The Healing Lessons:
The Collect of Healing
Isaiah 42:1-7
Psalm 139: 1-17
John 9:1-41

"At every moment of our existence
You are present to us, Holy One,
In gentle compassion.
Help us to be present to one another,
So that our presence may be a strength
That heals the wounds of time
And gives hope that is for all persons."

I Was Blind But Now. . .
The Rev. Richard L. Schaper, CFP
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, San Rafael
August 24, 2003 - Healing Sunday

When I was 13 years old, I woke up one morning and I couldn't move my body. I could barely move my arm or leg, but when I did so the pain was excruciating. I cried out for my Mother to come. I told her. She called the doctor. I insisted that she assist me in trying to get on my feet. I had to walk. But I could not. I collapsed with the pain. The doctor indicated to my mother that it might be polio. For two days I was in the hospital absolutely still. I could not move a joint. The next day, Thursday, they were to perform a painful spinal tap. When I awoke on Thursday morning, I discovered that I could move the big toe on my right foot. I could move my toe. I COULD MOVE MY TOE! Had you, or anyone, been there in that room, you would have seen tears come streaming down my cheeks.

The experience of healing--of a painful wound being healed, of a sin being forgiven, of a protracted disability being removed; of moving a toe on a body that we feared was immobilized permanently --is one of the deepest experiences of our human existence or of our Christian faith.

Healing of our hearts, of our bodies, of our minds, is what God desires for us. We were created for wholeness, for shalom. Our brokenness overcome, our woundedness healed: this is our destiny, to be accomplished if not in our lifetimes, then when we are brought fully into God's presence.

When I was visiting at my goddaughter's church in Hawaii in a rural village on Kauai, at the part in the liturgy after we had said the confession and the priest had pronounced the forgiveness of our sins, the presider said: "May the ALOHA of the Lord be always with you!" And the person in the pew in front of me turned around and offered me her hand and said, "Aloha!". At first this struck me as amusing and a little quaint, but then I came to understand: the Hawaiian word "aloha" is far better translation of what Jesus said to his disciples than is the pale English word "peace." In the Hawaiian tongue, the word "aloha" means much more than simply "hello" or "good-bye." "Aloha" means the blessed wholeness of your whole being.

When Jesus, the rabbi from Nazareth, crucified and risen from the dead, appeared to his astonished dearest friends and said to them, "SHALOM!", he was saying to them more than simply "hello." With "shalom"--"peace"--Jesus was saying to them:

"May your sins be forgiven!
May your wounded hearts be made whole!
May your broken relationships be restored!
May God's blessed intention in creating you to be the person who you are, be fulfilled to accomplish God's purposes!"

You wouldn't expect someone who had just risen from the dead to say any less than this, would you?

On Sunday morning, when the presider pronounces, "May the peace of the Lord be with you!" and we all turn and wish the same to one another, it's more than a break time in the service after a long and boring sermon. Rather, we are offering a prayer for one another, the same prayer that Jesus once and always offers for us: That our lives--hearts, bodies and minds, our relationships--might find a semblance of the wholeness and peace for which God created us. Whoever you are in the pew next to me, I do not know how I wish you anything more precious than this. This "shalom" is far more precious than gold.

Healing is whatever takes us in the direction of Shalom, of Aloha, restoring what has broken but originally was whole.

"Who sinned, this man or his parents?" Jesus' disciples ask him of the man born blind. In other words, encountering the man who could not see, the disciple's first question is, "Whose fault is this?" "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," Jesus replies, " . . . but so that the works of God might be revealed in him."

The meaning of a person's suffering, Jesus indicates here, does not lie in assessing blame for the cause of the suffering. Whether the suffering is from blindness or cancer or alcoholism or mental illness, the impulse to find fault, to assess blame, to assign responsibility, is a seemly natural human tendency.

If we can only pin the cause of this tragedy down to someone's having sinned, we will have contained its threat to our own well being. For we naively pretend that we ourselves have never done anything ourselves to deserve the suffering that we behold in this other person. There must be some reason, we want to assume, that this person is suffering and I am not.

To unlock the meaning of the suffering, Jesus looks not backward to blame--"who sinned?-- but forward--to God's purposes--and to encounter in the present moment.

Jesus spits on the ground, bends over and makes mud between his fingers with the salvia and uses the mud to anoint the man's unseeing eyes, telling him to wash in the waters of pool called "sent"--just as Jesus is "sent" from God.

The man washes and… his eyes are opened. He experiences healing, restoration of a faculty which had not been his even since birth.

Pressed by religious fundamentalists to condemn the one who healed him on a Sabbath, all the healed man born blind will say is, "All I know is that I was blind, but now I see." Amazing grace. The one who said, "I am the light of the world" not only opened his eyes but illumined his heart. And at the conclusion of the story, his final confession is: "Lord, I believe."

The challenge to see in our suffering not recrimination or regret but rather the finger of God is a steep order. I was shown this once by an aged woman who was on the floor of the hospital for which I was chaplain. This was Mrs. Patterson's third admission for a very aggressive form of cancer. The chemotherapy was not having any positive effect--and she knew it. Mrs. Patterson must have been easily in her 80's. Although her body was losing its battle to cancer, her spirit was very strong and her eyes had a bright twinkle. When I asked her about her illness, she said wryly, "Yes, sometimes God has to lay me down to make me look up."

One way that Mrs. Patterson was making sense, finding meaning, in her illness was by focusing on how this suffering was opening her a deeper level of trust in the one in whom, more and more, she was placing her hope. Sometimes God has to lay ME down to make me look up! Until I get stopped in my tracks, I often forget to look up.

Jesus' encounter with the man born blind is like other stories in the gospels of Jesus bringing about healing. In each story, the experience of healing is associated with faith.

Do you remember the story of the woman with the issue of blood who reached out her hand to touch the hem of Jesus' cloak? At the end Jesus says to her, "Go in peace"--go in shalom, go in aloha--"Your faith has saved you." But the original Greek word that is in this sentence translated into English as "saved" is in other contexts in the New Testament rendered "healed." So what Jesus said to the woman was, "Your faith has healed you."

"Your faith has saved you" and "Your faith has healed you" are, in the mind of New Testament faith, the same thing. Healing and salvation are alike in this: they both represent a restoring of what has been broken into a wholeness that God intends for us.

This is why our prayers for the healing of our bodies in the Litany of Healing leads directly to our prayers for the forgiveness of our sins. We beg that all impediments be removed that prevent us from a deeper communion with one another and with God.

In a few moments we will be offered the laying on of hands and anointing for healing.When in prayer a person of faith places their hands upon us, we feel a tangible link with the source of our faith and love in God's Holy Spirit. The oil with which we are anointed was blessed on the altar of the cathedral on Maundy Thursday with prayers that all who receive this oil may know God's healing power. This anointing for healing brings us back to our anointing in our baptism, a reminder that healing is our birthright as a child of God.

A central moment in the film Seabiscuit-- I'm not giving away the plot here!--occurs when a crippled race horse is about to be put down. The horse is held down to the ground by several stable hands as a rifle is brought to the animal's head. "I'll take that horse," a voice says suddenly interrupting. "I'll take that horse," again says the man who has stepped into the situation. "He's no good for anything," protests the man aiming the rifle. "Just the same, I'll save you a bullet," says the man, "Just because a life is broken down, it doesn't mean you throw it away."

"Just because a life is broken down, doesn't mean you throw it away" is a sentiment that becomes the theme of the story-- Just as it is the theme of the Good News of the one who "a bruised reed, he will not break, and a dimly burning wick, he will not quench."

God is a God of mercy. The Holy One before whom we come this morning does not throw away what is broken or discard what is wounded, but reaches out his hand to heal what is hurt and to mend what is broken and to give strength to what is weak. "So that God's works might be revealed in us."

And so that we may be agents of God's healing love for others.

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St. Paul's Healing Service
August 24, 2003
The Lessons

The Collect of Healing

O God of peace, you have taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength. By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Lesson
Isaiah 42:1-7

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching. Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it. I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.

Psalm 139: 1-17

Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You trace my journeys and my resting-places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O Lord, know it altogether.
You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.
Where can I go then from your Spirit? *
where can I flee from your presence?
If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
If I say, "Surely the darkness will cover me, *
and the light around me turn to night,"
Darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day; *
darkness and light to you are both alike.
For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,
when as yet there was none of them.
How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.

The Holy Gospel
John 9:1-41

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. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?" Some were saying, "It is he." Others were saying, "No, but it is someone like him." He kept saying, "I am the man." But they kept asking him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight." They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know."

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, "He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see. Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, "What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened." He said, "He is a prophet."

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?" His parents answered, "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself." His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, "He is of age; ask him."

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, "Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner." He answered, "I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." They said to him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" He answered them, "I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?" Then they reviled him, saying, "You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from." The man answered, "Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." They answered him, "You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?" And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" He answered, "And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him." Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he." He said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped him. Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.