revival 2009 Sermon
Prayer and Healing Service
Rev. Jonalu Johnstone
Invocation
Great God, Healer and Comforter of all,
Come into our midst and let us feel and know your spirit and love.
Be with each of us, offering what we need from you, whether our needs are great, or small, or even unknown to us at all.
Let us be filled with thankfulness for your presence and power. May we come to you with humility, integrity, and full of love, just as Jesus came to us.
AMEN
Scripture II Kings 5:1-14 (NRSV)
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.”
He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”
But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash and be clean?’” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
Mark 5:25-34 (NRSV)
Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Prayer
Gracious God,
There is a balm in Gilead. We know that, we know that whenever we wish, we can invite your spirit and feel its power. So often, we hesitate, though. Let that not be true for us tonight.
Some of us come with hearts that are burdened, others with bodies that are broken or worn. Some have spirits that need uplift.
Grant each of us what we need, whether we have identified it or not. Help us to know your power.
All of us are grateful for the gifts you bring, for the spirit of love with which we are surrounded and the company which lifts our hearts and helps us to know you better.
In the name of all the children whom you love,
AMEN
Sermon “Do You Wish to Be Healed?”
Do you wish to be healed? Do you really wish to be healed?
I find Unitarian Universalists can be skeptical about healing, just as skeptical as they can be about, well, everything. Of course, most mainline Western Christians have their questions about healing. While embracing the stories of Jesus, many don’t really believe in healing miracles in this day and age, except in the most vague or abstract sense. In a recent Christian Century article about Uganda, writer Jason Byasse describes meeting Father Gabriel, an African Catholic charismatic healer. These are his words:
“So how did you come to have the gift of healing?” I asked the white cassocked priest, whom I’d just seen dancing …. “Well, I was dead for seven hours,” he said. How does a skeptical Westerner respond to that? [“Perilous Presence,” Christian Century, Feb. 10, 2009, p. 14]
In other places, in other times, where people haven’t relied so fully on the scientific method as we tend to, healing has had a different, and perhaps, deeper meaning. What remains the same across time and place is that we base our beliefs and expectations in a limited set of knowledge of how the world works.
We usually think of healing as a medical issue. It’s not. It’s a spiritual issue.
A colleague of mine, Russ Savage – some of you know him -- told how watching a surgery had changed his view of healing. He realized that the surgery was a violent violation of the body, and the healing was not healing from the original problem, as he had always imagined it, but was actually healing from the surgery. Healing was the adjustment of the body to a new way of being, a new interrelationship of the organs and blood vessels and nerves and everything. Surgery was not healing; the recovery was what was healing.
Do you wish to be healed? Do you really wish to be healed?
I ministered to a woman who had pancreatic cancer, a cancer with among the worst survival rates. She put everything to bear on this disease. She did visualizations, listened to healing tapes, refused to be around people who were negative about her prognosis, and of course, followed doctors’ recommendations. Her cancer disappeared, for some years.
When it returned, she confessed to me that she had no more energy for the fight. The extra years had allowed her to accomplish what she wished to in her life. There would be no more battle. And the disease took her in a short time. Yet, what had she managed to heal of her life? A great deal, I think.
Do you wish to be healed? Do you really wish to be healed?
The two Biblical stories I shared depict two sufferers with differing attitudes about their own healing. Naaman wants to be healed – enough to travel to a foreign land, seeking out a prophet he knows little about. He wants to be healed enough that he brings with him silver, gold, garments and a letter of introduction from his own ruler.
But, he nearly leaves in a rage without receiving his healing because his own expectations and ego get in his way. Does he want to be healed? The king doesn’t know what to do for him. The prophet refuses to come out and deal with him personally. Naaman is an important man; this prophet has the gall to send a messenger. Naaman expects an exotic cure – a foreign prophet, if not an actual king, who touches him with healing power, who at least deals with him personally. Isn’t he worth that? What’s more, this so-called prophet Elisha asks him to bathe in the crummy waters of the Jordan. What good could come of that? Wouldn’t a respectable Syrian river do? Naaman is outraged enough to leave without a cure. He nearly lets ego prevent his restoration.
Until his humble servants reframe the situation for him. “Wouldn’t you have done something difficult if that’s what the prophet had asked? He’s asked for something easy. Why not try it? Go and bathe.” The simple logic of the servants’ confrontation jolts Naaman into compliance. And he is healed.
How typical is the patient like Naaman. We all know someone who refuses – or is unable -- to follow doctor’s orders. The asthmatic who won’t quit smoking; the diabetic who loves sweets. My uncle said, after his heart attack and surgery that if he had to quit eating red meat, life wasn’t worth living.
If we require healing, we have some disease – dis-ease; lack of comfort. Disease, or dis-ease, is a sign that something is out of whack in our lives, out of balance, out of harmony. Healing is a restoration of balance or harmony. Healing requires change.
What we often want is for everything in our lives to remain the same except the disease, that single element of our lives. What we forget is that we are organic creatures. Everything in our bodies, minds, spirits, relationships and environment is interrelated.
My massage therapist recently told me that she has learned that a lot of neck problems can be alleviated by working on the lower back. That sounds counterintuitive, but the spine is built on that base in the lower back. If it’s out of kilter, the neck may be too. For that matter, my neck pain may be related to me holding stress about a relationship. My allergies may be triggered more when I haven’t had enough sleep. More than once, I’ve had physical complaints disappear when I’ve quit a stressful job.
Healing may require willingness to give up what I cannot imagine letting go – my ego, my expectations, my dreams. How does my disease hook into my life? What might healing require of me? Do I really want to be healed?
Some of us get a lot out of being sick. Our dysfunctions twirl together with our identities like a vine curling around a branch. Who would she be if she were rid of her eating disorder, or codependence, or depression? How would we arrange our lives without those disorders, those dis-eases that motivate our decisions in so many conscious and unconscious ways? Do we really want to be free? Do you really want to be healed? Or, like Naaman, would you rather hold onto your identity, your ego, your status, whatever it is that must be released to free you?
Remember Father Gabriel, that dancing charismatic healing priest who had died and received the gift of healing? Despite the writer’s skepticism, he offered one quote from the priest that may be valuable in our consideration: “It can’t be hard work. If you have to strain it’s your work, not God’s.” [p. 34]
It’s a strain to give up the identity, the ego, the status. It’s a strain, unless we let go and turn to God for healing. Because I can’t change the way I want to change without help from some source outside myself. Because, along with Paul, I do what I would not do and do not do what I would do.
The hemorrhaging woman wished to be healed. She had been to doctors for years and never found a cure. She knew, though, that she wanted to find healing and she knew where she could find it. She knew she needed the power Jesus possessed.
Yet, like Father Gabriel, Jesus did not strain to heal. He felt the power of it, but he knew that power came from outside himself, just as it comes from outside of us. It flowed through him.
In contrasting Naaman and the hemorrhaging woman, I’m not saying that attitude, trust, or faith means everything. I have New Age friends who are convinced we create our own reality and that if we can visualize what we want to bring into our lives, we can make it appear.
That’s magical thinking, not turning it over to God. What we have to do to truly be healed is to let God have the sickness, the disease, the discomfort, the trial. We have to open ourselves to what God invites us to do – bathe in the Jordan, ask for forgiveness, reconcile with our family – or leave them alone completely. Only then will we find the healing we desire. And, as in Naaman’s case, it might not look like what you expect.
Do you wish to be healed? If so, I invite you now to come to one of the designated ministers for a time of individual prayer.
Individual Healing Prayers
Unison Prayer*
Jesus… Best Friend
May your soul give life to me,
May your flesh be food for me,
May you warm my hardened heart.
Jesus… Best Friend
May your tears now wash me clean,
May your passion keep me strong,
May you listen to my plea.
Jesus… Best Friend
May your wounds take in my hurts,
May your gaze be fixed on me,
May I not betray your love.
Jesus… Best Friend
May you call me at death’s door,
May you hold me close to you,
May you place me with God’s saints,
May I ever sing your praise.
AMEN
*"Jesus, Best Friend,” inspired by the Prayer "Soul of Christ"
from David Fleming’s Draw Me into your Friendship: The Spiritual Exercises A Literal Translation and A Contemporary Reading
Benediction
Go now in peace, healing, love and prayer, living God’s will for you now and always.
AMEN
Thanks to all participants in the service including Rick Fortner for music; Rev. Linda Bunyard, Rev. Suzanne Meyer, Rev. Bill Neely and Rev. Tom Schade for offering prayers. |
