ST. JOHN’S DUMFRIES
HEALING ADDRESS 4
In my first address, reaffirming the Church’s Ministry of Healing, I finished up with the question “Is healing limited to curing?” Dictionaries suggest there’s not much to choose between them: but then (to be fair) any dictionary can only give brief and approximate equivalents, otherwise they would become hopelessly unwieldy. In a sentence, I think my personal answer to that question would be that Healing or health relates to wholeness, whilst curing usually concerns putting right symptoms. True, they quite often go together, but they don’t necessarily do so.
In our modern, “health-club-orientated” culture, all too often we see health purely in terms of physical fitness – particularly, the ability to climb mountains or run marathons! But is that really all there is to health? (In practice, many of us in our ageing population would be quite unable to do these things anyway!!) But in any case, I know of people who may be in fine fettle physically, but who are actually quite short on Wholeness. On the other hand, I also know people suffering conditions at present regarded as ‘incurable’ whose actual wholeness and health would put many of us to shame. I have only to call to mind a 15 year old who has not one but two currently ‘incurable’ conditions, and whose diet has to be pretty severely restricted, but who (despite these problems) displays quite incredible wholeness.
I deeply believe that real wholeness and health are primarily grounded in relationships – three in number. 1. Our relationship with ourselves: 2. our relationships with our neighbour; and 3. our relationship with God. It may surprise you that I put it that way round – with self coming first. Yet surely, we must start where we are. Not long ago, a friend of mine on an appointing panel to a senior post was asked what he was particularly looking out for in the candidates. He replied first by saying “that he should be someone who likes himself.” Surprised? Many people seem to think that all good Christians ought to hold themselves in low esteem, in some sort of false modesty. I couldn’t disagree more!! Of course, to be obsessed with self is certainly a disease that we can all well do without. But equally, just remember that to appreciate oneself in a disciplined way is quite simply to be obedient to the age-old teaching endorsed by Jesus that we should love our neighbour as ourselves.
Of course, health or wholeness also involves our personal relationship with others – (that very neighbour whom we are commanded to love as ourselves). Community sickness can all too easily contribute to personal sickness. As we know, violence erupts very readily in broken communities – particularly wherever any society cares too little for its depressed and deprived members. But even at home, within the family, impoverished relationships can result from lack of genuine inter-personal communication – not least wherever the rectangular goggle-eyed monsters of either television or computer screen is allowed to dominate. Then, not only marriages, but also family wholeness itself can disintegrate. For the sake of our own health (as well as that of others) it is vital that we also cultivate real companionship with people we can trust, and with whom we can safely share something of our inner selves.
Most important of all is our relationship with God. Too many people have the idea that God is in some way over against us, when actually he is for us. After all, what’s the whole drift of the New Testament, but this? That “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son for us” or again, “We love because he first loved us.”
But having said all this, what should our expectation be from the Church’s healing ministry? There are those who suggest that if there are not always instantaneous miraculous cures, then any healing ministry is no more than a pious charade. I couldn’t disagree more. Wholeness (or health) is something far, far more than the mere removal of symptoms of illness or incapacity. Healing is something which grows, pervading and permeating the whole person – sometimes even when the physical outcome is neither what we might have expected nor chosen. (Remember, St Paul complaining of some “thorn in the flesh” – whatever it was – that was not taken away: but he was given strength to cope with it).
I believe that no prayer ever goes unanswered: but our trouble is this. If we don’t get the result that we had hoped for, we may be tempted to say that prayer has not been answered! Just remember that God is a great lover of alternatives! Perhaps, therefore, I may close by sharing with you one very personal experience about healing prayer being answered in an alternative way.
When she was in her eighties, my mother suffered a pretty severe stroke. I travelled several hundred miles to see her. When I arrived, she looked so unlike her old self that had I been just doing an ordinary hospital ward round, I don’t think I would have recognised her. When she saw that I had come, she tried to speak with greatest difficulty, and soon I gathered that she was asking to be anointed. So I went to the local church, got the oil and anointed her. That evening, I thought I was saying good bye for the last time. You will understand my utter astonishment [“O me of little faith!!”] when next day I returned to find her, perfectly recognisable, sitting in a chair next to the bed, and we were actually able to have just the conversation that one would want to have with a dying parent. True, she entered the fuller life within twelve hours – surely, the ultimate healing! But I can hardly tell you what that experience did for me and my faith. I would like to think that it also did something for her in her final hours in this world. God is indeed a lover of alternatives, and I am utterly convinced that no prayer ever goes unanswered – even though the answer may not be the one hoped for or expected. But even so it is still vital to expect great things of God nonetheless. Could our real trouble be – that we don’t expect half enough?
J. Paul Burbridge