Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

Preached by Winton Boyd on February 24, 2008

Today, we continue on a journey through some of the “signposts” of vital faith as outlined by Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith. Butler Bass, after visiting and “living” with mainline congregations for three years, has outlined what she feels are faith practices that are leading to personal and congregational renewal. Two weeks ago, we looked at discernment. Today, we look at the ancient practice of healing – with the laying on of hands and the anointing of oil. While this is an ancient practice in the church, Butler Bass points out that only recently have many churches actually practiced it.

I suspect many of us are like a friend Tammy and I have known since 1987. About 7-8 years ago he contracted colon cancer. He was under the care of a colon specialist and underwent chemo and radiation, but there were many people in his church who wanted to offer healing prayers and rituals of various forms. Someone came to perform reiki on him, someone else came and offered acupuncture. Another person brought a group of Buddhists to do a sitting prayer with him. There were others than offered homeopathic teas and massage. Others simply wanted to lay their hands on him, pray and anoint him with oil. Our friend said at the time that he wasn’t sure what he thought about all these offers and all these attempts at healing – but he was a willing guinea pig. “I’ll try anything and I will welcome any good energy – because I am sure it won’t hurt!”

When it comes to healing we are both confused and hopeful.

In one sense, the ritual of a healing prayer is counter-intuitive to us – we see God as expressing Godself through science and medicine and the natural course of life. The healing miracles of the New Testament stories seem to come from a distant and pre-modern world. While we occasionally witness unusual and unexpected health “miracles” – we are not sure we believe in a God who intervenes in to alter our body’s processes the natural course of things. We find the notion that God heals some people because they pray for it, but not others who pray equally hard, too arbitrary or cruel to accept as a working theology. Some of us have long experience with non traditional medicine through acupuncture, Reiki, or homeopathic pills and ointments; but some of us find that a bit on the edge itself.

At the same time, as human beings we often feel deep and abiding yearning for health and wholeness.  This is true physically and spiritually. In both our personal health and our social well being as a people, we know pain, agony, and suffering. We know, in our bodies and our hearts, that much of the world is unbalanced, disharmonious, in desperate need of healing. We seek a deeper and stronger connection between ourselves and the created order around us.

This sense of awareness and longing is shaping the way we understand our faith too. Phyllis Tickle, writer of religion in this country, describes a “new kind of Christianity emerging, with an emphasis on “right harmony” – or a kind of healing to make whole, the creation of what is disordered into what is ordered. To touch the center of harmony is to find balance. Bass writes that for mainline “pilgrims” salvation entails several levels of healing: emotions and psyche, physical wellness, human reconciliation, and cosmic restoration (Christianity for the Rest of Us, p. 108)

It is the embracing of “God’s harmony, what the Hebrew scriptures call “shalom,” or dynamic wholeness. Walter Brueggemann, UCC Old Testament theologian writes that, “shalom is the central vision of the Bible in which all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well being of every other creature.”

In this spirit, Bass writes that “looking for healing is not flaky, but a human desire to experience God’s dream of created wholeness…It is not spooky or kooky…involves a deep awareness of oneness with God’s healing within and moving beyond the self to help heal the world.”(p. 111)

One of the churches Butler Bass writes about in her book was The Church of the Epiphany Episcopal Church in Washington DC. “The people…watched as one of their beloved leaders DID NOT experience a miraculous cure of pancreatic cancer. Although struggling with his disease, Jack was scheduled to preach on Sunday. Weakened by cancer, he could no longer make it to church. But, he insisted he could still preach…”In a sermon he wrote that was read by someone else he said, “We learn that people received healing through the laying on of hands and anointing with oil, which takes on a different form when we engage in healing, and sometimes even curing, in today’s world…I do think it makes sense to keep in mind why we are doing (healing arts). We are always, always, working for God’s world. What this church gives to us individually through the healing we receive, our own sense of belonging, and a clarity about God’s kingdom is the equipment we need to be Christ…to meet the needs of a world that is calling for relief and seeking the sure and certain knowledge that it has been saved.”

Bass concludes, “According to this vision of the Christian faith, salvation is a process whereby we enter into God’s saving work..salvation is a lifetime of practice, receiving God’s healing grace and power, being changed by it, and offering healing back to the world. The healed heal. The practice of healing traces grace in our hearts and opens us to the evidence of shalom in all creation.

When it comes to worship, I think I am a good preacher. I know we have good and vibrant music, but I also know the one place in worship where we connect most deeply on a consistent basis is our sharing of joys and concerns. In this time, we read or hear about simple joys like snowfall and complicated miracles like the birth of babies. We listen to loved ones share their diagnosis of cancer or the depression of loved ones. We lament the passing of dear ones in our lives and dear ones in our community. We marvel at the connections one another have to other co-workers and extended family, and we relish the ability of children to voice their prayers in safety and joy. We also know that this is a vulnerable time. Some things we can’t share, some things we can’t articulate. Some days we can only trust that God knows our heart and the prayers we carry, even if our community does not.

There is nowhere our theology is more practical than in this time. I think it is this deep harmony, this deep shalom, that we seek. We know that physical and emotional ailments are part of the burden of the world – and so we bring the lives and names of those we love and ourselves in hopes that as a community we can reaffirm each week God’s grace makes a difference in our lives. Sometimes we come believing in miracles; sometimes we come without expectation. Nevertheless, always we come trusting that the peace we seek comes in community, and it belongs to the whole world. We come in humility and offer our lives – both what we need and what we can do – to the healing of the world.

• We trust that as we share our pain it will be wrapped with all pain – that we know and that which we don’t know- into the compassion of God.
• We trust that as we share our joy- and the joys of others we know and those we don’t know - that the collective and spirit-filled joy of us all will be a part of the experience of God’s kingdom, God’s realm, here on earth.

And while this spirit, this aura surrounded Jesus all the time, our story in Luke today is a reminder that sometimes it is good and right to simply ask for a special prayer of healing. Sometimes it is good to move from where we are, to physically move, in hopes that the laying on of hands, and the anointing of oil, will be a part of leading us where we need to be.

So that is what we will do this morning. We will offer stations for prayer and the laying on of hands. You are invited to come forward to one of these three stations to receive a prayer and the offer of healing oil. Those receiving you will invite you to say a word or a sentence about why you are coming. It may be a prayer for yourself, or your family, or your loved ones. You may want healing in your life or you may want to be an agent of healing for others. Each team will share a prayer with you. One station will also offer prayer shawls, if a tangible and lovingly made symbol of God’s grace and wholeness would be helpful for you.

We invite you to come for wholeness, for salvation, for shalom, for the healing of your body, your spirit and your mind.

After Jesus realized that “the power had gone out from him” when the woman touched his garment, he said to her, Go in peace. Practice peace. Be the peace you have sought. Live the peace you have found. Be for others what you have found today. That is our prayer today as well.

Text for this sermon
Luke 17

43 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years; and though she had spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her.
44 She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his clothes, and immediately her hemorrhage stopped.
45 Then Jesus asked, “Who touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds surround you and press in on you.”
46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me.”
47 When the woman saw that she could not remain hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before him, she declared in the presence of all the people why she hadn’t touched him, and how she had been immediately healed.
48 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”