1 Corinthians 12:8-12; Proverbs 3:3-8
August Sermon Series: Gifts of the Holy Spirit:
Healing
I’ve
noticed a general trend. As folks get
older, the number of daily “maintenance” medications increases. I have a strong feeling you’ve noticed this
too. For yourself and for those you love
and care for.
We
come to depend on these daily doses to help with our blood pressure, cholesterol
levels, allergies, emotional well-being and such. They don’t replace other good health habits
and routines, but the daily doses help us have a greater degree of confidence
that we are taking care of ourselves and helping our loved ones to have better
balanced health. The fact that many
people we know depend on maintenance meds also gives us communal support.
We
care deeply about the well-being of our bodies. None of us in anywhere near perfect in
always doing what’s best for our health.
Yet the reality that we fail at it doesn’t change the fact that we
continue investing time, energy and money to strengthen the quality and
duration of our lives. And there is a seemingly infinite stream of
products available and always being developed to help us out. Partnering up with these third party
providers is an important part of bringing healing to our lives when our health
is in jeopardy.
But
health and healing is about more than just taking care of our vital organs and
physical frames. That’s not all we are, not all that can get
sick in this world. You and I also have
a soul. How often do you actually
think about this? And when you do,
what’s your understanding of it?
Broadly
speaking, I think many people’s understanding of the soul is a mix of biblical
and other ancient teachings – Greek philosophy in particular. The likes of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates
general taught that the body and soul are separate. And not only separate, but in opposition to
one another. The soul was ideally
regarded as good and eternal, while the body (and everything else material) was
considered bad and perishable. In this
worldview, the ultimate well-being of every human being was about setting the soul
free from the body. Sound familiar?
I
think this understanding is very much alive and well. But for those who abide by it, I find
myself wondering why they would ever want to experience healing from diseases
of the body and mind. Trips to the
pharmacy, the hospital and the psychologist would only serve to preserve the horrible
prison housing the soul. It seems to me
like this view would say that suffering is about all there is in this life, and
healing doesn’t come until the time of death.
This
is not at all what the Bible teaches. In
both the Old and the New Testaments, “soul” refers to the very core of
life. To fully understand this we need
to go back to the beginning. We need to
re-read about how humankind was born of God’s breath and of the soil of God’s
good creation. Together. And to recall that we were all made in
God’s image … meaning we are not God but are meant to be Godlike. A helpful way to think about what this
means is to see yourself as a unique photograph of our Creator. The subject of the snapshot is both God and
you at the same time. By viewing yourself
this way, “you will feel the greatest pleasure and wholeness when who God made you to be is fully
developed and expressed.”[i]
God is endlessly life-giving and
creative. So we are divinely designed to
be in life-giving, creative partnership with one another and with all the good
stuff of the earth.
Our bodies and the material world are not
enemies.
They are allies for God’s
glory.
We aren’t born to just slowly decay
until we pass into the eternal realm.
We are born to live as wholly as
possible on earth as it is in heaven.
When anyone and anything of God’s
good creation is wounded, we should always remember that we are born to help
God bring about healing. This holy
purpose remains with us all our lives long because God’s life-giving breath, the
Holy Spirit, is with and within us. So
when you take a breath, think about more than your respiratory system. Think about your soul! Think about the powerful harmony of mind,
body, and Holy Spirit. “To be fully
human,” I once read, “is to fully reflect God's creative, spiritual,
intelligent, communicative, relational, moral and purposeful capacities and to
do so holistically” because “God's image has been imprinted uniquely on each of
us.”[ii]
But the prophet Ezekiel warns us the
soul can not only be wounded, it can die (Ezekiel 18). Again, we aren’t God.
This is something Rev. Dr. Rita Nakashima
Brock knows very well.
She is the daughter of a POW in WWII
who later served tours in Vietnam as a medic. Honoring this root reality of her family life,
she has spent years tending to the spiritual wounds of military veterans. She’s done so seeking faithful answers to
the condition among veterans known as “moral injury.”
This condition is best defined as an
affliction of the soul and is therefore distinct from mental health
conditions. It happens when a soldier
has no choice but to undermine their deepest moral beliefs in combat. And it happens when prayers aren’t answered,
leaving a solider to feel punished or abandoned by God. As a bomb disposal veteran of the Iraq war
describes it, “Most deeply, it’s a loss of confidence in one’s own ability to
make a moral judgment with any certainty.
It’s not that you lose your ability to tell right from wrong, but things
don’t seem so clear any more. For me, it’s whether or not what I did, did any
good.”[iii]
Rev. Brock faithfully applies her
deep knowledge of veteran suffering at the Soul Repair Center of Brite Divinity
School in Forth Worth, TX. She has a
vision to teach all congregational leaders about moral injury. She strongly believes that it’s critical for
communities to participate with veterans to help reduce “the shame and
isolation associated with moral injury.”[iv]
Living with sin as we all do, we all
deal with moral injury in various degrees.
We all feel embattled as the
result of trying to live the life God intends us to live while knowing that we
daily compromise our core moral convictions.
To say that we are all wounded is
about more than our bodies and minds.
We all have soul wounds too. We
all need healing. We all need the balm
of salvation.
As Christians, all hope of healing arises
from our belief in Easter. Our Lord’s life-restoring
love cannot die. It is a gift to our
souls each and every day.
Look for little resurrections through healing
connections in community!
The well-being of ourselves, our
families, our congregation and all our social circles depends on us not missing
the measured doses of divine healing freely delivered by the Holy Spirit.
Each day is a healing event.
Each day there are “daily signs of
the divine mercy that is surging through the world and guiding it toward its
final perfection.” Such healing events
happen “whether they take place by the sharing of chicken soup, the performance
of delicate surgery, or the laying on of hands in a service of worship.”[v]
How can we help one another not miss
these daily doses of divine healing? Here
are some ways for you to think about today and this week. If you want to read more about these
suggestions, check out a book and its companions website titled Practicing
Our Faith.[vi]
Notice
the many ways in which people of faith can fulfill their call to be healers. For
example -- as medical personnel or chaplains, by supporting organizations that
promote wholeness and healing for the environment, by joining recovery programs
that address their own need for healing or by making space and support for such
programs available to others, by volunteering in hospices, by visiting one
another in the hospital, by recognizing the healing power of therapeutic touch,
by taking care of family members who are ill.
Invite
health care professionals in your worshiping community to speak about how they
practice their faith in their daily work of healing.
Organize
a workshop on relaxation techniques for a group you belong to or for our congregation.
Open
FPC’s doors to an exercise group, an addictions recovery group, or a support
group for people with chronic illness.
Hold
a special worship service of prayer for the sick.
Make
an inventory of the places in your community or life where healing takes place
(medical facilities, your congregation, your home) then ask how these places
offer wholeness beyond just a physical cure.
Bring
a meal to someone who is healing from physical or emotional injury.
If there was a positive
spark in your soul about any of these healing practices, please consider talking
with me and talking with our wonderful Deacons. We really do need to constantly help one
another to greater spiritual and physical health by focusing on all of our holy,
healing connections. After all, Abigail “Dear Abby” Van Buren was quite
on the mark when she wrote the well-known words about how “The church is a
hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”[vii] Amen.
[i] http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/features/23549-qmade-in-the-image-of-godq
[ii]
Ibid
[iii] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/us/12religion.html?_r=1&
[iv]
Ibid
[v] http://www.practicingourfaith.org/healing
[vii]For
more about this, visit https://www.pcusa.org/blogs/faith/2013/9/20/church-hospital-among-other-things/
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