Prayer Practice: Prayers for Healing

from my message on March 30, 2014, from James 5:13-16

I have some questions for you.  Are any of you suffering?  Anyone here cheerful?  Is anyone here sick?  Has anyone here ever sinned?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, then God's response back to you is "Pray."

Today, we continue our Lenten series on Prayer Practice by focusing on Prayers for Healing.  I believe that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is a Healer.  If you come to the altar rail today to be anointed with oil, I will pray with you in the name of Jesus Christ, our Great Physician.  I believe God wants us to be whole and holy.  God wants us to be well in our bodies, minds, spirits, memories, and relationships.

In biblical times, the priest did it all:  chief medical officer, counselor, religious representative.  Today, we sometimes compartmentalize.  But I want to claim that God wants us to be not in parts or pieces, but whole human beings.  I want to claim that all those who practice the healing arts are on the same team, after the same goal.

It is National Physician Day.  We recognize all the ways God heals through the doctors around us.  We have just about every medical discipline represented in this congregation.  We give thanks to God for you.  I also give thanks for nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, respiratory therapists, counselors, and all the others.  If you consider yourself to be part of the healing team, let us recognize you now.

I also give thanks to God for the healing that comes through surgery, radiation, pharmaceuticals, counseling, and other therapies.  Furthermore, I give thanks for the healing that comes through recovery groups like AA and other 12 step programs.

We use best practices.  In our passage today, sick persons were anointed with oil and prayed over.  That's about the best medicine they had.  Today we have so many more tools.

They touched.  They laid hands on.  We still know the power of touch today.  A story I got from long ago involved a baby in the Neonatal ICU who was born premature and drug dependent.  The mom had been a heroin addict.  The mom deserted the child.  A nurse there knew the child needed more than  the breathing tube and IV's.  She began to hold the child.  Then as the child got better, she began to carry the child around like a papoose.  The child thrived.  She adopted the little girl as her own.  The child grew and became full of life.  She would run, and jump, and push the boundaries.  The mom would say, "Ruby, be careful."  Ruby would reply, "Oh, mama, I was born to dance."  And so we are.  Touch is powerful.

They prayed in biblical times.  We do today.  Prayer changes things.  The first thing prayer changes is us.  There have been all kinds of studies done that show prayer lowering blood pressure, lowering anxiety.  There have been studies done that show how prayer rewires the brain, creating new neural pathways.  Prayer changes us first.

Prayer also changes others.  Many of you know this. You have experienced it.  We have many examples of healing that we have celebrated over the years here in worship. That's why we put all of these names and situations on the blue prayer sheet each week. That's why we pray on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. in the library.  We believe that our prayers matter and change others.

Prayer also changes God.  We read many examples in the Bible of how seems to wait to act until we pray.  God is in relationship with us.  It makes a difference to God when we pray.

Always our prayers for healing are in the realm of mystery.  The prayers themselves don't bring about the healing.  We don't heal others. The oil or the touch doesn't have the healing power.  Only God heals.  It is a mystery how God does this.

I have been in the hospital with the family gathered around.  The doctor was there to remove the life support....and she lived!  In fact, when I went to see her the next week in her care facility, she ran over my foot in her wheelchair as she was on the way to art class.

I have also been there with Ellen in San Saba, who had cancer.  Wife, mother of a young son, artist, with cancer.  We banged on heaven's door.  We begged, we pleaded for her to be healed.  She continued to decline.  It wasn't right.  I grew discouraged.  I was doing a prayer exercise, taking people who needed healing before Jesus.  The meditation involved me carrying people one by one down into a pool of water to Jesus.  When I carried Ellen down into the healing water with Jesus, I heard a voice in my spirit.  The voice said, the voice of God said, "She belongs to me."  All of my anxiety left me.  That's right.  She belongs to You, O God.  She always has, always will.  In life, in death, in life beyond death, she belongs to you.  Even death can be our final healing.

You can practice praying for healing for others by lifting up persons on this blue prayer sheet, by remembering them when you go by their house, or calling their name out in prayer when you wake up at night.

Stephen Ministers are persons trained to listen and care for others.  Stephen Ministers learn a great phrase in their training:  we are the caregivers, Christ is the cure giver.  That's the good news I have to share today.