Revelation

Well, it ain’t much really, but here is my meditation on healing for today.  Hopefully my words will be buttressed by the liturgy of healing that will follow my message, and which is the heart of the worship service for today anyway.

The texts for the sermon can be found in this post.

Today I want to focus upon healing.
Now I know the idea of healing gives many people reason to pause,
and it’s easy to understand why.
You only have to turn on your TV or radio to find any number of preachers who claim to have the gift of healing.
Some of them may even ask you to touch the TV or radio as they pray and to expect a miracle.
Just believe, they say, and you will be healed.
Others might ask you to send for a special prayer cloth guaranteed to bring healing for whatever ails you.
I once heard one radio preacher ask his listeners to send for their very own special anointing oil key chain,
filled to the brim with olive oil straight from the Holy Land.
To be honest, there are way too many hucksters out there,
trying to make a buck and a name for themselves,
while taking advantage of people too gullible for their own good.

And because of the nature of healing,
this is easy for some people to pull off.
After all, look at story of Paul and Barnabas we read in Acts.
Here two legitimate disciples and healers are considered gods by the good people of Lystra,
who would have offered sacrifices to them if Paul and Barnabas hadn’t stopped them from doing so.

People with less ethical standards can and do take advantage of those who sincerely desire healing in their lives or in the lives of those they love.
My list of these modern day hucksters would include Pat Robertson,
who loves to tell his TV viewers that there is someone out there in TV land with this or that specific illness or problem,’
and that even as he squints his eyes in prayer,
God is in the process of healing them.
And then there’s Benny Hinn.
As you can see from the photos,
if there is anyone out there with a worse haircut than mine,
that person would be Benny Hinn.
Hinn has a penchant for waving his hands over people or swiping his coat in front of a crowd,
and lo and behold, they are slain in the Spirit and supposedly healed of their diseases all in one fell swoop, so to speak.
Of course, an HBO documentary on Hinn a few years ago,
was unable to verify even one of the Benny’s many “healings,”
but that has not stopped him from becoming one of the wealthiest ministers in the world, with his own private jet, several multi-million dollar homes,
and a yacht, if I am not mistaken.

And then there’s Kenneth Hagin, who died in 2003.
Hagin was an influential American Pentecostal preacher,
and he is often referred to as the “father” of the “Word of Faith” movement,
which basically teaches that if Christians have enough faith,
they can be healed of any disease.
In my research on faith healing this week I found the following on a website.
In response to some who had written him, saying things like,
“Brother Hagin, when you laid hands on me, I felt the power go through me just like electricity. It went all over me. For days I was perfectly all right, but now every symptom has come back on me, and I’m worse than I ever was. Can you help me?”

“Thank God, I can. Thank God, I can,” Hagin tells them. “You see, you were healed on somebody else’s faith, or by a manifestation of the Spirit of God. You didn’t have any foundation of the Word of God in you to help you keep your healing.”

Hagin goes on to say,
The minute the first symptoms show up, [these people] say, “I thought the Lord healed me. I guess He didn’t.” And when they say that, they open the door to the devil. Instead of rising up and meeting the devils with the Word of God and commanding his power to be broken, they yield. Why? Because they have no foundation of God’s Word in their lives. They are depending on other to carry them on their prayers and faith.”
“That might work temporarily, but a permanent healing will be based on their own faith. No one can maintain a healing which has come as a result of another’s faith.”

So in other words, if your healing at the hands of Brother Hagin didn’t take,
it’s all your fault for not believing hard enough.
You just didn’t have enough faith.

I wish he had been there to tell my Aunt Marie something like that when my Uncle Walter was dying of cancer.
Aunt Marie was and is a woman of deep faith and conviction,
and though she prayed for Walter’s healing constantly for months,
he was never cured of his disease and he died a slow and painful death.
If Brother Hagin had said that all she or Walter needed for him to be healed was more faith,
I believe that Aunt Marie would’ve have been tempted to smite that man up side his head with her big, heavy, leather bound King James Version Bible.
Then Hagin would have been the one in need of healing instead of Walter.

So Why bother?
Why not just forget about healing.
Why not leave it alone and say that it was just something that happened in Bible times, but that it doesn’t have anything to do with our lives or world today?
Well, we don’t do this because the ministry of healing was an essential part of Jesus’ ministry, life and teaching,
and further, he gave that same ministry to his disciples.

For instance, if you spend just a few moments reading your Bible,
you’ll be overwhelmed by the amount of healing that takes place within it.
Almost one quarter of the gospels are devoted to stories about healing.
And it’s not just Jesus either.
When Jesus sends the 12 disciples out to do ministry in Matthew 10
he says to them:
Go and proclaim, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.”
And later in Luke, when the 70 are sent out,
Jesus tells them,
“ Heal the sick in it and say to them,
‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’”
Further, on three separate occasions in his letter to the church at Corinth,
Paul lists healing as one of the gifts of Holy Spirit to Christians.

And there is no reason for us to believe that this biblical emphasis on healing no longer applies to Jesus’ disciples today,
We too, need to be concerned about healing.
And while this doesn’t mean we have to imitate those on the TV or radio,
it does mean that we need to open ourselves up to the possibilities of healing and of being healed.

Part of our problem is that we don’t understand what healing is really about.
We tend to see it as a nothing more than “cure” for some disease or illness,
when in fact the word used for healing by Jesus and throughout the New Testament means so much more.
For instance, in our gospel lesson today Jesus doesn’t ask the man if he wants to be healed.
Instead he uses the word hugies (hoog-ee-ac

e) which literally means whole.
For Jesus then, healing has much more to do with wholeness of one’s body, mind, and soul than it does with curing sickness.
And we should understand healing in the same way.

One preacher has said,
When I think about it,
I’ve known people who were deeply healed even when they were very sick. There was a man who taught me how to pray while he was dying of AIDS; his devotion to God was so deep and powerful that it changed my life.
There was a friend of mine battling brain tumors for 30 years who spread the joyful power of the gospel every day of her life.
[And then] there is Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
battling prostate cancer as we speak,
who nonetheless still manages to climb a pulpit on Sunday mornings and proclaim a gospel that will rattle your bones.

On the other hand, a person can be cured of a disease and still not be healed, not be whole.
We see this in today’s gospel.
The man at the pool of Bethsaida was cured of his disease,
but he wasn’t made whole.
In fact, he refused Jesus offer of wholeness.
You remember what happened.
When he is found carrying his mat,
the man is interrogated by the religious leaders,
who want to know who it was that healed him.
A little later on when he runs into Jesus,
these are the words that Jesus says to him,
“See, you have been made well!
[But] do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

But what does the man do?
He promptly turns around and rats Jesus out to the authorities,
which in turn leads to the religious leaders’ intensified persecution of Jesus.
The man in John 5 was cured of his disease,
but he not made whole in the biblical sense at all.
Getting over the flu or being cured of some disease might make us feel better,
but these cures won’t necessarily make us better people;
in fact they might free us to become even bigger pains in the rear end of others than we were when we were sick.
For you see, healing is first and foremost about wholeness,
physical and spiritual wholeness.

And when we understand healing in this way,
we come to understand every person here,
indeed, everyone we know,
is in need of some healing,
There is not one person who is completely whole.
Everyone we know needs to feel the true healing touch of Jesus in his or her life.
Of course, the lie we often tell ourselves is that everyone is well and whole except for us, but in reality we are all dis-eased,
whether physically or spiritually.
And if this is true,
the question for today is simply this:
Is there healing here for us?

Now there are things I don’t know, things I cannot know.
Like why are some cured while others are not.
But there are a couple of things that I can say with confidence.
First, I know that God’s desire for us is for wholeness, not brokenness.
In fact, the Bible tells us that this is God’s desire for all of creation –
That’s part of what John sees in his vision in Revelation:
As John says:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.
On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month;
and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Nothing accursed will be found there any more.
But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it,
and his servants will worship him;
they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
And there will be no more night;
they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light,
and they will reign forever and ever.

Second, I believe that we, as the church, can be an instrument of God’s healing power to bring about wholeness.
We can be a tool in the hands of the Great Physician –
not by selling cures or claiming to be mysterious faith healers.
But by creating a church that offers hope and belonging,
by being a people of prayer,
a haven that helps connect people to the God of love.
This church can be a place where we are strengthened in our relationship to God, where we are restored in our connection to our neighbor,
and where we are renewed in community.
We can be the waters of God’s love into which those in need of healing can immerse themselves;
we can offer the touch that brings hope and healing to broken lives.
Is there healing here for us?
Yes, yes, there is.
And so I invite you this morning to consider whether there is some area of your life or another’s life that is in need of healing.
Perhaps there is anger that has damaged your spirit,
maybe a sense of guilt and a need for forgiveness;
perhaps you are struggling with a physical health issue,
or maybe you are feeling isolated, separated from any sense of community.
Some of you may have broken relationships or feel overwhelmed by stress.
But whatever is that is keeping you from being whole,
I want you to bring it to God this morning.
I cannot promise you a cure,
but I do believe that God will offer you healing and wholeness.

My friends, that is the gospel for us this morning.
That in Christ we can find forgiveness for our sins,
life for a death-filled world,
and healing and wholeness for ourselves and others.
It is our mission and our ministry to share this good news to all we meet,
even to ourselves -
to our own hearts and minds.

 

This is my sermon for tomorrow – Thanks to everyone I stole from. I think I have given everyone credit for what I have taken. I’ve been waiting for a sermon in which I could use the Fred Craddock story about soup for some time, and this sermon feels about right for it. Special thanks to Tim Zingale and Charles Johnson. I also plan to use Bass Mitchell’s wonderful invitation to communion as a bridge from the word to table.

By the way, members of First United Methodist Church are forbidden from reading this until after tomorrow’s services. Yes, that means you, Jim Pennock : )

For all you others out there, any comments or corrections or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

———-

Scriptures:

Acts 11:1-18
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

All of which can be read here.

John, a disciple of Jesus, is in exile,
imprisoned on the island of Patmos.
He is an old man and no doubt is already looking forward to the life
that will come when he finally casts off his mortal body for one that
is immortal.
It is while here, on Patmos, at the end of his life,
that John has a vision, which we have come to call the book of Revelation.
Now while most of this book is filled with symbolism and can be
incredibly difficult to interpret and understand,
chapter 21 is almost crystal clear in giving us a picture of what God
has in store for his children.
For here John is given a vision of the new heaven, the new earth, and
a new Jerusalem,
and all these things are vastly different from the heaven, earth and
Jerusalem we have now.

Listen to his words:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth;
for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,
and the sea was no more.
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband;
and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Behold, the dwelling of God is with mortals.
He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people,
and God himself will be with them;
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes,
and death shall be no more,
neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more,
for the former things have passed away.”

Now I don’t know about you,
but I can all but feel the joy and comfort that these verses exude.
I can almost picture the brilliance and glory of this scene,
and I find myself wanting, more than anything,
a world without death and sorrow and pain,
a world where these “former things” have passed away.

And I’ll bet that many of you feel the same way.
I am sure that John did.
One small phrase gives a clue to John’s feelings as he lives in
isolation upon that island.
Notice that he says “for the sea was no more!’
Robert Borgwardt, in the Augsburg Epistles series, writes:
John is saying something very significant in those few words.
He is speaking about separation,
he is speaking about the sea separating him from his friends, his
books, Christian fellowship, separation from the land where Jesus
walked and lived,
separation from all that made life bearable for John.
So John says very clearly that heaven will be a place where there will
be no more separation. There will be completeness, a togetherness, a
union of all things.

All of us live now with a bit or a lot of separation in our lives.
We can be separated from God through our sin,
separated from ourselves through the brokenness of this world.
We can be separated from each other through our unwillingness to love
others as we love ourselves.

As another (Tim Zingale) has stated:
John found in his vision a promise from God that through the power of
the resurrection,
through the grace of Jesus Christ,
each person will experience a sense of closure, or completeness in life.
Unity will be restored,
people will be fully reconciled,
A trusting faith in Christ will be brought to its completion.
Healing will take place in all the broken areas ‘of life,
and perfect love will allow everyone to be a brother and sister to
each person and a perfect child to God, all this will happen in
heaven, in the new dwelling place.

But we don’t necessarily have to wait for the new heaven and new earth to appear for us to get a foretaste of what they will be like.
Jesus tells us in our lesson from John that one way we can begin to
experience the new heaven and new earth now, is to love one another.
He says: “A new commandment I give to you:
Love one another.
Just as I have loved you,
so you should also love one another.
By this all will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love toward one another.”

John saw in his vision of the new heaven and the new earth of
completeness of love. And Jesus tells us in the gospel lesson that
loving one another is the most complete way to live.
Of course, this isn’t easy.
If anyone ever tells you that love is easy,
they are lying and the truth isn’t in them.
And though loving may become easier over time,
as we draw closer to Christ and his life,
it is never easy.
It is, however, essential for us as followers of Jesus.
Love is the only way to live completely in Christ.
But love can hurt you, you might say.
And I agree,
Love is one of the only emotions that can make you both miserable and
elated at the same time.
And though it does have, at times, some powerfully negative consequences,
we can say the same thing about not loving.

C. S. Lewis says this about love:
To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact,
you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.
Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries;
avoid all entanglements;
lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change.
It will not be broken;
it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable….
The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all
the dangers of love … is Hell.

So okay, you say, all we need to do is love.
That’s simple enough.
But once we start to ponder the consequences of love,
all kinds of things start running through our minds:
Questions, doubts, wonderment, values, ideas, relationships, all come
into play.
Yes, this four letter word seems simple enough,
but in reality, it is the most, difficult thing,
the most difficult concept we can encounter.

Charles Johnson, a colleague of mine on the Preaching the Revised
Common Lectionary discussion group, put it this way:

“Listen up, now,” said Jesus, “I have a new commandment for you.”

“A new commandment!? All right!
This is what we’ve been waiting for!
The ultimate revelation from God, the secret to life, the key to everything!
The new word that will fulfill and place in proper perspective
everything we’ve ever been taught! The word that will make
everything clear that has been fuzzy!
The word that will drop the scales from our eyes and open up the
pathway to God’s future,
to the Kingdom of God.
This is what we’ve been waiting for!
Hit us with it, Jesus!”

“OK — here it is: love one another.”

“What?”

“Love one another.”

“No, no, we meant, what is the new commandment, the secret to life,
the key to everything?”

“That’s it: Love one another.”
“That’s it?
What kind of secret is that?
We’ve been following you for three years, and our people have been
laboring and suffering for hundreds of years, and this is the payoff:
“Love One Another”?!”
That’s all there is to it?

“That’s it.
That is the ultimate revelation from God.”

The disciples were a little crestfallen.

“No offense, Jesus.
It just seems a little …. anti-climactic, after all the hype and everything.
We expected a new commandment that was, well,
a little NEWER, if you know what we mean.
This ‘new commandment’ one has been around for awhile.
And it’s not particularly original.
I mean, aren’t there even non-Judeo-Christian types who have said
something along this line?”

“Well, you’d expect the Key to Everything to be universally true,
wouldn’t you?
Besides, although the commandment may not exactly be totally new in
every respect,
it is new as a foundational command.
As the measure of every other concrete commandment — and thought and
action — it is new. Respect one another,
love one another,
care for one another,
always have one another’s best interests at heart –
not the way that people usually love either other,
but the way I have loved you.

“But it seems almost too … simple.”

“Too simple to be worthy of you?
Let me assure you that the principle is indeed simple and clear –
too simple and clear to sit well with many people who have made an
Olympic sport out of looking for loopholes.
But believe, me, applying it to all kinds of real-life situations
involving real and complex human beings will tax all the brain cells
you have.
And actually doing it will take all the faith and hope in the world –
and all the love.
Try to do it — try to forgive one of your enemies, for instance –
and you will soon find that you cannot –
unless you have totally surrendered yourself to God.
And that you can’t totally surrender yourself to God unless you
totally trust God.
And that you can’t totally trust God unless you love God with your
whole being.
To love one another will take everything you’ve got and everything you are.
Believe me, this is not a kind of ‘Lite Commandment for Busy
Post-Modern People’ with a penchant for fuzzy sentimental
spirituality.
And now, as I’ve said, I’m off to … well, to where you can’t follow now.”

“Why can’t I follow you now?” Peter asked.
“I’m not afraid. I love you totally. I will even lay down my life for you.”

“Oh, really?
Don’t have any doubt about that, do you?
Well, Peter, you are about to get a crash course in this matter of loving.
In time, you will indeed follow me and lay down your life for me.
But not now — you’re not ready yet.
Truly I tell you, within the next 24 hours, you will discover how
simple loving seems –
and how difficult it is to actually do, especially when crunch-time comes.”

Did you know that Jesus gave only two commandments in the New Testament?
One about loving God and the other this one about loving each other.
The commandments are written in different versions in different places
in the New Testament, but essentially, they are alike.
He commands us to love.
But why, and why at that particular moment in time,
just hours before he will be betrayed?

And to that I say, “good question.”
Earlier this week I wrote on my blog that context, if not everything,
is extremely important.
Take this command to love in John’s gospel,
Much of its power comes from its context.
For one, it is part of Jesus’ last discourses with his disciples
before his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion.
And as such, these words have much in common with the words that a
dying person might speak to their loved ones who have gathered at the
deathbed, hoping to receive some final words of instruction or wisdom.

We also need to bear in mind the events that have transpired just
before Jesus gives his new commandment.
Two things stand out.
One, Jesus has just humbled himself to wash the disciples’ feet.
When he finished this task, over the initial rejection of Peter,
Jesus says, “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.
If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet,
you also ought to wash one another’s feet.
For I have given you an example,
that you also should do just as I have done to you.
Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master,
nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.
If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.
(John 13:13-17 ESV)”

The other important event that immediately precedes Jesus’ giving of a
new commandment is Judas leaving the fellowship of the disciples in
order to betray Jesus.
It is Judas’ leaving that prompts the gospel writer to say, “And it was night.”
And John isn’t just saying that the sun has gone down either.
This is as dark as it gets in the gospel.
This is the time when, in fact, darkness rules.
And so it is after Jesus has given an concrete example of servant
ministry and after Judas has left to carry out his evil work that
Jesus gives his disciples a new mandate:
to love one another as he has loved them.
Of course, in a few hours he will once again demonstrate his love for them.
When he is arrested in chapter 18,
Jesus will offer to peacefully go with those who arrest him in
exchange for them letting his disciples go free.
This is in addition, of course, to his subsequent sacrificial death for all.
“When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.”

Unlike many teachers and leaders in the history of humanity,
Jesus teaches and leads by example.
He never asks his followers to do anything that he himself would not
and does not do.
And that’s why he gives this new commandment when he does.
So that when he tells us to love each other as he has loved us,
we know exactly what such love entails.

And if that doesn’t make us feel just a tad uncomfortable,
then we still haven’t really wrapped our heads around what Jesus has
just asked us to do.
Because, you see, love will push us far outside any boundaries that we
set up for ourselves.
Love will go far beyond our comfort zones.
Love, true love, will shake us to our very core.
Just ask Peter.

In Acts 11 Peter tells us of a vision of his.
A vision that, on the one hand, seems to be all about what foods a
good Jew or Christian can or cannot eat,
but which, on the other hand,
tells us what kind of people we are called to love and share the gospel with.
Peter wasn’t at all comfortable even thinking about eating non-kosher food,
but the idea of visiting with and welcoming non-kosher people to
Christ’s table was even more repugnant.
So it took not one, or two, but three visions for Peter to get the message.
God had to do everything but hit Peter up side the head with a 2 by 4
board of love to get him to see things the way that God sees them.
To get him to see people the way that God sees them -
that everyone, regardless of who they are, where they are, what they are,
are worthy of God’s love and therefore worthy of our love.
And when we, like Peter, begin to see this and live out this truth in our lives,
then we will begin to have just a little foretaste of what John is
talking about in Revelation 21.
A world where death itself dies,
a world where there is no sorrow or pain,
a world where love has finally overcome hate.
That world will come one day in its fullness,
but may we begin to create such a world, as best we can, now.
Teilhard de Chardin, the great philosopher, once said,
“The day will come when, after harnessing the winds, the tides and gravitation,
we shall harness for God the energies of Love.
And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world,
man will have discovered fire.”

I don’t know about you,
but in this world and time we live in,
I’d be happy with a few sparks here or there.
Like the sparks Fred Craddock recalls in a story he tells of being in
Winnipeg late one fall when a terrible snowstorm caused the
cancellation of a lecture he was to give on Saturday morning.
He was totally unprepared for the snow.
In Tennessee where he grew up and in Atlanta where he lived,
it just didn’t snow like this in the fall.
Well, his host could not even get out to pick him up for breakfast,
but thank goodness,
there was a bus depot just a block or so from where Fred was staying,
and he walked in the deep snow to find a cup of coffee and maybe some pancakes.
When he entered the café in the bus station,
he said it looked like every stranded traveler in Canada was there.
He found a place to sit and asked for a menu.

“What do you want a menu for?” the waiter asked.
“All we have is soup.”
“What kinds of soup?” Fred asked.
“Soup,” came the answer.
“You want some soup?”

“That’s just what I was going to order,” Fred said.
It was a gray-looking, watery bowl of soup.
Tasted pretty bad, too.
Too bad for Fred to be able to eat it.
But he wrapped his hands around the warm bowl,
“bemoaning and beweeping,” he says “my outcast state.”

Just then the door opened, and a woman came in, clutching her coat.
She found a place to sit.
The waiter came up.
“What do you want?”
“Glass of water,” she said.
He brought it.

“Now what’ll you have?”
“Just the water,” she said.
“You have to order, lady.
I have customers that pay-What do you think this is, a church or something?
If you’re not going to order, you’ve got to leave!”

So she got up to leave.
But almost as if rehearsed,
everybody in that little café stood up and started toward the door.
And the man in the greasy apron said
“All right, all right, all right, she can stay.”
Everybody sat down,
and he brought her a bowl of soup.

Fred recounts what happened next.
“The place grew quiet, but I heard the sipping of the awful soup.
I said `I’m going to try that again.’
I put my spoon to the soup-
you know, it was not bad soup.
Everybody was eating this soup.
I stated eating the soup,
and it was pretty good soup.
I have no idea what kind of soup it was.
I don’t know what was in it,
but I do recall it had a familiar taste.
Because when I was eating it,
it tasted a little bit like bread and wine.
Just a little like bread and wine.”

Technorati tags: Acts 11:1-18, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35, Sermons, Holy Communion, invitation, love, acceptance, Fred Craddock, Soup story