Lent Healing Series - Canon Sarah Chapman
As we look at the world situation, the state of our institutions and our own journey with all the effects of the pandemic and the post-traumatic stress, we recognise our need for healing. Now is the healing time. Sometimes all we can do is sigh too deep for words.
What do we mean by healing and wholeness?
For many involved in the healing ministry of the church the ultimate place of healing, the place of wholeness, is in death. Canon Angela Tilby reminded us on Ash Wednesday evening in her sermon that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We are returning to that from which we came. Dust to dust ashes to ashes. In John’s Revelation, in his vision of the new Jerusalem “Death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more; for the first things have passed away.” Death is the place of healing and wholeness. How we live and know we are alive informs our approach to death.
Sheila Cassidy in her book The Loneliest Journey says this:
“Let me begin my story where most of us begin; as normal healthy human beings who do not expect to get seriously ill and who absurdly, do not really expect to die. We assume we are going to live forever - or forget we are going to die. One of life’s coping strategies.”
Are we ready prepared for death? Are we excited about the fact that we have heaven to hope for? Are we living as a people of God excited about the greatest party we will ever be invited to?
For many of us the greater problem is getting through the ‘now’ - the every day.
So what do we mean by healing?
The General Synod’s report in 2000, though now over twenty years old, still gives us one of the best definitions of healing:
“The Church’s ministry of healing remains a charismatic work of the Holy Spirit through sacramental and non sacramental means. The sacramental means include baptism, communion, confession, absolution, anointing and laying on of hands.
The non sacramental means include intercession, friendship, forgiveness, acceptance, active listening, counselling, psychiatry nursing and medical care and healing of emotions and memories.”
In my role as Adviser in Canterbury I visited many churches, invited to preach on a Sunday, who told me: we don’t really do healing, or we have no healing ministry here. When asked, yes, they did do baptisms, and celebrate communion and pastorally care for people, listening to their problems, preparing the dying for death, offering friendship and fellowship and welcome.
So yes they are involved in the healing ministry! As we are reminded at the invitation to receive communion;
“Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Blessed are those who are called to his supper.
Lord I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed.”
What about our own healing? In the gospels many people came to Jesus seeking his touch, his healing. In his encounters he is showing everyone what the kingdom of heaven looks like.
He brings healing and restoration….to the lepers who are healed physically as well as restored into their communities - as is the woman with the haemorrhage. The blind see, the deaf hear and some are restored to their right mind as in the Gerasene demoniac.
Are we prepared to seek our own healing: to encounter Jesus for ourselves?
This next quote is from someone who emailed me after taking part in a healing day I led.
“As I woke this morning after the healing day. In the softness between sleep and opening my eyes I mentally touched my wounded places, no pain. In wonder I touched another and felt the squashy ‘give’ of covering where previously had been an open hole. What wonder and gratefulness filled me.”
There was much wonder and rejoicing in the parable of the Lost Sheep that we heard as our second reading today. The lost sheep is found, restored, returned. We too may feel like lost sheep overwhelmed with anxiety, fearful about the future, about members of our families, about friends, those we hold dear who are struggling. We too, like the paralysed man’s friends, can bring them to Jesus in prayer. Sometimes that’s all we can do.
A while ago I was at a healing conference and we were challenged to ask ourselves: would we be prepared to pray for 100 people for their healing, if we knew only one would get healed? We all replied yes. It is in those moments of healing that we see the kingdom come here and now. It is a glimpse of the kingdom of God.
Our care for one another and our prayers often mean we wrestle with the unending darkness and pain. On this first Sunday of Lent as we are reminded of how Jesus wrestled with Satan. In Mark’s Gospel: “And the spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts and angels waited on him.” There are times when we too wrestle with the darkness.
Michael Mitton in his book Wild Beasts and Angels says this:
“The more I reflect on the ministry of healing with all its joys, sorrows and mysteries, the more I am convinced that a spirituality of healing is located in the spirituality of the desert. It is in the desert that we are brought face to face with the wild beasts within and without, where we are aware of the miraculous resources of heaven. The desert is a place of triumph and testing, of weary perseverance and unexpected revelation of training in disciplines and discoveries of freedom.”
As we take this Lenten series of Now is the healing time, may we embrace the opportunities to be part of Christ's healing……in worship, in prayer, in pastoral care, with an increased awareness of the miraculous resources of heaven; knowing there will be times of testing when perseverance is needed and times of hope for when unexpected revelations happen.
Now is the healing time. What would that look like for this cathedral community?
A greater awareness and openness to the lost sheep; a greater openness to truth, owning our own lostness, our own need for healing and an offering of expectation and watchfulness for the kingfisher glimpses of the signs of God’s kingdom in this place. Amen.