Christ the Healer: Renewing Lives!
Mark 1:29-39
February 5, 2006
Rev. Nancy Pfaltzgraf
Mary had developed such painful ankles that she found it difficult to teach. Her doctors thought perhaps she suffered from a form of arthritis, but they were unable to help her very much.
Mary's predicament deeply troubled her. She loved teaching and considered it the ministry to which she was called. Her distress was compounded by her lifelong painful shyness. What could she do if she was not able to be with her "little people;' the only ones with whom she was really comfortable?
When her suffering became evident to some members of her parish, they invited Mary to attend a healing prayer group in her church. At first she refused, fearing she might have to talk in front of everyone. Worse yet, if the parishioners prayed for her, she would be the center of attention. And then there were all those hands that would touch her. . . .
In the end, her friends won out. Reluctantly, she went to the meeting and, just as she had feared, found herself in the middle of a group of people. They prayed for her, their hands on her ankles: "Jesus, please heal Sister Mary's ankles. . . . Hear our prayer, 0 God."
One of the clearest and most prevalent pictures of Jesus throughout the gospels is that of a healer. Time and time again Jesus makes it clear that he loves the whole person, thus his goal was to help each person become whole. From curing simple fevers, restoring sight, hearing or mobility to resuscitation from death, Jesus invited all he met into a journey of healing and wholeness. Some, like Simon's mother-in-law responded to that invitation, others were content with just a simple cure of their physical ailment.
As we pick up Mark's story Jesus and his newly called disciples have just left the synagogue where in the midst of his teaching Jesus cures a man of an unclean spirit. His disciples are, no doubt, both excited about what this means for their future. So when they withdraw to Simon's home for the Sabbath meal, and discover that Simon's mother-in-law is sick in bed with a fever, they immediately go to Jesus, anxious to see what he will do. Now in the scope of all the healings recorded in scripture the healing of a fever is by no means the most dramatic or even the most critical. Even though in Jesus day a fever was perhaps far more serious than it is today, it was never-the-less something that people could and did recover from without miraculous divine intervention. Even so, Mark tells us, Jesus went to the woman, took her by the hand and lifted her up. One translation says he stood her on her feet. The fever left her and she began to serve them.
Now despite the fact that some of you may be thinking, "Isn't that just the way it is; the woman has to get up from her sick-bed to fix dinner for the men!" Mark points us to something far deeper. Healing and wholeness are far different and far more profound that the mere cure of a physical ailment. Healing and wholeness are about the renewal of life that happens when we shift the focus of our lives from serving ourselves to serving God, from listening to the demands of our ego to attending to the voice of the still-speaking God, from trying to be the masters of our own life to joining God in the on-going work of creating our lives and our world in God's image, according to God will, in openness to God's dream and vision for us all.
I think that's why Jesus refuses to go back with the disciples the next morning when they interrupt his prayer with what they think is good news, "Everyone is searching for you." From his previous days encounters Jesus knows these seekers are interested in nothing more than a physical cure. He, on the other hand, has come to call people into deep communion with God who lives in the depth of each heart and invite them into openness to the power of God's love that brings healing and renews life.
When her prayer group prayed for Sister Mary, God heard; but God did not heal Mary's ankles. Instead a wonderfully funny thing happened. As the group prayed for her ankles, her ear that had been nearly deaf since childhood suddenly opened, allowing her to hear with that ear for the first time in many years. Amid the laughter and the tears that followed, any illusions that the group could predict what God would do quickly melted away.
The next week Mary did not need urging to attend the healing group. Once again the group prayed for her ankles, and once again she experienced healing, but not in her ankles. Instead, the arthritis in her arm improved.
This went on week after week for several months. Each time the group prayed for Mary's ankles, some minor ache or pain would vanish or improve. Many times the group would end in laughter at the peculiar way God seemed to be working. However, Mary was certain that God was indeed at work, and the small physical improvements kept her coming back.
During this time, God was working marvelously with Mary in other ways. She became deeply aware that God loved her. Of course Mary already "knew" this, and she had taught her first graders that God is love. But now for the first time in her life Mary felt God's passionate, tender love. God was no longer a demanding father ready with punishments if she did not work hard to please him, but one who delighted in her. As Jesus became more real to her as friend as well as savior, Mary's shyness gradually diminished. She even found herself reading the Old Testament lesson at Sunday worship in front of hundreds of people, something she would not have dreamed of doing only a few months before.
But here is the enigma: Mary still had painful ankles. They had improved only a little after months of prayer. One day Mary was asked why she thought the pain in her ankles persisted. She replied: "My ankles were the bait that enticed me to pray for healing in the first place. The continued pain kept me coming back so that God could heal me in ways I didn't even know to pray for. I couldn't have imagined the depth of this healing and how it involved so much of me. Just think of what I would have missed if my ankles had been healed that first night. God had something much more profound in mind for me than just my ankles."
Then her eyes twinkled and she smiled her wonderful smile. .'Anyway, don't say my ankles weren't healed. Just say 'they aren't healed yet'." She went on to say that she had begun to sense a new call to be a chaplain to some of the older sisters in her community who were in poor health. She was looking forward to developing a new ministry in that direction.
In their book, Stretch Out Your Hand: Exploring Healing Prayer, Tilda Norberg and Robert Weber offer some profound insight into the ways Christ the Healer seeks to renew your life and mine. They write:
Very often the results of our healing are increased faith in God and a new empowerment to love and serve others. Frequently we find that the very thing that caused our greatest brokenness becomes transformed into our own unique giftedness.
Whatever the state of your physical health, I invite you to join us each month at the Service of Prayer for Healing and Wholeness and open your heart to what God has in store for you. You might choose to experience the laying on of hands, as Sister Mary did. Or you might simply rest in the healing love of Christ that baths us all as we sing and pray and open our hearts to Christ. Christ the Healer meets each of us where we are, takes us by the hand, lifts us up, and invites us to return to the path of healing and wholeness. May we too, rise up and serve and find LIFE!
Amen
Mark 1:29-39
February 5, 2006
Rev. Nancy Pfaltzgraf
Mary had developed such painful ankles that she found it difficult to teach. Her doctors thought perhaps she suffered from a form of arthritis, but they were unable to help her very much.
Mary's predicament deeply troubled her. She loved teaching and considered it the ministry to which she was called. Her distress was compounded by her lifelong painful shyness. What could she do if she was not able to be with her "little people;' the only ones with whom she was really comfortable?
When her suffering became evident to some members of her parish, they invited Mary to attend a healing prayer group in her church. At first she refused, fearing she might have to talk in front of everyone. Worse yet, if the parishioners prayed for her, she would be the center of attention. And then there were all those hands that would touch her. . . .
In the end, her friends won out. Reluctantly, she went to the meeting and, just as she had feared, found herself in the middle of a group of people. They prayed for her, their hands on her ankles: "Jesus, please heal Sister Mary's ankles. . . . Hear our prayer, 0 God."
One of the clearest and most prevalent pictures of Jesus throughout the gospels is that of a healer. Time and time again Jesus makes it clear that he loves the whole person, thus his goal was to help each person become whole. From curing simple fevers, restoring sight, hearing or mobility to resuscitation from death, Jesus invited all he met into a journey of healing and wholeness. Some, like Simon's mother-in-law responded to that invitation, others were content with just a simple cure of their physical ailment.
As we pick up Mark's story Jesus and his newly called disciples have just left the synagogue where in the midst of his teaching Jesus cures a man of an unclean spirit. His disciples are, no doubt, both excited about what this means for their future. So when they withdraw to Simon's home for the Sabbath meal, and discover that Simon's mother-in-law is sick in bed with a fever, they immediately go to Jesus, anxious to see what he will do. Now in the scope of all the healings recorded in scripture the healing of a fever is by no means the most dramatic or even the most critical. Even though in Jesus day a fever was perhaps far more serious than it is today, it was never-the-less something that people could and did recover from without miraculous divine intervention. Even so, Mark tells us, Jesus went to the woman, took her by the hand and lifted her up. One translation says he stood her on her feet. The fever left her and she began to serve them.
Now despite the fact that some of you may be thinking, "Isn't that just the way it is; the woman has to get up from her sick-bed to fix dinner for the men!" Mark points us to something far deeper. Healing and wholeness are far different and far more profound that the mere cure of a physical ailment. Healing and wholeness are about the renewal of life that happens when we shift the focus of our lives from serving ourselves to serving God, from listening to the demands of our ego to attending to the voice of the still-speaking God, from trying to be the masters of our own life to joining God in the on-going work of creating our lives and our world in God's image, according to God will, in openness to God's dream and vision for us all.
I think that's why Jesus refuses to go back with the disciples the next morning when they interrupt his prayer with what they think is good news, "Everyone is searching for you." From his previous days encounters Jesus knows these seekers are interested in nothing more than a physical cure. He, on the other hand, has come to call people into deep communion with God who lives in the depth of each heart and invite them into openness to the power of God's love that brings healing and renews life.
When her prayer group prayed for Sister Mary, God heard; but God did not heal Mary's ankles. Instead a wonderfully funny thing happened. As the group prayed for her ankles, her ear that had been nearly deaf since childhood suddenly opened, allowing her to hear with that ear for the first time in many years. Amid the laughter and the tears that followed, any illusions that the group could predict what God would do quickly melted away.
The next week Mary did not need urging to attend the healing group. Once again the group prayed for her ankles, and once again she experienced healing, but not in her ankles. Instead, the arthritis in her arm improved.
This went on week after week for several months. Each time the group prayed for Mary's ankles, some minor ache or pain would vanish or improve. Many times the group would end in laughter at the peculiar way God seemed to be working. However, Mary was certain that God was indeed at work, and the small physical improvements kept her coming back.
During this time, God was working marvelously with Mary in other ways. She became deeply aware that God loved her. Of course Mary already "knew" this, and she had taught her first graders that God is love. But now for the first time in her life Mary felt God's passionate, tender love. God was no longer a demanding father ready with punishments if she did not work hard to please him, but one who delighted in her. As Jesus became more real to her as friend as well as savior, Mary's shyness gradually diminished. She even found herself reading the Old Testament lesson at Sunday worship in front of hundreds of people, something she would not have dreamed of doing only a few months before.
But here is the enigma: Mary still had painful ankles. They had improved only a little after months of prayer. One day Mary was asked why she thought the pain in her ankles persisted. She replied: "My ankles were the bait that enticed me to pray for healing in the first place. The continued pain kept me coming back so that God could heal me in ways I didn't even know to pray for. I couldn't have imagined the depth of this healing and how it involved so much of me. Just think of what I would have missed if my ankles had been healed that first night. God had something much more profound in mind for me than just my ankles."
Then her eyes twinkled and she smiled her wonderful smile. .'Anyway, don't say my ankles weren't healed. Just say 'they aren't healed yet'." She went on to say that she had begun to sense a new call to be a chaplain to some of the older sisters in her community who were in poor health. She was looking forward to developing a new ministry in that direction.
In their book, Stretch Out Your Hand: Exploring Healing Prayer, Tilda Norberg and Robert Weber offer some profound insight into the ways Christ the Healer seeks to renew your life and mine. They write:
Christian healing is a process that involves the totality of our being -body, mind, emotion, spirit, and our social context- and that directs us toward becoming the person God is calling us to be at every stage of ourliving and our dying. Whenever we are truly open o God, some kind of healing takes place, because God yearns to bring us to wholeness. Through prayer and the laying on of hands, through confession, anoining, the sacraments, and other means of grace, Jesus meets us in our brokenness and pain and there loves, transforms, forgives, redeems, resurrects and heals. Jesus does this in God's way, in God's time, and according to God's loving purpose for each person.
Very often the results of our healing are increased faith in God and a new empowerment to love and serve others. Frequently we find that the very thing that caused our greatest brokenness becomes transformed into our own unique giftedness.
Whatever the state of your physical health, I invite you to join us each month at the Service of Prayer for Healing and Wholeness and open your heart to what God has in store for you. You might choose to experience the laying on of hands, as Sister Mary did. Or you might simply rest in the healing love of Christ that baths us all as we sing and pray and open our hearts to Christ. Christ the Healer meets each of us where we are, takes us by the hand, lifts us up, and invites us to return to the path of healing and wholeness. May we too, rise up and serve and find LIFE!
Amen
