Healing in the eschatological perspective
Below is the text of the sermon I shall preach at a Healing Mass on Sunday morning. Enjoy!
Daniel 12.1-3
Hebrews 10.11-14
Mark 13.1-8
I have to admit, I’ve always been rather the sceptic when it comes to healing services, and I do believe there are some situations where they can do more harm than good. Before I proceed, I probably ought to say more about that.
It always seemed to me that praying for a person’s healing, especially from a physical ailment might rather raise false hopes. Indeed, in some circles there seems to be such confidence that healing will occur if only we bamboozle God enough that any apparent failure to heal must be read as, at best, the inadequacy of our prayers and, at worst, a serious challenge to our Christian faith.
Yet today’s readings do, in part, give us an indication of the theological landscape within which we pray for healing, and within which healing may occur.
My own opinions began to change when last year I worked in a parish in North London. As part of that work I spent a day a week as a chaplain in an “Older People’s Services Hospital”, what we might more conventionally call a geriatric hospital. As part of this work Fr Bruce, the chaplain, and I would visit many people ill in their beds and pray with them for healing, sometimes laying on hands and anointing them with holy oil. Some of these people were desperately ill, with perhaps not long to live. Indeed, for some of them, suffering from painful sicknesses, a quiet death would be a relief and an end to their suffering. I needed to radically challenge my prejudices about “healing prayer”…
Within this context I began to see healing as something other than bamboozling God with words in the hope that he might “make us better”: prayer for healing isn’t some divine paracetamol taken for a cosmic headache. Rather, prayer for healing is an acknowledgement of our broken and fallen state: the acknowledgement that we are not now all that we will be. And, the alignment of our will with God’s, that one day we will be perfected in his presence.
Our readings today are set within what theologians would call an apocalyptic framework. Apocalypto translates as “to uncover” and it is a word used to allude to the time when things will be seen clearly (or uncovered), that is the time of the coming of the Kingdom of God, when Christ shall be revealed as Lord of all. When we shall be changed and renewed in him and by him. And this is the Good News: that the person I will be is more truly myself than the person I am. That the perfected, healed, restored person that God will make me, or rather renew me into, is the fullest expression of myself.
We see this in the life of Christ himself. He came to preach the Kingdom, to make the Kingdom of God a present reality, and he did so, not just with words but with actions: with miracles of healing, where people were transformed from a broken, outcast state to wholeness and integration in the community. The wholeness we await is the Resurrection of the body, and the community into which we will be integrated is the Communion of Saints. The pattern was the same for Christ, he is our prototype for the ultimate healing – the healing of death by the resurrection to eternal life. So we do this not alone, but with him as our captain and our guide. It is not only Christ’s companionship either, but we are assisted by the angels, as Daniel says St Michael, the chief angel, will arise to deliver us to everlasting life, that we may shine like the stars forever. And, we are surrounded by one another as those anticipating the greater reality which will transform us - we do this together.
Our reading from Hebrews helps us to understand, as much as that is possible, how this is done: it is done in Christ. The writer of the letter assures us that the sacrificial death of Jesus has lasting effect for us now, and yet there is something that is not quite given to us fully yet. “Until I make your enemies your footstool…” there is still a little more to be done. The process of healing has been begun, and completed in Christ, and yet we shall not enjoy its full effects until we too are part of that new creation, or renewed creation, of which he shall be Lord.
But what of us now? What of the sicknesses, the weaknesses, of our own and of others that we bring with us to this rail? With which we kneel and ask God to meet us in those dark, hurting places. If full healing is not fully realised yet, why do we bother? Well, we bother because we believe that God meets us when we come to him, indeed that he is already there and we just re-member ourselves into his presence. And, that in doing so our faith will be strengthened and that we will be encouraged by the promise of the fullness of healing that is to come. Indeed, perhaps even at a deep level we will be healed inasmuch as we shall be given the grace and faith to bear our sufferings until they are subsumed into Christ’s death and Resurrection and transformed into glory.
Until then we are reminded of Jesus’ words to us today in St Mark’s gospel: “these are but the beginnings of the birthpangs”, and from the pain of birthpangs and labour comes new life. A new life which we are promised and which faith assures us, we shall receive, because (as the letter to the Hebrews affirms) “he who has promised is faithful.”
So to him who fulfilled the Father’s will in order to heal us by the operation of Spirit, to the one true triune God, from angels and men, be all glory and power, blessing and honour, now and from age unto age. Amen.
Daniel 12.1-3
Hebrews 10.11-14
Mark 13.1-8
I have to admit, I’ve always been rather the sceptic when it comes to healing services, and I do believe there are some situations where they can do more harm than good. Before I proceed, I probably ought to say more about that.
It always seemed to me that praying for a person’s healing, especially from a physical ailment might rather raise false hopes. Indeed, in some circles there seems to be such confidence that healing will occur if only we bamboozle God enough that any apparent failure to heal must be read as, at best, the inadequacy of our prayers and, at worst, a serious challenge to our Christian faith.
Yet today’s readings do, in part, give us an indication of the theological landscape within which we pray for healing, and within which healing may occur.
My own opinions began to change when last year I worked in a parish in North London. As part of that work I spent a day a week as a chaplain in an “Older People’s Services Hospital”, what we might more conventionally call a geriatric hospital. As part of this work Fr Bruce, the chaplain, and I would visit many people ill in their beds and pray with them for healing, sometimes laying on hands and anointing them with holy oil. Some of these people were desperately ill, with perhaps not long to live. Indeed, for some of them, suffering from painful sicknesses, a quiet death would be a relief and an end to their suffering. I needed to radically challenge my prejudices about “healing prayer”…
Within this context I began to see healing as something other than bamboozling God with words in the hope that he might “make us better”: prayer for healing isn’t some divine paracetamol taken for a cosmic headache. Rather, prayer for healing is an acknowledgement of our broken and fallen state: the acknowledgement that we are not now all that we will be. And, the alignment of our will with God’s, that one day we will be perfected in his presence.
Our readings today are set within what theologians would call an apocalyptic framework. Apocalypto translates as “to uncover” and it is a word used to allude to the time when things will be seen clearly (or uncovered), that is the time of the coming of the Kingdom of God, when Christ shall be revealed as Lord of all. When we shall be changed and renewed in him and by him. And this is the Good News: that the person I will be is more truly myself than the person I am. That the perfected, healed, restored person that God will make me, or rather renew me into, is the fullest expression of myself.
We see this in the life of Christ himself. He came to preach the Kingdom, to make the Kingdom of God a present reality, and he did so, not just with words but with actions: with miracles of healing, where people were transformed from a broken, outcast state to wholeness and integration in the community. The wholeness we await is the Resurrection of the body, and the community into which we will be integrated is the Communion of Saints. The pattern was the same for Christ, he is our prototype for the ultimate healing – the healing of death by the resurrection to eternal life. So we do this not alone, but with him as our captain and our guide. It is not only Christ’s companionship either, but we are assisted by the angels, as Daniel says St Michael, the chief angel, will arise to deliver us to everlasting life, that we may shine like the stars forever. And, we are surrounded by one another as those anticipating the greater reality which will transform us - we do this together.
Our reading from Hebrews helps us to understand, as much as that is possible, how this is done: it is done in Christ. The writer of the letter assures us that the sacrificial death of Jesus has lasting effect for us now, and yet there is something that is not quite given to us fully yet. “Until I make your enemies your footstool…” there is still a little more to be done. The process of healing has been begun, and completed in Christ, and yet we shall not enjoy its full effects until we too are part of that new creation, or renewed creation, of which he shall be Lord.
But what of us now? What of the sicknesses, the weaknesses, of our own and of others that we bring with us to this rail? With which we kneel and ask God to meet us in those dark, hurting places. If full healing is not fully realised yet, why do we bother? Well, we bother because we believe that God meets us when we come to him, indeed that he is already there and we just re-member ourselves into his presence. And, that in doing so our faith will be strengthened and that we will be encouraged by the promise of the fullness of healing that is to come. Indeed, perhaps even at a deep level we will be healed inasmuch as we shall be given the grace and faith to bear our sufferings until they are subsumed into Christ’s death and Resurrection and transformed into glory.
Until then we are reminded of Jesus’ words to us today in St Mark’s gospel: “these are but the beginnings of the birthpangs”, and from the pain of birthpangs and labour comes new life. A new life which we are promised and which faith assures us, we shall receive, because (as the letter to the Hebrews affirms) “he who has promised is faithful.”
So to him who fulfilled the Father’s will in order to heal us by the operation of Spirit, to the one true triune God, from angels and men, be all glory and power, blessing and honour, now and from age unto age. Amen.
posted by Credo at 11/16/2006 12:38:00 pm
3 Comments:
Well, you know me; just a simple bible-believing Christian.
Thanks for your helpful comments and affirmation.
The sentence you quote is adapted from someone else. I forget who...
Further, Westcott readers will note the absence of "three moves" from my sermon...
Indeed, you are doing very well for an ordinand in training, my friend! Bless yah ;)Thank you for sermon ....
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