Sermon for Healing and Wholeness

2 Kings 20:1-5

Mark 1:29-34

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

This evening’s service is an opportunity to pray for healing and wholeness, for ourselves, for each other, our family and friends, and for the world. Of course it’s possible to do that at any time and  in any place, but occasions like tonight give a particular focus to our faith in a God who heals, restores, refreshes, and mends what is broken – all of which we all need.  As we come together we recognise that although our lives may be very different, and we each have different concerns, our need is the same, to be made whole by God.

Healing can come of course in many different forms, and very often not in the way that we may have expected or prayed for. There are many, many passages in the Bible that speak to us of healing and wholeness. It is a thread that runs throughout the entirety of humanity’s interaction with God. The Old Testament is full of examples of God’s unending love and care for his people…….very often in the face of stubbornness or even outright disbelief. And there is Jesus, who in the gospels, reaches out to the broken and the hurting, demonstrating in a very real way what it means to offer the unconditional love of God to all, reaching out to people’s bodies and spirits.

In our gospel reading we read of Jesus being sought out by those in need of healing. His reputation as a healer had spread so much that people brought their family and friends to simply receive a touch from him. To be touched by Jesus was to be touched by God! I wonder what was going through the minds of those who were in such need. For many of them coming to Jesus was probably their last resort. Shunned by their communities for whom sickness was a sign of God’s disfavour, they came from miles around to a man who responds to them with such love and compassion that they had probably never experienced before.

It wasn’t just their bodies that were being healed, it was their spirits too. Something deep inside them cried out for his touch. And we see something similar in our Old Testament reading from 2 Kings as Hezekiah is facing death and he cries out to the Lord. In response to his cries God speaks to him through the prophet Isaiah, “I have heard your prayer, and seen your tears, and will heal you” (2 Kings 20:5).

The desire for healing and wholeness is one of the most fundamental needs we have. We wish it for ourselves and for those we love and care for, but what we actually mean when we seek it? Of course it would be wonderful if every time we prayed for somebody we know who is sick we could see visible results. In reality we must recognise that is not what always happens. What we pray for and what we receive are not always the same thing. I’m reminded of the passage in Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8). This passage comes in the middle of an invitation to ALL who are thirsty to come and drink from the provision of God. A God, who, although his ways are in so many ways are hidden from us, has revealed his love for us through the incarnation of his Son. Though we may not always understand the ways of the Lord we can still reach out and be assured of his presence with us, guiding us and walking alongside us.

There is the old story I’m sure that some of you will know by heart of the man who was walking along the beach with Jesus, and for most of the journey there was the two sets of footprints, his own and those of Jesus. From time to time he noticed only one set of footprints, and this always seemed to be when he was feeling at his absolute lowest ebb. Thinking that maybe God had abandoned him he calls out, “Where were you in those times God?” The response he receives, which again, I’m sure you have probably heard before is that “When you see only the one set of footprints in the sand, it was then that I picked you up and carried you”

It is an old story and it is a familiar one, yet it is a story that rings true. Yes, there may be times when people are be miraculously healed of some life-threatening illness, and I believe that we do ourselves and God a dis-service to discount this. However this is the exception rather than the rule. Even in the gospels which are full of accounts of healings they were considered so exceptional that they were recorded by the writers as something so very out of the ordinary.

We need to recognise that our physical bodies do wear out, and that this is all part of the natural cycle of life and death for us all. Allowing ourselves and others the space to deal with this in ways that are most appropriate for us is part of the healing process. There comes a time for all of us when our final healing will be to rest in the presence of the one who first loved us.

For many of us and for those who we love and care for, when we pray in the words of the Lord’s Prayer for “thy will be done” we are acknowledging that whatever our own often mixed feelings and emotions might be telling us, ultimately we are in the care of our loving God, being carried, and often patched up and mended in ways that perhaps we didn’t expect.

There will be the opportunity in a short while for those who may wish to receive the anointing of oil as a sign of God’s power and presence in our lives, and we shall also remember those whose names are currently on our prayer list. Sometimes perhaps, we can fall into the rut of just hearing the same names week after week and not always giving them our full attention, yet each name is an individual person, loved and cared for by somebody in our church family, and loved and cared for by God.

So let us reach out to the one who first reaches out to us and who desires to make us whole and wonderful in his sight.

+In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

AMEN