Healing Power

I was raised in a worldview that said ordinary and non-ordinary reality, the physical and the spiritual, are separate, and the spiritual is pretty much none of our business. We can’t measure spiritual things, we can’t predict or control them, so what’s the use of messing with them?  Go to church, live ethically, and hope for the best.

So what happened to me?  I got religion.  The spiritual realm, non-ordinary reality, became real to me, and I wanted to understand it better.  I decided to explore spiritual healing as a possibly useful way to experiment with the spiritual realm.  This was in the early ‘90’s, pre-internet.  I found an ad for “spiritual healing classes” in a little local newspaper in Minneapolis. I joined two other students to study under Paula Sunray.  As you might guess, Sunray wasn’t her given name.  Paula was a survivor of breast cancer, a wounded healer.  She was passionate in her desire to share healing of body and spirit.  She used crystals and chakras and the archangels and white light meditations and all kinds of props.  Some of them I found very helpful, some of them I just found distracting.  Paula also had a lot of practical wisdom about how to care for others.  She taught us healer wannabe’s ways to care for ourselves, so that we could be of service to others.  She taught me how to spend a half hour totally focused on bathing somebody in the love of God, and there are few things I’d rather do.  

Working under Paula, it did become clear that I should keep my day job.  But I got what I came for, a little clearer sense of how to envision and invoke spiritual power.  That turns out to be pretty handy for pastoring a church, and for following Jesus generally.  I also got a chance to develop some solid guidelines for ethics in the practice of spiritual healing, which I consider crucial.

*****

Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

May 27, 2018

Healing Power

Mark 5:21-43   When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea.  22 Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23 and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.”  24 So he went with him.

            And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.  25 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.  26 She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse.  27 She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”  29 Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.  30 Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”  31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’”  32 He looked all around to see who had done it.  33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.  34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

            5:35   While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?”  36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”  37 He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.  38 When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.  39 When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.”  40 And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.  41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!”  42 And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement.  43 He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

In the gospel of Mark, Jesus heals people left and right.  Everywhere he tries to go, lines of people are waiting at all hours to get healed, except in his hometown.  Jesus heals until he’s exhausted, escapes to some desolate place, and then people in need of healing track him down.  In today’s reading, he’s on his way to do one healing when a woman sneaks in for a quick drive-by healing.  Jesus heals.  Which, in Greek, is the same as saying Jesus saves. Did healing like that only happen two thousand years ago?  Did it happen at all? Jesus told his disciples to preach the good news, and heal.  We are his disciples.  What do we do with that invitation?

In seminary, I never studied Jesus’ healings as such.  I certainly never studied healing in the church today.  My friends in seminary and I had all experienced various kinds of spiritual healing, but we were not given a language or framework with which to share it with you.  So bear with me as I explore a topic that I have never preached about before.

If you say that physical healing through spiritual means is not possible, I respect that view.  That is what we have been taught in mainline churches, if only by omission.  Not possible.  This belief saves us from a lot of snake oil salesmen, and a lot of people who would take your money to build their egos and their wallets and their mansions.  It saves you from religions that require their members to use dicey spiritual healing instead of perfectly effective regular medical treatment.  It also saves you from hard questions about who gets healed and who doesn’t. It is a way of avoiding the horrible lies that you could have be healed “if you just had enough faith, were good enough, deserving enough, prayed hard enough…”

I believe that physical healing through spiritual means is possible. I am aware of the pitfalls associated with my views, and I do not ask you to participate in them.  But perhaps you might keep an open mind.  

I was raised in a worldview that said ordinary and non-ordinary reality, the physical and the spiritual, are separate, and the spiritual is pretty much none of our business. We can’t measure spiritual things, we can’t predict or control them, so what’s the use of messing with them?  Go to church, live ethically, and hope for the best.

So what happened to me?  I got religion.  The spiritual realm, non-ordinary reality, became real to me, and I wanted to understand it better.  I decided to explore spiritual healing as a possibly useful way to experiment with the spiritual realm.  This was in the early ‘90’s, pre-internet.  I found an ad for “spiritual healing classes” in a little local newspaper in Minneapolis. I joined two other students to study under Paula Sunray.  As you might guess, Sunray wasn’t her given name.  Paula was a survivor of breast cancer, a wounded healer.  She was passionate in her desire to share healing of body and spirit.  She used crystals and chakras and the archangels and white light meditations and all kinds of props.  Some of them I found very helpful, some of them I just found distracting.  Paula also had a lot of practical wisdom about how to care for others.  She taught us healer wannabe’s ways to care for ourselves, so that we could be of service to others.  She taught me how to spend a half hour totally focused on bathing somebody in the love of God, and there are few things I’d rather do.  

Working under Paula, it did become clear that I should keep my day job.  But I got what I came for, a little clearer sense of how to envision and invoke spiritual power.  That turns out to be pretty handy for pastoring a church, and for following Jesus generally.  I also got a chance to develop some solid guidelines for ethics in the practice of spiritual healing, which I consider crucial. 

I continue to practice and refine my modest spiritual healing skills. I became a Reiki master in 2012.  That means I am in theory able to teach others to do Reiki, though I haven’t yet done that. I have seen a few pretty powerful transformations in my Reiki practice.  I can pretty reliably promise people that they will feel very deep relaxation.  The retreat I took earlier this month in Virginia included a lot of spiritual healing, both giving it and receiving it. 

Let’s try looking at today’s bible reading as if spiritual healing is a real possibility.  I have some “hypotheses” about how it works.  See what you think.

Our reading from Mark’s gospel is another one of those story sandwiches, chiastic narratives to be technical.  The top slice of bread is Jairus, the head of a synagogue, kneeling at Jesus’ feet and requesting healing for his very sick daughter.  The sandwich filling is that drive-by healing. A woman who has suffered for years from a hemorrhage, and from useless medical treatments, sneaks power from Jesus’ robe.  But he senses it happening.  His disciples make fun of him for that.  He stops everyone, finds the woman, and lets her know that she hasn’t sneaked anything he would not have freely given.  And the bottom slice of bread is Jesus refusing to acknowledge that Jairus’ daughter is dead, arriving at her home, and with some drama from the wailing chorus, he heals her from her near death experience.

The first thing to notice in all this healing may be so familiar we overlook it. Jesus never turns down a healing request.  He never tells anyone they are not good enough, or deserving enough, or holy enough, or have not done the right rituals, or that God never gives you anything you can’t handle.  He never says their suffering was given by God to punish them or to make them a better person.  Jesus frequently says peoples’ suffering is caused by some kind of evil, and then he rids them of it.  He gets angry at anybody who try to stop him healing.  Jesus clearly wants everyone who asks to be made whole, body and spirit.  And his tenderness, his caring, comes through loud and clear in today’s stories.  Can you picture his strong hands gently enfolding that little girl’s small limp hand as he says, “Little girl, get up”?

As Christians, Jesus reveals God to us.  So a first hypothesis about spiritual healing:  Healing is God’s will for us, always; we don’t have to earn it or deserve it. You knew that, right?  Only at this church you might have heard in this way:  “Creative transformation is always luring us toward what is good and true and beautiful.”  That’s great, but people who actually think God would cause illness need to hear it more bluntly.  Healing is God’s will for us, always; we don’t have to earn it or deserve it. 

Next, Jesus is always talking about peoples’ faith making them well.  Uh oh, we have responsibilities.  Jesus tells the drive-by woman that her faith has saved her. He tells Jairus, don’t be afraid, just have faith. What is this faith, and how do we get it?  Simple.  If you believe you can’t, you won’t.  If you go to the doctor and submit to the treatment, it might work.  If you never go to the doctor, the treatment that you never get is guaranteed not to work for you.  Openness to God’s power, willingness to ask for help: that is the faith that makes healing possible. This requires vulnerability: we admit our brokenness, and we risk being disappointed.  And it requires willingness to change.  Our second hypothesis about healing:  God doesn’t force healing on us; healing can happen when we seek it out and are willing to receive it.

Imagine yourself at a dinner party with Jesus.  Would you be willing to tell him your particular hurts, and ask for his help?  Or are you fine, fine, everything’s fine, don’t worry about it?  God doesn’t force healing on us; healing can happen when we seek it out and are willing to receive it.

Faith is necessary, but not sufficient.  Jesus did not say, “Your faith will heal you every time.”  I do suspect there were times when Jesus couldn’t heal, certainly not completely.  Those stories were not reported.  Physical healing will fail every one of us at some point.  But Paula used to tell me that when we practice healing, some kind of healing always happens, be it physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or relational.  Spiritual or relational healing… those are things churches could do, should do.

As you may already know, a large part of the drive-by woman’s healing was a healing of relationship. Her monthly period should have been, for an observant Jewish woman, an occasional time apart for rest and renewal.  Instead we suspect that it had become unending years of estrangement from God, or her family, or both.  The healing of her body was also a healing of her relationships.  It’s all connected.

Healing relationships…our church is already doing this.  We do it when we declare that sexual minorities are whole and good and beloved of God.  We do it when we visit people who can’t make it to church because of illness or disability. We heal relationships when we advocate respectfully for a more just social order.  We do it when we treat our shelter guests as friends. 

How about the church and the healing of our spirits?  There are epidemics of spiritual sickness around us.  We call them hatred and tribalism and scapegoating, violence and despair and loneliness.  Has anybody felt the effects of those things recently?  Just like in Jesus’ time.  These things are contagious, but our faith, and our faithfulness can help protect us and heal us from these spiritual sicknesses.  From this perspective, who among us needs healing?  Maybe all of us.  Do we seek the power of Jesus in our lives to overcome these things, to give us hope and healing? I do, daily.  Can prayer and study and supportive community help?  Can church help?  Absolutely! 

So here’s my third hypothesis: Healing is the work of the church.  Spiritual healing of physical illness may be too “woo-woo” for you, but healing from the things that warp our souls helps our bodies too.  Jesus’ power for healing did not end two thousand years ago.  We can claim it, and we can share it.  The language may seem odd to you, but we are already doing it here, and it makes a difference.

So here are those three hypotheses about spiritual healing. Put them to the test.

First, healing is God’s will for us, always; we don’t have to earn it or deserve it.

Second, God doesn’t force healing on us; healing can happen when we seek it out and are open and willing to receive it. 

Third, healing is the work of the church. And I am grateful to be able to name that ministry out loud.

May you experience Jesus’ healing power in your life, through your relationship with God, and with people who love God, and may you share that healing power.  Amen.