea…much better than just banging your head against the wall.

Within our church, healing can come in other forms; it can come through confession. It can come through “official/ identifiable ministries”: through the companionship and support of Our House, the quiet and meditation of the Labyrinth, or the helping hand of the Advocacy Office.

And yet, if you take another step back, the entire ministry of the church itself is healing. Everything the church does is in some way about healing. Healing is what God does for us…but healing is also what God does through us

At our baptism, our birth into the Christian life, we were all thrown into that great, big gene pool of possible practitioners of healing. We have received the potential by virtue of our baptism.

Members of the Healing Guild do not have “magic hands”; we do not have arcane wisdom or severe ascetic practices. We are…now, how can I put this nicely…we are every bit as screwed up as you are!

Healing may be carried out by each and every one of you both in recognized ministries and in your everyday lives. What you do and what you are can bring healing: to the world, to those you know and those you love, and to yourselves.

There are a lot of people out there hurting and in need.

To be a candle in that kind of darkness is to be a healer in anybody’s meaning of the word.

[As a member of St. Paul's Healing Guild, Jo Anne Tharalson delivered this sermon on October 18, 2009. Jo Anne will be awarded the Order of the Diocese of New Westminster at 4:30 p.m. on November 1, 2009 at Christ Church Cathedral. All are welcome at this special eucharist celebration.]