Healing Prayer- feast of St. Luke
Today we
are celebrating the feast of St. Luke who was referred to by St. Paul as “the
beloved physician”. Tradition tells us that he was a physician of the body, but
the Gospel and the book of Acts he wrote also shows us that he was a physician
of the soul. Today we pay particular attention to the ministry of healing as a
part of our mission as Christians.
Healing
was a continuous part of Jesus’ ministry. Wherever Jesus went he healed the
sick as a sign of God’s compassion and a sign of the wholeness that comes with
the kingdom of God. It seems like wherever he went he was healing people who
suffered from a variety of illnesses.
Healing
was also a part of the ministry of Jesus’ disciples. We read in Luke chapter 10
that Jesus sends out the 70 into the surrounding towns. Jesus says to them, “Whenever
you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure
the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to
you.’“ (Luke 10:8-9) (See also Luke 9:1). We also see this ministry of healing
continue in the book of Acts after Jesus ascends into heaven. Early in the book
of Acts St. Peter and St. John were going to the temple to pray when they come
across a man begging. Peter turns to him and says, ‘I have no silver or gold,
but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand
up and walk.’ (Acts 3:6). The man is completely healed and it starts a huge
controversy with the authorities.
As
disciples of Jesus we are also told to pray for healing. In the letter of James
we read, “Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church
and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The
prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone
who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to
one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of
the righteous is powerful and effective” (James 5:14-16).
We also
have many stories from the lives of the saints about healing. There are stories
from our own lives about people who receive healing in response to prayer. I
have a friend who is a priest who once went to the hospital to pray for an
elderly woman who was dying and anoint her with oil. He believed he was going
to die and so did the medical staff. In the morning the phone rang and there
was a voice on the other end asking, “what did you do to grandma?” The woman
woke up the next morning with no serious problem. She went hope to England and
sent him a Christmas card until she eventually passed away. There was a woman
in this building a few weeks ago who told me about her cancer being healed in
response to prayer in a very dramatic way. She was preparing for an operation
and the cancer was gone. I hear many of
these kinds of stories. I have prayed for people and they have gotten well. No
doubt God uses medications and various medical treatments and the wisdom of
doctors and nurses and various other healing professionals. But, God also uses
prayer.
In the
book “Healing Words” Dr. Larry Dossey speaks about how as an agnostic medical
doctor he was confronted by evidence of prayer’s effectiveness. He writes, “Over
time I decided that not to employ
prayer with my patients was the equivalent of deliberately withholding a potent
drug or surgical procedure. … I simply could not ignore the evidence for prayer’s
effectiveness without feeling like a traitor to the scientific tradition. And
so, after weighing these factors for many months, I concluded that I would pray
for my patients” (Dossey, xviii).
This
might be a good time to mention that this is part of why it is so important
that we develop a Pastoral Care group. This group can be a group of people that
can provide constant prayer for those who are suffering. It is an important
ministry and can be used by God to bring various kinds of healing.
We also have to take
seriously the fact that sometimes we pray and there is no healing. St. Paul speaks about a thorn in his flesh
that would not be healed (2 Cor. 12:7). In the Bible, Job is the ultimate
example of a good person who suffers unjustly and does not receive healing. There
are also many saints that die early deaths or who deal with constant illness.
For example, St. Francis of Assisi was only 44 when he died and was nearly
blind. When we pray sometimes people seem to be healed, but sometimes they don’t.
Sometimes people seem incredibly deserving of healing and don’t receive it. So
prayer is not as simple as we might want it to be. There is a mystery here. It
touches on the mystery of suffering.
The fact
that prayer doesn’t always bring physical healing doesn’t refute the fact that
sometimes it does bring healing. We don’t understand how it all works, but
sometimes it works and so we should pray for healing while also understanding
that there are deeper purposes that might mean healing will not always come. There is a deeper purpose in suffering. For
example, sometimes suffering can teach us patience. Hemingway once wrote, “The
world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places”. Mysteriously sometimes suffering can have a
positive effect on our soul. The healing and strengthening of our soul might be
more important than our physical healing. But, we have to admit that sometimes
we see no purpose in suffering. It is deeper and more mysterious than we can
see.
Jesus performed some
amazing acts of healing. He healed people that were born blind. We even read
about Jesus bringing people back from the dead. The most famous of these was
Lazarus, but there are others as well (Jairus’ daughter- Mark 5; The Widow’s
son and Nain- Luke 7). Jesus healed people, but it is important to remember
that eventually they all died. Physical healing is only temporary. So physical
healing really only points towards a greater healing.
What kind
of healing ultimately matters? Jesus in his compassion and mercy is about
healing the entire person, body, mind, spirit, but this isn’t just a matter of
healing the individual. Jesus also desires the healing of social relationships,
which is why he places such an emphasis on forgiveness. Jesus’ ultimate goal to
heal the relationship between the world and God. Jesus’ physical healings (which
are temporary) really foreshadow that great healing.
In Jesus
we see humanity as it was meant to be- he is the fully healed human being. This
is God’s desire for us as well. The church is ideally meant to be an instrument
of God used to help heal the split between the world and God. We enter the church
as broken, fallen, sick, and confused human beings, and through a variety of spiritual
disciplines, and working in the power of the Holy Spirit, and following the
teachings of Jesus, we enter the process of becoming healthy.
We see
this healing most clearly in the saints. They are the ones who have received
the deep healing God is offering. They followed the way Jesus taught us and
they have bee healed of their sin and in being healed show the Fruit of the Spirit-
“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23).
The
theologian Paul Meyendorff says, “the very purpose of the Church is to heal us,
to restore the rift between God and humanity which is caused by our sin and
leads to death. This is achieved precisely when we are united to one another
and to God in the body of Christ, which is the church”… “Jesus Christ is here
asking for nothing less than the healing of the whole world, all humanity, all
creation. This is achieved when we come to know Christ, when we become one with
him and with one another. Everything that the church does, all its sacramental and
liturgical life, all its teaching, is directed at restoring the proper
relationship between God and creation, which has been corrupted through our
sinfulness. This is the real meaning of Christian healing, and it involves the
whole person, body, soul, and spirit.”[1]
Baptism
is the ultimate sacrament of healing and is aimed at the whole person, body,
soul, and spirit. I love this Eastern
Orthodox prayer over the baptismal waters: “Therefore O loving King, come now
and sanctify this water by the indwelling of your Holy Spirit, and grant to it
the grace of redemption, the blessing of Jordan; make it the fountain of incorruption,
the gift of sanctification, the remission of sins, the remedy of
infirmities… Master of all, show this
water to be the water of redemption, the water of sanctification, the
purification of flesh and spirit, the loosing of bonds, the remission of sins,
the illumination of the soul, the washing of regeneration, the renewal of the
spirit, the gift of adoption to sonship, the garment of incorruption, the
fountain of life …”[2] That is the healing God wants for us.
If God’s purpose for the church really has to do with
healing, then baptism (as our entry into the church) is really at its core
about healing. It is ultimately about healing our relationship with God. Baptism
is primarily a healing sacrament. It is where we are set on the path of
restoration and wholeness. So I
encourage you to mark yourself with the baptismal water today as a sign of
embracing your baptism and the healing that began on the day you were baptized.
We do pray for healing. We pray for the
healing of the entire person- body, mind, and soul. And we pray knowing that
our ultimate healing is God’s desire for us. Amen
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