March 13, 2005

Surprises Along the Way

by Julianne Stokstad

Do you like surprises? Are you open to being surprised by life? Our scriptures today from the Prophet Ezekiel and from John are both very surprising, telling us about resurrection. Ezekiel's hopeful vision of the old dry bones getting knitted back together and then coming again to life is a metaphor for the re-establishment of Israel out of its exile. Over and over the Prophet assured his despairing people of God's abiding presence and God's seemingly impossible promise of new life. From Ezekiel's vision of the healing of community to the wonderful gospel story of Jesus' raising of Lazarus, we are told of God's amazing promise and desire to heal our institutions, and us taking us from death to life.

Are you open to new life? Are you open to resurrection, right now along the way on our journey towards Easter? Does this seem a bit early to you, after all isn't resurrection is supposed to be an Easter event?

I do not believe resurrection is a one-time thing that happened only to Jesus on that Easter morning so long ago. It matters because it can happen to us. Resurrection is happening all around us, all the time, if we are open to see it. If we take a moment and think about it, the experience of going from death to life is not so unusual any more given our modern medicine. We have come to accept, even expect, that terrible illnesses are no longer death sentences. People can be brought back from death. Near Death Experiences are stories telling what it was like to die and come back to life. I mention this because several weeks ago I received a book describing a university art professor's experiences during a time of near death, which led him to become a UCC minister.

All this brings me to the topic of healing. Today I want to talk about healing as a kind of new life or resurrection experience. Without a doubt, I believe that God wants to heal us of our afflictions and bring each of us to wholeness. I do not believe that hurt, pain or suffering are ever caused by God, but rather by things that happen in our world, by human actions or choices. I believe that God is ever present with us in our suffering and works through each of us for healing in our world. This might be hard to believe because the pain in our world is so great. We want to believe God can and will heal but we have so many questions.

To sincerely pray for healing puts our faith on the line and that is an awesome and fearful thing to do. Considering all these things, the response to our Lenten class on Healing Prayer has been extraordinary. In this little church there have been about twenty people coming and many more are following along reading the book. I don't know if you've heard much, but let me tell you, it has been incredible!

We've been using the book Stretch Out Your Hand by Tilda Norberg and Robert Weber. They believe God uses ordinary people to heal and that teaching people to use healing prayer will strengthen their faith and bring a new level of spiritual growth in our churches. Healing can happen here and now right in the midst of our lives. I think I've said this before, but praying together and praying for others connects us in deeply profound ways, which is a surprise to many. To be sure that has happened in our class.

Using the book as our guide, we have come to see Christian healing as a process, with layers like an onion, involving the interconnection of our physical, emotional, spiritual and social parts. Jesus' healings are found in all these areas, for example the healing of lepers, the healing of the woman at the well, the healing of Legion, and so on. Becoming healed doesn't mean we won't die but rather that we are growing always toward being fully ourselves. Whenever we pray or are open to God in any other way, healing happens because opening ourselves to God's presence always heals, but we need to learn to be patient because our healing occurs in God's time in God's own gentle way.

We each bring to healing prayer assumptions some of which we are aware of and others that we're not aware of. These greatly affect our prayer and us. For example when my husband Bob gets a cold, he can usually trace it back to being in a cold draft or getting a chill. For me, it's not like that at all. I have no idea if our immune systems are different or if our beliefs affect our immune systems or if what we think is anecdotal and is not even true. Some people believe only a doctor can make them well, others are open to prayer. I'm not advocating one or the other, because we all agreed in our class it was prudent to use all means available to help with healing.

We spent an entire class discussing our questions and doubts. Here are a few of the questions. Can we prove prayer works? No, but there are increasing studies done at medical schools. How do I know it wouldn't have happened anyway? We don't. Isn't it just the placebo effect? What about when I prayed and it didn't work? We have to be patient and also look at all the levels of our selves. Does that mean I didn't pray right, that I am a bad person, or that I didn't have enough faith? No. Healing prayer brings up profound questions about the nature of God like how powerful is God; can God intercede in our world and heal us? Why doesn't God heal everybody? If God is a good God, why do bad things happen in to good people? I'm sure you can add more questions and I'd be very happy to discuss them with you and pursue them further if there is interest.

I believe our questions are very important and lead us into deeper understandings. Questions can be used however as a defense strategy to keep us at a distance from whatever is being considered. Many of our questions came down to issues of our need for control and our difficulty of really trusting God.

At each session we practiced healing prayer, praying first for ourselves, then for others, and last week we prayed for our church. Some of the people we prayed for in the class have experienced healing and others not. But I do know that God is not finished with us.

As we have been exploring and experimenting with healing prayer, here are a few of the things that I have learned. Healing involves truth telling. We must be able to name specifically and most honestly what we want to be healed. We spent lots of time practicing processes of discernment. Discernment can be difficult because it is hard for us to access God's will within ourselves. This process involves a great deal of trust and humility before others and before God. The temptation is to not be honest and to test the process, which is testing God. We need to feel compassion for the one we are praying for. This means we need to let go of what gets in the way, our judgments, our ego, our need for power and control, our own issues of hurt and suffering. Healing involves respect, for the process, for the person or institution being prayed for, but most of all, respect for God. Healing demands an openness, which means we have to let go of our need to control the outcome. We must be open to change because the healing can come in ways we really don't want. Lastly we need to trust God's goodness and be patient that healing will indeed happen in God's good time in God's good way.

I invite you to think about healings you have experienced, especially healings in this place. Please let me know if you want to share stories of healing and the way God is working in our lives here in this place. In being open and praying for healing, our community is being empowered in new ways. After all, Jesus very often healed others and empowered his disciples to go out and do likewise.

There is great hope for healing for us all. God promises even dried up bones can come together and new and live again, with the breath of God. When God breathes the breath of new life into us healing happens. Believe it. It has happened right here! Praise Be to God!