Pentecost 20 – A Healing Community
Reformation, Media
Larry V. Smoose

Leontine Price is one of the great singers of our day.  She rose to that final judgment of excellence, the Metropolitan Opera, receiving a 42 minute ovation for her performance as Leonora in Verdi's Il Trovatore.  Then, in the prime of her brilliant career, having been in the limelight for over two decades, she virtually disappeared from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.  In an interview, she talked about the reasons for her withdrawal: 

“There are certain things in life that you have to have, because without them you’re so uptight and tense that all the joy is gone from performing. . .   Now I feel I have recaptured the joy of singing, the feeling that courses through your body when you know the tone is right and your whole being vibrates with it.”  What Ms. Price experienced in relation to her art, is what Christian wholeness is all about. The feeling that courses through your body when you know the tone is right and whole being vibrates with it. 

Jesus’ ministry was integrally involved with healing – physically, emotionally and spiritually.  The good news of God’s kingdom was about wholeness for all people and all creation.  And so he would not only teach with words, he would teach with actions – healing those afflicted with diseases and pain and demons.  These few verses that I read from Matthew’s Gospel are a short summary of the chapters that follow.  In chapters 5-7 we learn what he is teaching with the Sermon on the Mount.  In chapters 8 and 9 there are specific stories of healings.  But both the teaching and the miracles were designed to move people toward wholeness in their lives. 

What Jesus wants is for everyone to find that inner harmony that comes when the tone is right, so that the joy of living vibrates through every part of our body.  Indeed, Salvation means healing, it comes from the same Latin root as the word salve and ointment for healing.  So when Jesus talks about our salvation, it is not just about some future state of bliss in heaven, it is also about our wholeness, our wellness in this life on earth. 

So on this Sunday closest to the commemoration of St. Luke, the physician, I would like us to think about the healing presence of Jesus.  As we reflect on the healing presence of Jesus, we will be reminded of two things:  (1) there is a close connection between spiritual wholeness and physical healing; and (2) there is a lot more to health than not being sick. 

Let me begin with the healing presence of Jesus.  When I first came to Reformation, as most of you know, I was going through separation and divorce.  What most of you did not know was that the trauma in my life put me in a serious depression.  I was experienced enough as a pastor to be able to do my job adequately and mask the pain that I was going through.  But there were days that I had to force myself to come to work and nights of weeping and inner pain.  I isolated myself from friends and became reclusive other than what work required.  I wasn’t even sure that I should still be in ministry.

During this time I prayed and prayed that God would give me some sign that I should remain in ministry or get out of it.  I prayed that God would give me some affirmation and healing.  But I did not get an answer.   In early summer of 1998 I was driving to Pittsburgh to attend the funeral of my sister-in-law’s father.  I was tired but rather than stop to rest, I kept driving because I was still in that “what does it matter” state of mind.  I dozed off and hit the left lane guard rail on the turnpike, bounced back over to the right lane, regained control of the car and no other vehicles were close enough to hit me.  I pulled over to the side (now fully awake) and I thought “what are you doing!”  You are immersed in self-pity and wallowing in self-guilt and not caring about life – but you need to care.  You need to live.  And that was the beginning of my healing. 

When I got back home and talked with my counselor about this, I also realized that God had never left me.   

You see, the HEALING presence is not always the dramatic HEALING of physical or mental disorder to which we can give witness, though sometimes it’s that.  And the HEALING is not always instantaneous and complete, though it often is.  More often than not, HEALING is a process.  The healing presence of Jesus moves into every area of our life, which we will open to him, to provide transformation and HEALING, not only physically but perhaps in even more important ways, Christ heals to the degree of our willingness and openness and yieldingness.  I had closed myself off. 

We’re healed of bitterness and hatred and painful memories, and wounded spirits.  We’re healed of the sores of the soul kept open and infected by estrangement from loved ones.  We’re healed of the ravaging grief of a broken heart because of the death of a loved one.  We’re healed of the despondency that has come from vocational failure.  All of these, all of these, can be healed because the presence of Christ is a HEALING presence.  Now the kind of HEALING Christ provides often takes time, and we need to remember that God is in charge.  We can’t manipulate God to comply with our own timetable.  Nor can we manipulate the sort of HEALING the indwelling Christ is to provide.  And that leads me to the second big thing I want to say..

There is a close connection between spiritual wholeness and physical and mental HEALING.  There was a survey several years ago in which the American Medical Association asked several thousand general practitioners across the nation this question:  What percentage of people who you see in a given week have needs that you are qualified to treat with your medical skills?  Some replied 25%, others 1%, but the average was 10%.  Doctors admitting that they had the medical skills to meet the needs of only 10% of the people who came to them each week.  Now this is not a disparaging word about doctors, not at all.  It is simply to state the fact that by their admission, 90% of the people who came to general practitioners in an average week have no medically treatable problem.  Certainly they’re ill and suffering pain, but their problem is not chemical or physical. 

When the doctors were asked what they would like most to do for those that they could not treat and heal, most of them responded, I’d like to have the time to spend an hour or two simply talking and listening to each of the patients. 

Medical researchers are helping us to understand the relationship between forgiveness and good health. A Canadian physician by the name of Dr. Hans Selye has done extensive research in the area of stress and distress. His study is primarily in the area of biochemistry, and yet he has discovered that positive emotions and attitudes, such as forgiveness, thanksgiving, praise and joy can actually enhance and improve a person's health. Negative emotions and attitudes such as resentment, anger, revenge and jealousy have a debilitating, disease-inducing effect on the body.

That makes the point, doesn’t it?  And we could have learned it from Jesus a long time ago.  Have you ever noticed how often in the gospels there is a connection between forgiveness and HEALING?  When the paralyzed man is lowered through the roof so that Jesus could heal him, the first thing that Jesus says is “Your sins are forgiven!”  It happens over and over again.  So there is a connection between spiritual health and our physical and mental well being.  And the HEALING that most of desperately need, has to do with our minds, our emotions, our spirits.  More and more medical science is aware of these connections and have recognized that if you can treat the whole person, you are more likely to provide healing that can lead to wholeness.  The presence of Christ is a HEALING presence, and that HEALING is often connected between the spiritual and the physical.  And that leads me to the last big thing I want to say.

There is a lot more to health than not being sick.  Did you get it?  There is a lot more to health than not being sick.  Let me go back to my experience in the accident.  At one level, you could say that I was not sick – I wasn’t missing work, I appeared to be okay.  And yet inside I was suffering.  It was in that experience of suffering and the awareness of a HEALING presence in the midst of my pain and doubt that I realized the intimate connection between suffering and grace. 

And this is a deeper truth yet, sometimes Christ uses our suffering and pain as the source of our wholeness.  Don’t think that is why something happens or that God causes something to happen so that we can learn through suffering.  But in the midst of my pain I had to work to find the source of the pain, to look deep into myself and realize pain is always – always an indication of an area of life that needs healing. 

On Gray’s anatomy a couple of weeks ago there was a young girl who had a rare syndrome in which she could not feel pain – she would dare people to hit her in the stomach, she could stick her hand in ice water longer than the doctor – but in not feeling the pain, she did not know how injured she was.  Pain is a gift to help us get help for healing.  And sometimes the healing we need is not evident on the outside.  So there is a lot more to health and wholeness than not being sick.

That’s why when Jesus became a part of people’s lives, he did not only bring them physical healing, but he also taught them God’s ways and helped them understand how God wants us to live in relationship to each other and to God.  That’s why the Gospels don’t only have miracle stories, but also sections of teaching and stories of suffering that lead to health or stories of forgiveness that lead to wholeness. 

In the Tenth Chapter of Matthew, after Jesus preached the sermon on the mount teaching the disciples and the crowds of people how to live; and after healing a bunch of people to remind them of God’s desire of physical, mental and spiritual health, Jesus sends out his disciples to teach and to heal and cast out demons.  Henri Nouwen calls the church a society of wounded healers.  People like you and me whose lives have known suffering and illness, tragedy and pain, difficulty and adversity, but who have also know the healing presence of Christ, the healing power of God and the healing comfort of a community of believers. 

Our HEALING does not come, by hiding our wounds, or pretending that they do not exist.  Only as we are willing to suffer the baring and the sharing of our wounds, will the HEALING power flow; only by making our wounds visible will others have the courage to admit their need for healing too. 

One of the great fears we all have in a time of illness is that of being abandoned, neglected, and forgotten. While many of us may not feel we are being punished for some sin during our illness, we may, nevertheless, be ashamed of our weakness and our inability to cope. Confident, independent, and self-sufficient, many of us find it difficult to be in a position where we are weak, helpless, and vulnerable. We know our family and friends enjoy us in our strength, but we wonder if they will stand by us in our weakness.

Like the sick of Jesus' day, and we all need a community of friends to surround us, to support us, and to bring us to the good physicians. We need to be assured we will not be rejected or abandoned or forgotten. Our friends need us, and we need them. We need a community of HEALING. And we can be one. 

And so I invite you to come to the healing presence of Jesus, with your needs and the needs of those you love.

Amen.