"Nothing Is Lost on the Breath of God" by The Rev. Dr. Donald L. Hamer, Rector
Posted on
Trinity Episcopal Church
5 Epiphany – February 4, 2018
“Nothing is Lost on the Breath of God”
Isaiah 40: 21-31 Mark 1:29-39
This week’s Gospel passage from Mark Chapter 1 verse 29 is Part 2 of the story that began in last week’s Gospel with verse 21. You may recall – and if you don’t I’ll recap it here – that Jesus and his newly acquired disciples were in Capernaum, and Jesus was teaching in the synagogue. And there was a man with an unclean spirit that began acting up and— after an interchange between Jesus and the spirit – Jesus commanded the spirit to come out of the man. And everyone was amazed at what they called this “new teaching” which can order the dismissal even of unclean spirits.
Last week, we heard an inspirational message from Fred Faulkner, a message of hope and healing as we observed Recovery Sunday and I want to thank Fred again for that. This morning I want to pick up on the significance of this “new teaching” of Jesus in the events of this morning’s passage.
What we saw in last week’s Gospel is that Jesus teaching and his power to heal are interrelated – they are one, and this theme continues today. This morning’s story takes place immediately after they have left the synagogue – so this is all one day of activity. As soon as they leave the synagogue, they enter the house of Simon and Andrew, where Simon’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever. Jesus comes to her, takes her hand, lifts her up – and the fever leaves her, and she immediately sets about to serve them. That very same evening, everyone in the city who is sick or possessed with demons was at Simon’s door, waiting for that healing touch of Jesus. And today’s passage closes with these words: “And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.”
Teaching and healing. Healing and teaching. It was the pattern of Jesus’ ministry, and I think it can also serve as a good model of ministry for the people who follow him. For nearly 10 years, the sign on the front of this church has proclaimed that we are a place of “welcome, hope and healing.”
I think one of the most powerful things we can do for and with one another is to pray, and I couldn’t be more pleased that in the last month we have re-established our intercessory prayer ministry on Sunday mornings. Especially when someone is suffering from some affliction – whether it be addiction, physical or mental illness, a broken spirit, hopelessness, poverty or maybe some combination of these – the ministry of presence of another person sharing that burden and praying with them is actually sacramental – an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
But what, exactly, are we praying for? Contrary to the understanding of his day, Jesus makes it clear in the Gospels that physical or mental illness is not the result of some offense against God – either the person’s own sin or the sins of others. In John 9 we find the story of Jesus healing the blind man. In verses 1-3 it reads, “As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.
He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. Jesus teaches us that even the hurts and shortcomings of this imperfect world are occasions for God’s light to shine through. Jesus understanding of healing seems to be more aligned with the contemporary understanding of healing not necessarily as cure but as a process that leads to wholeness. In Mark 5:34, where a woman reaches out and is healed simply by touching the hem of Jesus’ garment, the King James Version reads, “And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.”
When I was a chaplain in training at Hartford Hospital, and when as a seminarian a group of us started an intercessory prayer team at Yale Divinity School, one of the hot topics of debate was, When we pray with someone, what exactly are we praying for? Are we praying for a cure? Or are we praying for a healing of body, mind and spirit? There were those in our group who were convinced that they had a charism of healing – that when they prayed with someone God worked through them in a unique way that enabled actual physical healing. And there may well be such people in the world – I’m not sure I’ve ever met one.
Without getting into the merits of any one person’s individual charism for healing, the sad challenge for us is always the question, how are we to understand situations where the desired outcome doesn’t happen? How do we respond? Pastor Thomas Oord tells the story of the mother desperate to have a child but instead has her fourth miscarriage despite her own prayers and those of others. The comments from people at church ranged from, “This is part of God’s plan,” to “It will make you appreciate your children even more once you have them,” to “God is building your character by allowing this.” Or perhaps the most hurtful of all comments came from those who shared biblical passages pointing to the faith of people whom Jesus healed and concluded, “You just don’t have enough faith.” Weak faith, so the argument goes, gets weak results.
In just the last two weeks, Paul Bolduc, husband of Trinity Academy’s Development Director Lisa, and LJ Sadosky, Jo-Ann Sadosky’s son, died suddenly and unexpectedly of massive heart attacks. This morning as we pray here, the husband of Karen Connal, Trinity Academy’s Head of School, lies at UConn Medical Center having just suffered a stroke. Who among us can find a coherent rationale for that? How do people of faith understand these things, and how do we respond? What are we to say or believe when the young father has a heart attack or a stroke and doesn’t survive? When the young cancer patients whom our own Kate Steven cares for at Children’s hospital don’t respond to the latest “miracle” drug?
The question of wholeness and healing isn’t limited to issues of physical or mental health. What role does our prayer play when the person who has been desperately seeking employment is turned down yet again? When the single mother piecing together several low paying jobs can’t be home at night to supervise her children and they fall into harm’s way?
Philosophers, ethicists and theologians have written thousands upon thousands of pages over many centuries attempting to address the “problem” of how evil and suffering can co-exist alongside a benevolent, loving God. They have provided no certain answers, nor will we arrive at an easy answer this morning. But we can reflect and learn something about how we respond.
I’d like to suggest that the role we play when we pray for others is to provide human interaction – whether it be actual touch or just physical proximity. That human interaction reminds us that God became incarnate – one of us – in the person of Jesus Christ so that we could experience God’s presence in him. As brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus calls us his followers to experience that same presence in each other. Research studies have actually been done comparing the outcomes for people who were being prayed for by known members of their own church as contrasted with those who were told they were being prayed for by faithful but otherwise anonymous people. The patients who had no intimate relationship with their prayer partner showed no significant difference in improvement from the general public, whereas members of the group who knew their prayer partners indicated a marked improvement in their condition or in their quality of life, or both.
Gerald May, a medical doctor who practices psychotherapy in Washington, D.C., writes of the importance of community in the healing process: God’s grace through community involves something far greater than other people’s support and perspective. The power of grace is nowhere as brilliant nor as mystical as in communities of faith. Its power includes not just love that comes from people and through people but love that pours forth among people, as if through the very spaces between one person and the next. Just to be in such an atmosphere is to be bathed in healing power.
Last week, as we observed Recovery Sunday, we were reminded that folks in 12-step programs are not the only ones in need of wholeness and healing. All of us – from the most successful businessman or elite celebrity to the person under the bridge and everyone in between – we, each one of us, has holes in our soul that are desperate for the healing touch of God that can lead us closer to wholeness – to being the person God desires for us to become. After all, Bill W, the moving force behind Alcoholics Anonymous, was himself a successful businessman who, despite his success, never felt he was good enough, or deserving enough. The condition is so common it even has a name – Imposter Syndrome. My friend and former colleague Matt Lincoln, who is now the rector of Trinity Church Buffalo where they have a weekly recovery service, speaks of the cruel reversal that many of us make in our subconscious assumptions about ourselves, “namely, we think of ourselves as more important and at the same time less valuable than we are. We put ourselves at the center of the universe, yet view ourselves as barely worth being thrown into the outer darkness. . . None of us is the center of the universe, yet each of us is cherished, valued infinitely by the one who actually is the center of the universe.”
This understanding of community and the intrinsic value of every single human individual is part of the DNA of this congregation, Trinity Hartford. It was articulated at the laying of the cornerstone of our present building in 1894 by Colonel Jacob L. Greene, who said, “Here no one is to be higher in right or privilege than another, this common and equal right being based on the common and equal need which each one has of divine help.”
In this morning’s message from the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Isaiah asks ,“Have you not known? Have you not heard?” The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. . . He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. . . [T]hose who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
As brothers and sisters of Jesus the Christ, as his followers, one of our most important roles is to be partners with God in promoting wholeness, hope and healing, for ourselves, for each other, and for the whole world. Because as Episcopalians we believe that everything God creates is cherished by God and to be honored by us. In the beautiful words of our sequence anthem by New Zealand composer Colin Gibson, Nothing is lost to the on the breath of God, nothing is lost forever, God’s breath is love, and that love will remain, holding the world forever. No feather too light, no hair too fine, no flower too brief n its glory, no drop in the ocean, no dust in the air, but is counted and told in god’s story.”
God so loved us that he gave his only begotten son to become one of us. As part of Jesus call to follow him, we are called to share in His ministry of healing, to extend that touch to humankind, for the healing and wholeness of the world, and to the glory of God, that God’s works may be revealed through our own self-giving love. Amen.