Healing Service
Reformation, Media
Larry V. Smoose
Linda and I were in the car, driving back from a day with some friends at the Delaware beaches. I think we were talking about one of the meals, or perhaps it was the Thrasher’s fries we had enjoyed, but suddenly Linda asked what I would order for my last meal. It really is not the kind of question I like to think about and so I hesitated a bit – and said, maybe a good hamburger – but in some ways it really doesn’t matter much if it’s your last meal.
Then she said, “It must be awful to be on death row.” Don’t ask me how we jumped from last meals to death row – she’s the psychiatric nurse! And then she said to me – what would you say to a person who was about to be put to death. Geez, I thought, we’ve gone from Thrasher’s fries to last meals to ministering to prisoner’s on death row all in the space of about five minutes! But she was serious about the question, so I decided to think seriously about it and finally I said, “I would tell them you are about to be free.”
And that was when I realized I had discovered the theme for this sermon! Prison is the punishment. Life confined. Life ordered by others rather than of your own free will. Life limited by walls and schedules. Solitary life without much human contact. When you are in prison, what you want is freedom.
And the connection I made as we were driving in the car is the realization that we are all in prisons of some sort, aren’t we? Rich and poor, male and female, young and old – without distinction or regard for station in life, we find ourselves in prisons. Like Naaman, the great general remembered by name in our Old Testament reading and the ordinary, unnamed man in our gospel lesson – both were imprisoned by leprosy. Naaman wanted to be free – was willing to spend $100 million or more if you translate the huge amount of money he took with him to the king of Israel. Illness is like that – it imprisons people without distinction – it threatened to take away Naaman’s honored position, so without a cure his money would do him little good.
It would seem as if he would do anything for a cure, and yet when Elisha tells him to wash in the Jordan River, Naaman is offended, upset about Elisha’s attitude and Elisha’s prescription. Apparently Naaman has some pre-conceived ideas about what should happen and how it should happen. Elisha should have enough respect for him to come out and greet him personally – instead he sends a servant. He had expected some extraordinary effort to be involved in the cure and all the servant tells him is to wash in the Jordan River – not nearly as impressive as the Tigris or the Euphrates. As the writer shares Naaman’s reaction to Elisha’s prescription, we see the other prison that confines many of us. His own attitude and ego are creating a whole other set of walls within the prison of his leprosy, and he goes into a rage and is actually about to refuse to take advantage of this opportunity for healing because of his own pride and stubbornness Naaman’s attitude, expectations and pre-conceived ideas become a second prison.
So there are prisons that we are put into against our will and there are prisons of our own making. What are your prisons? What kind of freedom are you seeking as you come forward at this healing service? Typically we think of a healing service in relation to illness or disease, and that can be a prison for you. But maybe your prison is a relationship that is not healthy or it might be difficulty in having a relationship and being open to intimacy. Perhaps you are trapped by guilt or haunted by abuse from the past or still bearing the scars of family dysfunction. There are all kinds of prisons and all kinds of healing.
In fact, The Bible is full of people in prison – some literally, like Joseph or John the Baptist or Paul; others are in prisons of chronic illness and disease, while still others are in prisons of prejudice, racism, slavery or oppression; and still others are imprisoned by their own guilt or fear like Joseph’s brothers or the disciples after Jesus’ death. In fact it is hard to find instances in the Bible where people are not in need of healing. Everywhere you turn, people are seeking freedom from prisons of one kind or another.
I think the same is true today – a lot of us are in need of healing, seeking freedom from the prisons that confine us, limit us, hurt us and those around us. Now here’s the thing about healing, it can take many forms and come in many ways, but before healing can take place, you must know that you need healing and be able to ask for it and be open to receiving it.
Sometimes that is relatively easy and straightforward – both Naaman and the leper in our Gospel lesson knew that they had leprosy and asked for healing. The leper in the Gospel already knew that Jesus could heal him and asked with confidence. Naaman had tried everything he could think of without success, and grasping at straws, when his wife’s slave girl mentioned a prophet in Israel that could heal him, he was willing to try that too. Of course it was more of a command to heal him than a request, and even when Elisha told him what he had to do to be cured, he almost did not do it – his second prison, that prison of the ego, of pride, or pre-conceived notions about how healing would occur and his stubbornness had to be pointed out to him by another slave and he had to face that truth about himself before healing was possible.
Our Bible lessons today do not include other forms of healing – like the healing of Joseph who not only has to get over his own inflated ego and self-centeredness that caused his brothers to sell him into slavery, but then had to overcome the resentment and anger he had because of that betrayal. In the end, his healing is evident when he helps to heal the guilt and fear of his brothers and help restores wholeness to his family.
And perhaps the most astonishing form of healing is when healing as we would normally define it does not occur, but God provides us with a strength and grace that allows us not to have our life defined by the illness that tries to imprison us, but discovers a freedom beyond those confining walls. As Richard Lovelace so poignantly wrote:
Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above Enjoy such liberty.
Paul could have given him inspiration for those words as we hear him say, “To keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” . . . Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ, for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:8-10)
This is the kind of healing that was given to Helen Keller and to young Alex of Lemonade stand fame; This is what gave hope and purpose to Mandella for 25 years in prison and allowed him to transcend hatred and desire for revenge and to say “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.” And with those thoughts he brought healing to both blacks and whites in South Africa.
I don’t know what kind of healing you seek, I don’t know the kind of freedom you need, but Jesus does – and so like that unnamed leper in the Gospel we come, knowing that healing is possible: “Lord if you choose, you can make me whole.” Like Paul, we don’t know what kind of healing Jesus will bring for our thorn in the flesh, and we don’t know what kind of strength God will give. But I do know this – God desires our healing, God sent Jesus to free us from our sin and make us whole, for as Jesus began his ministry he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, to bring sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed . . .” (Luke 4) And, God has promised us a day when there will be no more pain, no more sorrow, no more tears or suffering and so I invite you to come today for the anointing oil of salvation, I invite you to lay your burdens before Jesus, and ask for the healing you desire. I invite you to receive the sign of the cross, our reminder of Jesus’ presence with us in every circumstance of life. He has suffered as you suffer, he has died, as we all will some day die, and he was raised to new life, as God will someday raise us. I invite you to accept the kind healing that God provides, for today, in this place, Jesus is here to touch you and make you whole and to send you as a healing presence for others. Amen.