Healing, Now and in Eternity

This sermon was preached at Holy Spirit Anglican Church on September 20th, 2012. The text was James 5:13-20.  The audio version of the sermon can be found here.  The text below and the audio will be different, as I preach from an outline.

                This past summer was the 30^th Olympic Games held in London, England.  It was a spectacular few weeks of rigorous athletic competition.  Watching the competitions on TV, I often wondered about the athletes themselves.  What brings them to that moment?  What kind of life do they live in order to be able to compete as top champions of the world? 

And the answer is that their whole lives revolve around the games.  Their whole identity is that they are Olympians, and that they are heading to the games.  Throughout the games, at different times the commentators would talk about one of the athlete’s training schedules, and it was always rigorous.  Each and every day, hours and hours practicing their sport, or doing cross training so that they could be better in their particular sport.  I’m sure that they have to approach every situation, every aspect of their life and say to themselves, “As I am an Olympian, what do I do here?”  Being an Olympic athlete effects this person diet, their time, their schedule, their activities, who they see, what they do.  It is who they are.

As we have gone through the letter of James, in each of the past 5 weeks we’ve heard James giving us a similar challenge.  James has gone through so many aspects of our lives and said to us, “You are Christians, and that means that you have to think through your whole life through that lens.”  We have talked about our words, about how we treat rich and poor, about doing good works, about the power of the tongue.  We titled this series, Practically Speaking, and practically speaking James urges us to rethink our whole life.  He wants us to approach each part of our life and say, “As a Christian, what do I do here.”

This week, our final week in James, we look at the topic of healing, and again we see James wants to reorient our world from what we expect and how we normally do things, to a way that revolves around God and how He has revealed himself.  As we look at our reading from James 5, and talk about healing, James says this: as we turn towards God, we are healed, both now and in eternity.

The first thing to notice about our reading this morning is that James is talking about us turning towards God.  He has certainly made that point throughout the letter, but in the first few verses of our reading, it’s clear.  He lays out a number of situations and in each directs us to God.  “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.  Is anyone happy?  Let him sing song of praise.  Is any one of you sick?  He should call the elders and pray…”  Each situation is reoriented toward God.  In times of trouble we seek God; in times of happiness, we give praise; and, the focus of today, when someone is sick, we pray.

Even though James does not specifically use this language, I think a helpful image for what’s happening here is that idea of turning back to God.  The Old Testament’s favorite word for repentance literally means, ‘to turn’.  We could picture the entire drama of the Bible as a choice between two directions, and the consequences of those two directions.  In the beginning we were directed entirely toward God.  We enjoyed His presence in the Garden, He would walk with us in the cool of the day, and we never experienced pain, suffering, or loss.  Until that fateful day, when Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan to turn away from God and choose themselves.  And because we turn away from God, the source of all life, death entered into our human experience.  We now began to see decay, began to feel pain, we got sick, we got angry, all because we were no longer oriented toward the source of life.  Yet God, in His mercy, sent to us time and again, through prophets, sages, Moses, and the Law to turn us back to Him.  Finally, in the fullness of time, through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, God sent the Spirit to come to live inside of us, which turns those who believe back to God.  We are again reoriented toward the Lord of Life, the source of all goodness, and even though we are far way, we immediately begin to feel the impact of that turn.  These things that we see around us which is evidence of our disconnection from God (sickness, decay, death) all begin to fall away.  Those things changing are the demonstration that we are again turned towards God.  That’s certainly what we see in the Gospels and in Acts; healings are the evidence that God’s kingdom has broken into our world and has turned us back to him.

And so the first thing that we notice is that James is telling us about turning back to God.  And as we turn back to God, we are healed.  We see this healing in all sorts of areas in our lives.  Fr. David once pointed out to me that, when we first sinned in the Garden, there were four areas of relationship that were broken.  Our relationship with God was broken, as we see Adam and Eve ejected from God’s presence.  Our relationship with ourselves was broken, as Adam and Eve first experience shame.  Our relationship with one another was broken, as Adam and Eve blame one another.  And, our relationship with nature is broken, as enmity and hatred is place between Adam and Eve and the rest of creation.  The earth would no long yield its fruit willingly and animals would no longer submit to them.  Also, in this category we could put the physical sickness that we experience because of hostile bacteria and viruses.  I think that these four areas; God, ourselves, each other, and nature, sum up the tragedy of the fall recorded in Genesis 3.  It also gives us an easy way to picture the healing that Jesus brings in our lives. 

In Christ, our relationship with God is healed as we become, through faith, the children of God, no longer strangers and aliens to Him.  In Christ, our relationship with ourselves is healed, as we realize that we have an identity in Him, and no longer have to search for a false identity.  In Christ, our relationship with each other is healed, as we realize that Christ died for all, all who are equally sinful, and therefore, we can consider one another as equals; equally sinful and equally loved by God.  Finally, in Christ, our relationship with nature is healed.  This includes physical healings of illness.

These physical healings happen in a number of ways.  Ninety percent of all healing occur through the medical field.  But we would be in error to assume that this happens without God.  There have been tremendous strides made in medical science just in the last century.  I remember speaking to one physician’s assistant who made that remark, and then followed it up with, “and we still have no idea why a lot of things work.”  That was enough for her to realize that it is God who brings healing, not our own understanding or working.  Still, the vast majority of our healing, God brings through doctors and medical professionals.  However, He still works through other ways.  One story of a recent healing demonstrates this interworking of medicine and prayer.

I read a story recently from an Order of Saint Luke magazine.  The Order of Saint Luke is a healing ministry, and we have a group of members here in our church.  The story was of a woman who attended a healing conference out in La Jolla recently.  She had previously had eye cancer, and the radiation therapy that was used resulting in her vision in her right eye being blurry.  She went to the conference and listened to the talk, and then went up to a prayer team for prayer.  She felt nothing miraculous at the time, but on her way home she noticed that her right eye was not hurting like it normally did.  She decided to cover her left eye and see what she could see out of her right eye.  Suddenly, she noticed that she could see!  It was not perfectly sharp vision, but the blur was gone and she could see.  She concludes the article by noting that she will still take the medicine that the doctor prescribed her, but she is incredibly thankful for this miraculous healing.

As we turn back to God, we are healed.  How does this happen?

James outlines two steps in this healing that are related to us turning back to God.  He writes, “Is any one of you sick?  He should call the elders of the church to pray over him … [and] confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”  To experience this healing, we are to call others in to pray for us and confess our sins.  Why does James involve other people in this process?  Why not just have the sick person pray privately and then be healed?

From the beginning, God has placed us in community and it is in that community that God works.  It is not good for man to be alone, God observed in the Garden.  Therefore, he places us in families, friendships, in churches, and it is in those social situations that he works.  Just as God often works on us as individuals through other people, so we often relate to God through other people.  The most important part of our Christian life is worship, and it is fundamental that we gather with others to do so.

So, even here, as we talk about healing, God places us in the community.  I struggled with this community idea for a long time.  I used to brush off this verse about confessing to others.  I confess to God, I would say, I don’t need anyone else.  Then I read a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Life Together.  The last chapter of that book is about confession.  Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor during WWII, wondered why, when we only confess privately, we continue to struggle with sin and a feeling of guilt.  He postulated that it was because we actually did not confess to God.  Because we are sinful, we deceive ourselves, and we just think the right words, maybe even speak them out loud, but we don’t really repent.  After all, God is not in front of us to openly rebuke us.  He recommended that, when we confess to another person, the horror of our sin becomes real to us, if for no other reason than we see the look on the other person’s face.  Then, realizing what our sins truly are, we really do desire to repent and we ask for forgiveness.  Where before we could trick ourselves again and not really think that we were forgiven, because we didn’t hear the words, Bonhoeffer wrote that hearing someone say it, even after they knew what our sins are, made forgiveness more real.  If a flawed human being could tell us that God had forgiven us, even after hearing what we had done, then how much more sure we would be that God, who has limitless mercy, had really forgiven us.  After reading this, I knew that I had been wrong, so I found a discrete friend, with whom I was close, and we started meeting every week to confess our sins to one another, assure one another of forgiveness, and pray for one another.  

James operates on the same principles.  The way that we approach God, in submission to another and in open confession, is lived out in our lives with one another.  By involving other people, James is making our turn back to God real.

So these steps which involve other people are really instruments to help us really turn back to God.  Remember, our healing comes because we are turned back to God.  Therefore, by truly being turned back to God, by submitting to Him and His people and by being open with Him about our sins, we are healed.  James makes that clear that it is God who heals us.  We are to be anointed in the name of the Lord, it is the prayer of faith in God which heals us, we are forgiven because of God.  It is God at work in our lives which brings healing, because we are reoriented toward the Lord of life.

And so, as we turn towards God, in submission and vulnerability, we are healed.  I’d like for us to see a video with a testimony of a healing which took place at a church holiday for Holy Trinity Brompton Church, which many of you will be familiar with because this is the church which developed the Alpha program. 

[I showed a video of a girl giving her testimony of being healed from eczema on her feet and arms.]

In that video, the little girl, Margo, mentioned that she had prayed before and nothing had happened.  This brings us to our final point; that as we turn back to God, we are healed, both now and in eternity.

James writes so confidently that we will be healed, and yet our experience does not show this. Why doesn’t God always heal?  There are many possible answers to this, but I think that the most satisfying answer is to remember that these healings are evidence that the Kingdom of God is breaking into our lives.  And yet, we know that the Kingdom is not here in its fullness yet.  There is a greater fulfillment to come.  It’s like in WWII, when the allies successfully landed on Normandy beach on June 6, 1944, the Nazi’s were pretty much defeated, yet there were still mopping up operations to do.  There was still hard work to be done, but the final outcome was virtually assured.  So it is in our faith, Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension has established the beach head.  Victory is assured, but the fullness of it is yet to come.

We do experience healing now, but we can be confident that we also will experience healing in eternity.  Any healing we get now is a foretaste of that heavenly experience when, as Revelation 21 glowingly promises, there will be no more tears, no more mourning, no more sorrow.  Death will be destroyed, and there will be no more sickness.

And so, as we turn our lives to God, we are healed, both now and in eternity.  That Olympic athlete, whose entire life revolves around those games, looks forward to the prize of a gold medal.  Every day she pushes herself, she makes her choices in light of that future goal.  As Christians, we know what the future holds, it holds that place where we will again dwell with God and there will be no more death, sickness, or sorrow.  And because of that future, we press on.  We reorient our lives around God, and as He is the Lord of life, we experience healing, and that healing is a peek at our future life.

So what does our reading from James 5 say?  “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray…and confess your sins to each other…that you may be healed.”  What does it mean?  That as we turn our lives back to God, we are healed, both now and in eternity.  How does this apply to my life this week?  Well, we’ve pushed that up a bit to apply to our lives today.  During communion we will have prayer teams behind the partition to pray for you, those are the elders of the church, gathered to pray and anoint with oil.  We will also, in just a few moments, have a time to confess our sins and be forgiven.  And just before that time for prayer, we will have a time when we each approach the table, and re-turn to God.  I encourage each of us, to go for prayer.  No matter what is going on; if you are happy, go pray to give praise to God; if you are in trouble, ask prayer for help; if you are ill, ask prayer for healing.  The Lord is among us and he desires to heal, to bring that future kingdom into our lives now.  Let us seek him together, and be healed.