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24th
March 2013 - Morning - Revd. Preb Maureen Hobbs |
Sermon
for Healing Service - Palm Sunday 24 March 2013
Isaiah 5. 1-7
Luke 20. 9-19
The idea that we can - indeed should - pray for healing is as
old as the Church itself. We might even say that the Church's
main mission is all about healing. Healing, wholeness, salvation
- these words embrace what God has achieved for us through the
incarnation of Jesus Christ. Because in Jesus, God enters into
the heart of what it is to be human, so too he feels our pains,
our concerns, our anxieties as fully as do we - and he yearns
to comfort and to heal us. Healing is something we all long for.
Healing is something God longs for.
After his resurrection, Christ commissioned his apostles to preach
the gospel of forgiveness of sins - of making all right between
God and humankind - in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that
men and women might turn to God and taste the first fruits of
the kingdom in their own lives. And in the power of the Holy
Spirit, and in spite of her many failings, the Church has attempted
to be God's obedient Servant as a messenger of redemption, reconciliation
and renewal - everything in short, which the scriptures reveal
to us to be in the purposes of God for his world and for the
humanity he created, and re-created in Christ.
The healing of broken bodies, painful memories, divided families,
communities and nations, the healing of the earth itself and
of our relationship with it, are all part of the integrity to
which God calls us. They are all part of the ministry of healing.
It is a ministry in which justice is as important as medicine;
in which reverence for the earth is as vital as respect for the
individual person and in which the health of the body politic
matters as much as the health of the body personal. Indeed they
are inextricably linked - bound up in each other.
The ministry of healing is not only an exterior one. We are also
invited to the healing of the divisions and splits in our own
lives - if you ever feel that your life Monday to Saturday is
quite divorced from your experience of God on Sundays, then this
service is for you.... The separation of the spiritual and the
material is simply not possible if we believe that Jesus really
lived in the flesh, was incarnate, made holy and whole the broken
human body. So we cannot separate our actions from their consequences,
our freedom from our responsibility, our lives as individuals
from our lives as persons in community - in this worshipping
community.
And as such, we are invited into the community of God. This community,
we believe, extends over the limitations of time and space. We
are part of the communion of saints; our wholeness is inclusive,
not exclusive. And even in death, we are not divided. When we
talk therefore of the church's God-given ministry of healing,
we are not talking about something for the cranky way-out few,
but about an aspect of salvation history which is essential to
the wellbeing of the nations and of Mrs Smith in the cottage
down the road.
Some would say it has been a neglected ministry, but of course
it has always been there wherever the church has offered sanctuary,
forgiveness, and above all, the Eucharist in any community -
and especially when we offer our intercessions for those who
suffer "in body, mind or spirit."
But it is true to say that perhaps it is an aspect of our ministry
that deserves to be highlighted and focused. In our age, as in
any other, the healing ministry of Christ's body, the Church,
has to engage with and grapple with the problem of suffering
and pain, which is the experience of so many people in the world.
We cannot trivialise it by saying, "Never mind, your pain
will make you a better person." Or bypass it by saying,
"You may not understand now, but in God's greater plan your
suffering is acceptable." Nor can we zap it with magic -
the church is not into mumbo-jumbo. And we certainly do not want
to suggest that prayer can or should ever take the place of conventional
medicine or therapies .... but that is not to say that sometimes
- and for reasons we cannot always explain, - prayer can underpin,
augment and confound conventional medicine. We have to take it
seriously and it is only when we take the mystery of suffering
seriously that we begin to see the face of Christ in it all.
Healing is not about curing - it is about wholeness. Health is
not about perfection, but about reconciliation.
So what better time could there be to focus our thoughts and
prayers on the ministry of healing than this Palm- Sunday evening?
This week - this Holy Week, as we begin to travel with Jesus
the path of suffering that leads from the entry into Jerusalem
to the desolation of the Cross and the victory of Resurrection,
so we surrender our wills to the will of God and invite him to
help us travel with him, to be healed, to be made whole.
O Lord, hear my prayer. O Lord, hear my prayer
When I call, answer me.
O Lord, hear my prayer, O Lord, hear my prayer
Come and listen to me. |
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