East Leake

THE WORD!

This page provides addresses and sermons, teachings and messages for us all.
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Prayer is a path when there is none.

When we get full of ourselves, we get empty of God.

Guideposts Magazine.

EL PARISH COMMUNION 27 JUNE
Theme: Healing
Readings: Galatians 5:1, 13-25 Luke 8:40-end

•Isaiah 35:3 “Strengthen the weak hands; and make firm the feeble knees”

This verse had been bandied about a bit recently – ever since I started hobbling about due to a painful right knee. I put off going to the Doctor until it got really bad – and when I did go he said, “Welcome to the wonderful world of arthritis”. I now have a much greater empathy with members of my congregation who have arthritic joints – and I know that’s quite a few of you!

Over the last couple of weeks some of you have told me of answers to prayers for healing; and after our Wednesday morning service recently when several people had painful limbs for one reason or another, we ministered to each other in prayer. As we think about healing today, some of you may have examples of answered prayer – whether that was a complete cure, or the healing process was speeded up a bit – but for some it may be that the symptoms weren’t miraculously cured, but instead you were given the inner strength to cope with pain and discomfort.

We have to be careful with prayers for healing. We believe God answers prayer, but the answers may not always be the ones we hoped for. Sometimes we hear people saying that if only we had more faith we could be healed. Well, certainly Jesus commended people for their faith, but we also know that some people with a great faith didn’t get the cure they hoped for. Remember St. Paul and his thorn in the flesh. We don’t know what that was, though some have come up with theories, but we do know that the Lord said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient” and we learn from Paul about God’s power being made perfect in weakness.
(See 2 Corinthians 12:7-9)

We have to hold that understanding in tension with the possibility of God’s intervention and the belief that, ultimately, God wants everybody to be healed. But healing and wholeness is not only about curing physical or even mental illness – it is also about healing of hurts, healing of bad memories, and filling each child of God with that inner peace that passes all understanding.

Now let’s look at the Gospel reading and the interesting juxtaposition of two healing miracles. In fact one is more than a healing; it is a raising from the dead. Here we have a twelve year old girl, on the brink of womanhood, the beloved daughter of Jairus, a man of some standing in the community. By contrast we have an unnamed woman, who has been ill for twelve years, the whole of that little girl’s lifetime. The continual bleeding would have rendered her not only physically weak, anaemic and continually tired and weary – she would also be ritually unclean according to the law in Leviticus. Various bodily functions could make a person unclean and therefore unable to take part in religious observance, as well as pushing them to the margins of society.

Jairus, a leader of the Synagogue, was a prominent man and presumably a man of some substance. The woman was poor, having spent all she had on doctors’ bills – no NHS to care for her in her illness.

Jairus came openly to Jesus, yet the woman came up behind him, secretly, reaching out to touch the fringe of his clothes. Jairus, though, for all his standing in the community, came in humility to Jesus, falling at his feet, setting aside pride and dignity to beg Jesus to come to his house. When you are desperately worried about someone precious to you, that is no time for standing on ceremony.

As Jesus went with Jairus the crowds were pressing in on him, yet he knew that power had gone from him as that woman touched him. Her haemorrhage stopped, Luke the physician tells us. Imagine the relief, to be free of the pain, the discomfort, the debilitating condition she’s suffered from all those years. Yet with that healing came another emotion as she was found out. She came trembling, fearful, yet also being bold enough to declare that she had been immediately healed.

Jesus spoke kindly to this unnamed woman, calling her “Daughter”. The child was Jairus’s daughter; this woman was called “Daughter” by our Lord himself. Both were precious children of God.

How wonderful to her ears must Jesus’ words have sounded, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace”. So faith can make us well, yet we know it is really God who makes us well, though that is through the exercise of our faith. And it doesn’t have to be a great faith in God, but as someone once said, “Faith in a great God.” Not a great faith in God, but faith in a great God.

But for Jairus’s daughter it seems it was all too late. The interruption in Jesus’ journey delayed his getting to Jairus’ house and the child had died. A messenger came to tell Jairus the devastating news, and to bid him not to trouble Jesus any longer. But Jesus’ reply was astonishing: “Do not fear; only believe and she will be saved.”

So Jesus turfed out of the house the professional mourners, all those who were weeping and wailing, telling them she was not dead but sleeping. The three closest disciples went with him into the house; only they and the child’s parents were allowed in. Then Jesus took her by the hand, saying “Child, get up”.

We all need saving, for we are dead – spiritually dead, through sin, and Jesus the healer is also Jesus the Saviour – the one who takes us by the hand and raises us up to new life. And when the time comes for our physical death, we shall be raised up to full and eternal life.

Those who fall asleep in the faith of Christ will be raised up to new life in him. And that is the ultimate healing – the resurrection life which will be ours one day.

So in the meantime, what about our prayers for the weak hands and the feeble knees, or the more serious infirmities and life threatening illnesses and the disabilities that some have to bear? James, in his letter, says: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. 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.

A word about anointing with oil. This does not have to be associated with extreme unction, or the last rites. We do sometimes anoint people who are close to death, praying for that ultimate healing and for them to be received into God’s everlasting kingdom. But anointing is on offer for any who have ailments and wish to be prayed over.

And a word about forgiveness. We often see Jesus forgiving sins before he heals; the fear that we are not forgiven can be a blockage inside us, preventing that healing love that flows from the Father heart of God, and from the cross of Christ, from entering deep into our hearts and souls. We need to know we are forgiven and set free from all our guilt and sin before we can open up our lives to God and let his unconditional love and grace do that deep work of healing in us.

We pray in faith to our great God, in the name of Jesus Christ, but we have to be careful not to pray answers. In other words we pray that God will move in the power of the Holy Spirit upon the person we pray for – but how God moves, how God acts, whatever the answer, it is God’s answer, not ours - and God, who alone sees the bigger picture, will work in that situation for good.

As it says in Romans 8:28 – “All things work together for good for those who love God and are called, according to his purpose.”

Revd Glynis Hetherington