The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by Dean Grant Lynn Ford at
the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, June 8, 2008.
Author Alan Cohen tells this story: “While I was presenting a program at a
long-established spiritual retreat center, several participants and I were
eating lunch at a picnic bench next to a snack bar. As we finished, one of the
participants stood behind me and began to gently massage my neck and
shoulders…
“Suddenly I was jarred by a deep voice booming, ‘No healing allowed here!’
I was certain this was another student playing a joke… To my surprise, the
retreat center security guard was standing behind us… His name badge said
‘George.’ I looked at George in disbelief.
“‘I’m sorry,’ George uttered authoritatively. ‘No healing is allowed on the
campus except in the healing temple. If you want to be healed, you have to go
there.’
“I looked around at my friends and we cracked up. We thought this was a
practical joke. After all, who would make a rule against someone being
healed?…
“After lunch I walked back to my room for a siesta. By that time I decided
the situation was quite funny. Who, then, do you think I encountered along the
way? You guessed it — Officer George. I decided I would have some fun with
George. ‘Sorry about that healing back there,’ I told him. ‘I can’t imagine
what came over me.’
“George remained quite serious. ‘I hope you understand. If I let you do
healing there, before you know it, people will be healing all over the place!’
“I had to muster all the will power I could to keep a straight face. I told
George, ‘And that’s the last thing we would want to see happen, isn’t it?’
“‘That’s right,’ he answered.
“I dashed to my room, closed my door, and roared. This was too strange to
be true. Then I remembered a Bible story that put my experience in
perspective.”
You guessed it! Its part of the larger story, a portion of which we heard
read to us this morning. In this portion the religious right complains that
Jesus is eating with people “beyond the pale.” Elsewhere they complain that
he’s healing on the Sabbath, or that he’s gotten too big for his britches.
Today we want to get beyond the complaints about Jesus, and look at the
topic that he is demonstrating for us: healing.
I know you’ve all seen the television program where the evangelist prays
for people and they are all healed.
One evangelist prays for crowds of people and they all fall over, like a
great wind blowing over a forest of trees. Whoooom! Boom!
Ever wonder about those healings? Don’t you suspect that the only ones we
see on television are the ones that look healed? What about the rest… the ones
for whom there is no dramatic change?
When Oral Roberts traveled the country in a tent, he had doctors checking
out the “miracle stories”. Katherine Kuhlman did the same thing. Doesn’t
happen today. It’s because they discovered that not everyone was healed. In
fact, the percentage of people actually healed who have come to these crusades
is dismally quite low.
So, if you think like I think, you might ask yourself, “I wonder how many
people Jesus prayed for that weren’t healed. Do we only get the stories of the
successful ones?”
I admit that those thoughts have crossed my mind. Is it possible that Jesus
didn’t bat a thousand?
In Matthew’s account, Jesus has quite a string of successes. He prays for
the centurion’s love-slave — his boy, as the Bible calls him — who is healed.
Then he goes a bit north and prays for Peter’s mother-in-law, who is healed.
After healing some more people he jumps into the boat, calms a raging storm
and lands in the Gadarenes, he prays for a couple of crazy madmen who are
healed.
Next he is confronted with a man who has no use of his limbs, who is
healed. One of the synagogue leaders in this otherwise Greek territory comes
to Jesus and asks for prayer for his daughter. Just at that moment the woman
with the disease of the blood touches Jesus, and is healed. By the time they
finish dealing with her and head for the man’s house, the daughter seems to be
dead. But Jesus scoffs at the mourners and raises the little girl up. Finally
he caps off this chapter by healing two blind men.
So far Jesus’ record is good; he’s batting a thousand.
Matthew is making a couple of points here: 1) Jesus is a powerful healing
agent; 2) to put it in Jesus’ own words: “your faith has healed you.”
If Jesus gives us any hope it is this: 1) we too can be powerful agents for
healing, and 2) we and those we believe for are healed by our own
faith, not Jesus’ faith. Our faith! If it’s going to be, it’s up to me!
Mark tells a lot of the same stories, be he includes a somber note: it
doesn’t work every time. Jesus’ batting record takes a real dip. Why?
You see, after this healing crusade through Capernaum and the Gadarenes, he
goes home to see his mama, who lives on the other side of the lake and up in
the hills. There the hometown boy preaches in the local synagogue. Let me read
this story from Mark’s gospel: “When the Sabbath came he began to teach in the
synagogue. People began to whisper: “‘here does he get off, teaching that
way?’ They were astonished with his Chutzpah. A few were more impressed,
saying: ‘Listen to that! And those deeds he’s done; quite impressive for a
young man.’
“But the whispering didn’t stop. They began to ask, ‘Isn’t he that
carpenter’s boy? You know, Mary’s son? You know his brothers: James, Joseph,
Judas, Simon. And he’s got sisters. Aren’t they up there in the balcony?’ So
they decided to pay the upstart no mind.
“Jesus just shook his head and retorted, ‘A prophet is without honor…
except in his hometown… right here with family… in his own house.’
“Hardly anyone even wanted to be healed, much less have hands laid on them.
It was his turn to be astonished… at their lack of faith.” [
Mark
6:2-6a
]
His batting record drops rapidly there in his own home town.
Why? Because of “their lack of faith.”
So what does it mean for us today? If we quit looking at Jesus as our Great
Exception and begin to see him as our Great Example, then we will pattern our
lives after his, and we can expect the same results “according to our faith”.
Listen to what Jesus told the centurion: “It will be done just as you
believed it would.” And to woman with the blood ailment: “Your faith has
healed you.” To the blind men he said, “According to your faith will it be
done to you.”
Say it with me: If it’s going to be, it’s up to me!
Why, Paul tells us in our first reading “God accepted Abraham’s faith, and
that faith made him ‘right on’ with God!” Everything good that happened to the
patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam happened because Abraham
believed in a Good God who would bless him with Goodness… even in his old age.
Tell you what; I like that part right about now!
If we choose to simply believe Jesus, and then believe in our own faith,
why, despite the Officer George’s of the world, we will experience “healing
all over the place!” And that’s the truth!