Healing Stories 15 & 16

Daughter of the Canaanite Woman #15 

At first read, this story seems to be about persistence, about a Gentile woman who came and knelt before Jesus saying “Lord, help me!”  Her daughter was possessed by and evil spirit.   Initially, Jesus refused to help saying he was “sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” but I suspect he could have been saying this for the sake of the disciples, who often wanted to restrict the kingdom of the Gospel to only Jews.  Maybe Jesus knew she had the fortitude to argue with him and make his point for the disciples, that God’s healing was for everyone.  

Interesting that the daughter (who is possessed) plays no part in the healing, it is all about the faith and courage of the mother, who comes on behalf of her daughter, and asks.  A good reminder for those of us who’s children are far from the LORD, that we can still –in faith—ask for God’s healing in their lives. 

Finally, the healing, as in other stories is done from a distance.  “She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.”  A reminder that God’s healing power knows no distance. 

Deaf man with speech impediment #16

We’ve seen this before, where Jesus heals the blind man and then says “See that you tell no one.”  In this story he touches the man’s ears and tongue, which opens the man’s ears and loosens his tongue, and then he says to “not to tell anyone,” which would not have been a problem five minutes ago.   

Again we read about the faith of friends fueling the healing power of Jesus, who ask on behalf of their friend.   When Jesus healed this man he healed his hearing, and loosened his tongue, but I suspect that had to do more with healing the speech centers of his mind.  This story contains a big and little miracle.  The little miracle is the healing of the ears, the much larger one how Jesus healed his mind and he could “speak plainly”. 

Two Blind Men - Matthew 9:27-31

Two Blind Men - Matthew 9:27-31

“According to your faith will it be done to you” – is this the same as “forgive us our trespasses and we forgive those who trespass against us”? That in some respect we must participate with Jesus in our healing; we bear some responsibility.  When Jesus asks “Do you believe I am able to do this?” Those with just a little faith, will receive just a little healing; When we pray to be forgiven as we have forgiven others, and if our forgiveness of others is small, so will God’s forgiveness of us?

When Jesus says “See that no one knows about this,” he has just said it to two formerly blind men, who until just a few moments ago would not been able to see anything, let alone that no one else knows about this.

Interesting that the story starts outside, and they follow him in.  There must be more to this story, some details as to why this part was omitted.  Yet in reading this, I understand that sometimes we don’t have to leave the room right away, but linger, and see what God does in that room or our lives when there is nothing pressing that is next. 

Woman with Hemorrhage & Jairus Dauther

There is a group of 7 of us that have begun a journey together to examine the healing miracles of Jesus that appear in scripture.  This class has a significant writing component, in that each of us will have a blog where we answer the questions "What lesson(s) have you learned about healing from this account? 

Here I examine Matthew 9:20-22, Mark 5:24b-34 and Luke 8:42-48, the account of the woman with hemorrhage

Last week in class we talked about the difference between healing and cure, how they were not the same, though in our society the two are used interchangeably. 

Being healed - is a process leading toward wholeness

Being cured – is the elimination of all evidence of disease or injury to the body.  

One can be cured without being healed, just as one can be healed without being cured. I suspect that much of the medical profession’s focus these days is on cure, but a cure without addressing the underlying spiritual unrest (or dis-ease) is just a band-aid . 

Maybe that is what was going on with the woman in this story, that she had “suffered under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.”  The doctors were attempting a physical cure when what was needed was a spiritual healing. 

“If I just touch his cloths, I will be healed” the story goes, she did and she was, and Jesus felt that the “power had gone out from him”.  This story is a reminder that we can be agents of God’s healing without even being aware that we are playing a small part in the great thing that God is doing.  This story is also a reminder to be aware of our own spiritual tank, and when we feel the power leave us to step away, and not be tempted to rely on our own power. 

For this woman being healed lead toward also being cured; and she was made whole.   

Man with Shriveled Hand AND Centurion’s Servant

In the account of the Man with the Shriveled Hand (Matthew 12:9-14; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 6:6-11), I wonder if the Pharisees had not been the protagonists of this story if the gospels writers would have remembered this particular healing.  The Pharisees make the story compelling because clearly Jesus is choosing to value people over livestock and The Sabbath, and that does not sit well with the Pharisees, they were “furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.”

In my ministry I’ve observed that some 80% of the problems I see are not really problems, (or what I like to call self-correcting problems).  Meaning that they will go away on their own if I don’t intervene.  What I have learned through the years is that if I treat any of the 80% like it is an actual problem, then it becomes a problem, and I will be forced to intervene.  I think the art of ministry is knowing exactly where the line is between real problems and the 80%.  The Pharisees, I think, didn’t have that line well calibrated with Jesus, and by their reactions turned, what would have been a rather unremarkable Sabbath healing story, into the story we are reading today. 

I wonder where the line is with people who ask to be healed.  Is there an 80% that will naturally just get better, like a doctor friend said about having a cold:  “You should be better in about a week, but sometimes it can take as long as seven days.”   Contained in that 80% is, I think, a smaller subset that are afflicted with a real problems, but unwilling to participate in being healed.    Now clearly the man with the shriveled hand was not in that 80%, Jesus intervened, and by asking him to stretch out his hand, he too participated in being healed. 

In the healing of the Centurion’s Servant (Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7-1-10), something very different is happening among those who observe Jesus saying “Go! It will be done just as you believed it would.”  In Luke’s account, he adds “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.”   To those hearing Jesus say this, they would have understood Jesus to say that the faith of this Gentile was greater than all of Israel, and for a people whose self-identity claimed that God’s blessing was for them only, the thought of Jesus first listening to this non-Jew, and then performing the healing he asked for, would have disturbed them.

Several things about this  Centurion’s Servant story speak to us today:

1. That the healee need not be present, or even aware that healing is being asked for them.
2. That the circle of who Jesus listens to is much larger than the ones hearing him at the time expected.  I think the same could be said for the American Church today.  

When Are We Healed?

There is a group of 12 of us that have begun a journey together to examine the healing miracles of Jesus that appear in scripture.  This class has a significant writing component, in that each of us will have a blog where we answer the questions "What lesson(s) have you learned about healing from this account? Here I examine John 5:1-17

When, we are asked,  was the man by the pool healed? I wonder, could he have been healed long ago, but had not known it?  In our OSL guide we are asked “Of all the disabled people there (at the pool of Bethesda), it seems that Jesus singled out one man…”   Why did Jesus single this man out?  What was special about him or his case?  I wonder if maybe Jesus could see/knew that the man had been already healed, but was not behaving like one who has been healed.

² In Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate in the north city wall is a pool with the Aramaic name Bethsaida. … ³ and a crowd of people who were sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed sat there.^[a] 5 A certain man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years.  (John 5:2-5, CEB)

Could the man have been healed years before, but had continued to live in the lie that he was still paralyzed?  Being healed implies a change to one’s current circumstance,  and when that change is unimaginable the healing may not be realized.  So Jesus asks:

“Do you want to get well?”

It’s a great question because I think sometimes we want to be healed of the symptoms but not the wound.   I’m not talking about the severe cases where it seems unlikely that someone will ever get well, but the times when staying sick, or unhealthy is truly a choice we choose, and choose over and over, even though we have been healed, we choose to act otherwise. 

⁷ The sick man answered him, “Sir,^[b] I don’t have anyone who can put me in the water when it is stirred up. When I’m trying to get to it, someone else has gotten in ahead of me.”

What if the man was already healed and all Jesus did was see that in him and his potential; seeing things not as they are but as they could be.  

It is really too bad that the story continues on past verse nine because it brings to light the fact that people do not always show gratitude.  I know I should not want the gratitude, and yet sometimes I do. I want my part in it to be recognized, but doesn't that steal or at least compromise the glory to God?

⁸ Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹ Immediately the man was well, and he picked up his mat and walked. 

What sins (wounds) have we been healed from, but are not able to pick up our mats and go on with life?

LiveCast of Bess Komm Memorial Service

On Sunday January 27, 2012 there was a LiveCast of the Memorial Service for Bess Komm.  The service was held in our historic chapel.

Here is a link to that service of worship: 

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/28862302

Sorry, it starts a few minutes before the service begins.

When Jesus Healed

There is a group of 12 of us that have begun a journey together to examine the healing miracles of Jesus that appear in scripture.  This class has a significant writing component, in that each of us will have a blog where we answer the questions "What lesson(s) have you learned about healing from this account?   This week we are examining the healing of a woman with fever (contained in Matthew 8:14-15; Mark 1:29-31; Luke 4:38-39), and the healing of  a leper (contained in Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16)

It used to be that when I would pray for someone who was  sick, I generally I just asked for an alleviation of the symptoms, (to be relieved of the pain...), but did not ask specifically for them to be healed.  

This week I have been praying for Laura, a singer I used to work with at my previous church.  She was a student at Southwestern, and sang both in the praise band and choir.  We enjoyed her theater performances at Southwestern.   

Over the week-end I received an email from her mother telling me that several weeks ago, they had rushed Laura to the ER with joint swelling and lesions on her hands.She was admitted to ICU for three days and then the cardiac unit, and later was diagnosed with  ANCA vasculitis, an auto immune disease. 

Her mother writes: 

She realized today that all her "instruments" have been attacked! The doctor told her not to speak or whisper at all since so much strain has been put on her vocal chords. After he left she was brought to tears realizing that her "gift" has been completely silenced!   

I remember when one of my gifts was silenced, our second year in Ghana [read here] when my shoulder was dislocated and fractured by a large wave while swimming in the ocean.  While I healed, I was unable to play guitar, type on the computer, cook, ride a bicycle, or really do much else.  While the pain was unimaginable, what I really felt was the loss of who I was and what I could do.  If I could not do these things, then who was I, and what good was I to anyone around me?  I imagine that is what Laura is feeling right now, and maybe God can use this in her life to teach her that she is so much more than those things that she did.

I find it interesting how in each of the tellings of this story, they end with "and she got up and began to wait on them."  It was the fever that was keeping her from doing those things that definer her, and once healed, she returned to do them.  Knowing the marvelous instrument that God gave Laura, I can imagine that is going to be one of the first things she does when she is healed...begin to sing God's praise.  When I say "I can imagine," I am not using a turn of phrase, it is really my prayers for.  I go to my prayer place, and imagine her singing, not as a memory, but as a soon to see future in her life.  Praying now with words, but with images to let God fill in the details of how to get there.  

In the second healing account, the one of the Leper being healed, I like how in each case he says "if you are willing..." never doubting that Jesus was able (even though it happens very early in the ministry of Jesus).  Prayers like that must pull at God's heart, and I hope so, for that is my prayer for Laura, saying "If you are willing..." and then imagining Laura singing God's praise.  

I so look forward to how God will heal Laura, and hearing her amazing voice she sings glory to God with gratitude.  Will you pray with me too?