The early church has several very clear memories of Jesus -as preacher, teacher and healer.  In our gospel reading of the morning Saint Marks shows us the healing ministry of Jesus: the healing of the Syrophoenician woman, daughter with a speech impediment, and the healing of the deaf man .

Marks sums up the healing ministries of Jesus with a memorable verse: “And wherever he went, into the villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch the fringe of his cloak and all who touched it were healed.  (Mark 5:56)

Let us pray:
Oh God, it is good to be here this first Sunday in September, at this time of beginning again, here in his majestic space, in a place we love, as part of this faith community.

Remind us anew that here we may find healing and wholeness for our broken hearts and our fragmented lives.  Startle us with your truth and open our hearts to your word that hearing we may believe and believing come to trust you with our lives, in Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

A cartoon depicts a man wearing a Red Sox tee shirt lying on a psychiatrist’s couch.  The doctor is saying, “Come on now Ben, it is a disease, and there is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Nations, communities and churches cry out for healing, and each one of us here this morning is in need of healing and wholeness, some more than others.  But there is nothing to be ashamed of, for we all have our heartaches and soul aches.  Many here are reeling from one crisis or another and have come to painfully understand they are not in control.  Yes, we each have our broken places which cry out for healing.  This morning we will consider healing in our own lives.  We will leave healing in nations for another day.  Now, we cannot all be cured, but we can all become whole in the sense of knowing more fully what the bible calls, Shalom: The peace of God which this world cannot give or take away.

It is amazing and perplexing how often, even those of us who are here faithfully week after week, overlook this healing power which is a vital part of our Christian faith.  We are not unlike the pastor who was visiting in the hospital.  He called on an elderly parishioner.  When it was time to leave he asked: “Mrs. Smith, can I do anything for you?”  “Yes, you can pray for me.”  “Well, what shall I pray?”  “Pray that I get better”.  So the pastor prayed:  “Dear God, if it be your will, heal Mrs. Smith.  If not, help her to live with the consequences, Amen.”  Mrs. Smith sat up in bed:  “Hot dickity, I feel great.”  She ran down the corridor to the nursing station and said, “I’m all better, I’m all better.”

When the excitement was over and the pastor was alone in his car, he bowed his head and prayed:  “Dear God, don’t you ever do that to me again.”

Don’t sell God short!  Expect great things from God!  This morning we will approach the topic of God’s healing power in a very basic and elementary way.  Some of what I share with you will not be new to many who have known these things for a long time.  For others, it will be their first exposure to spiritual healing.

The best way to develop a spirituality of healing is to start when you are well.  Most people are not going to find it easy to grow in an understanding of spiritual healing when they are seriously ill.  Even though illness can provide time and space for considering other ways of being in the world, now is the time to begin growing in the life of the spirit and walking more closely with God so you are able to come to affirm: “Great is your faithfulness, O God unto me.”

The first conviction about God’s healing power is a theological affirmation:  God wills our health and wholeness.  A fatalistic acceptance of illness as God’s will is contrary to the attitude needed for spiritual healing.  Illness has been understood as the work of the devil, as punishment for sin, as the way God disciplines God’s children.  Strange as this may seem to some of you, I had a dear friend who refused a liver transplant and died, because he believed God was punishing him for years of alcohol abuse.  We need to be very clear about this attitude; it is the very opposite of the biblical concept of spiritual healing.  The theological foundation of spiritual healing is that the God we see in Jesus Christ is a God of love and grace.  God wills our health and wholeness.  This theological understanding of spiritual healing needs to be balanced with a theology of death and resurrection - new life in the presence of God.

We will all die and for most of us that means some physical malfunction.  No one of us will live forever, and there are circumstances when death can become life’s last blessing.  Yet we affirm the truth that in the end, as in the beginning, God’s grace is sufficient and nothing in life or death can ever separate us from the love of God made known in Jesus Christ.

The Second affirmation about spiritual healing is that love is the catalyst for healing.  We can see this truth ever so clearly in our own lives and homes.  When there is brokenness - the absence of wholeness - often it is because love is not present.  Love, not as a warm and fuzzy felling, but as a commitment, a way of life, empowers the ministry of forgiveness.  This is basic to healing.  Unforgiving attitudes spread poison through the body and block the body’s normal defenses from doing their preventive work.  Forgiveness of those who have wronged us - forgiveness through God’s grace, motivated and empowered by love - opens us to healing in our bodies, hearts and homes.

Henri Nouwen states it this way:  He calls Jesus “a wounded healer”.  He says each of us choose between being wounded healers - for again, we all have our wounds, or becoming wounded wounders - lashing out in anger with bitterness.  The choice is yours, with God’s help to become a wounded healer, or turn away from love to become a wounded wounder.”

The third affirmation about God’s healing power is that laughter is essential to healing.  Love and laughter make the healing go round.  As someone said: “Laughter can be the shortest distance between two people.”  Try to keep your sense of perspective on life and of your own life.  Resist the temptation to see yourself as the center of the universe.  We live in a culture that places great emphasis on the individual and encourages us to be “in charge of our lives.”  The gospel teaches that peace and true freedom, wholeness and healing come by surrendering ourselves, by seeing our illusions of control and autonomy for what they are, and by giving ourselves to God’s love and purpose of our lives.  A sense of perspective, humor and laughter aids this process.  It can motivate the immune system to respond positively.  Very simply this means we have to partner with God in the healing process.

We partner with God in spiritual healing through prayer.  Healing prayer includes: relaxation - learning to let go and let God.  God is in control, not ourselves.  Meditation - as our minds and spirits stretch to embrace God.  Some people use a short affirmation from the bible:  “Be still and know that I am God…God is light and in God there is no darkness at all…the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  Visualization is an important aspect of healing prayer.  When you pray visualize yourself or the person you are praying for surrounded by God’s love and light, well and whole.

I want to share with you the experience of Amy, a young woman who was a parishioner in Richard Lischner’s First Church in rural Illinois, as he tells her story in his delightful book: “Open Secrets - A spiritual journey through a country church.”  He writes,  “Kathryn Kuhlman, a faith healer and evangelist, was coming to the civic auditorium in St. Louis.  What made Kathryn Kuhlman a controversial issue in our congregation was the presence of Amy Friedens, a member of my tenth-grade confirmation class who had cerebral palsy.  “So, Pastor,” Amy said as I wheeled her through the parish hall after class, “Kathryn Kuhlman’s coming to St. Louis.”  Amy did not have a devious side to her, but I could sense she was feeling me out on a matter of critical importance.  The “So” was the giveaway.  It carried the force of “what do you think”?  Of course she knew I was aware of Kathryn Kuhlman’s crusade, and she knew that I had heard the quiet but intense debate going on in the parish.  Jimmy the Greek could not have set the odds on this one.  Would she or would she not attend the crusade of miracles and try to get herself healed?  Her parents had let it be known around town that the decision was “up to Amy.”

“So?”  So, I do know that Kathryn Kuhlman is coming to St. Louis, and I hear you’re thinking about going.”  I said to Amy “I am.”  Amy laughed nervously.  “Mom and Dad and I have been talking about it.  We talk every night before dinner.  We have a prayer about it before we eat, and then we talk.”  “And so?”  “Well, we think it would be a good spiritual experience for us all.”  I said, “in other words, Amy, you wouldn’t expect to be healed by Ms. Kuhlman.  You would go there for the prayer and music and the Christian fellowship.”  Amy grew silent.  “Not exactly, Pastor, no, not exactly.”  Now it was my turn to get quiet.  “What about your Mom and Dad?  What do they say?” I asked.  “It’ll be a good spiritual experience for them,” she said, repeating the family’s phrase for the third time.  Then she sat silent for a moment and smiled at me.   “You know Pastor,” she continued, “you are a real good pastor.  That’s for sure.  And, this is a wonderful church.  You are a real good confirmation teacher.”  She was letting me down easy.  A sixteen year old was delivering pastoral care to her pastor from her wheelchair, and we both knew it.  She didn’t come out and say it, but I had the distinct feeling she was not going to St. Louis for the Christian fellowship.  She was going for the cure.

The next time I saw Amy she was in her wheelchair as cheerful as ever.  I had already heard at the post office that she, her family, and a few neighbors had gone to St. Louis for the service.  Word was, it had been a good experience for everybody.  Trusting makes for greater trust.  Amy taught me that.  Or, should I say, I learned that from watching Amy smile.

I began to notice a change in Amy.  She seemed more prepared to think about her future in a wheelchair and get on with it.  She became more vocal about her physical condition.  She told us that her dad shouldn’t have to carry her up the steps into the parish hall.  She was too big for that, and her dad was too old.  Through her uncle she petitioned the Trustees for a ramp and a clearing for her chair among the pews.  She announced her plans to become a counselor in a rehabilitation center and found a college with the program she wanted.  Would Amy make an effective counselor?  I thought of our conversation when she disarmed me with a rare combination of tact and candor.  It had taken her about ten minutes to prepare her pastor for a controversial act of faith.  If that performance was any indication, our Amy had a brilliant future.  Was Amy cured?  Was Amy physically healed?  No!    Did Amy come to know more fully God’s gift of wholeness, peace and Shaloam?  You decide

Consider that day two thousand years ago when a nameless Syrophoenician woman approaches Jesus and asks that he heal her daughter.  Presumably because she is not Jewish Jesus refuses and says, and the words sound so harsh, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”  The woman, however, does what no other person in the gospels has done.  She persists and persuades Jesus saying: “For even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”  She is the only person in all of scripture to win an argument with Jesus.  Jesus says to her, “Oh woman, great is your faith.  Go home, your daughter is healed.”  (Matthew 15:21-28)  The disciples look on in astonishment.  This woman, this foreigner, their inferior, so they think, has been given the greatest commendation for her faith, by the one whom they call friend and Lord.

Difficult to explain or ignore Jesus’ behavior.  It is perhaps best to leave it with the words of theologian Sharon Ringe. “Jesus was caught with his compassion down.”  The woman’s behavior, on the other hand, has profound importance for the entire Christian community.  She achieved a new table to which all were invited.  She serves as an example for each of us.  She recognized the new life of peace, healing and wholeness Jesus had to offer and stopped at nothing to get it for herself and her child.
Let us do likewise.  We cannot all be cured, we can all be healed, in the sense of knowing wholeness and peace.  Expect great things from God and from yourself.  The first step in knowing God’s healing power is the Affirmation/Prayer