October 22 and 23, 2005
23 Pentecost

They say that we grow more like our spouses as we spend more and more years with them.  That this may be true both comforts and scares me.  My husband Mel who is Rector of Trinity Church in Iowa City has told the same funny story for his Easter sermon three years running.  It’s not because he’s forgotten he’s told it before.  It’s because until he finds a better story—or perhaps until someone else finds him a better one—he’s going to keep telling it.

So this morning I am going to start with a story I know I have used in a sermon here before.  It is the story of the little girl who was afraid of lightening and thunder and woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a great storm.  She ran into her parents’ room to crawl into bed with them.  Her mother reminded her that she was safe; that God was always with her.  She replied, “Yes, I know, but I need somebody with skin on them.”

Today we are celebrating the healing love of God with the opportunity for a special experience of the laying-on-of hands for healing.  Yes, we know that God loves us and wants us healed, but sometimes, we need somebody with hands and arms and a voice that shares words that are unmistakenly the tender words of God’s love for us.

The laying-on-of hands for healing has been part of the ministry of the church since its beginning, although it was side lined for some centuries.  In more recent times it has been brought back to a more central understanding of what the Church is all about.  It is what Jesus did.  We have so many wonderful stories of Jesus touching people, calling people into a healed and whole life.  Healing is what the early church offered to people in need and to one another—the anointing with blessed oil and the laying-on-of hands for healing. 

The disciple we most closely associate with healing is St. Luke, the physician, and as our Healing Ministries Team here at Christ Church deliberated about the best time to start a new way of offering healing, we chose a Sunday close to his day, Oct. 18.  When I looked at the lessons for today, the Sunday after St. Luke’s Day, I was at first disappointed that they didn’t involve one of Jesus’ healing miracles. 

But then I quickly realized that the Gospel we have just heard is just about the best one we could have had.  It is about love.  What is more healing than love?  What is more central to our faith than love?  We call Jesus’ words from the Gospel the Summary of the Law.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

What does it mean to be a Christian?  It is to be one who loves.  And the reason that we are called to love is that we have been loved first.  Our love of God and neighbor and ourself is because God has loved us.

Julian of Norwich, a 14^th century mystic, a wise woman attached to the Cathedral in Norwich and available for counsel to many of her time was perhaps one of our first pastoral counselors. She did not do miraculous physical healings, although she received one of these as a young woman and did her writing and reflecting and living out of this experience of being touched by God’s healing love.

One of the writings we have from her has her contemplating something the size of a hazelnut—a very small nut, as they go.  She had it in the palm of her hand, and she says it was as round as a ball.  She looked at it with her mind’s eye and thought, “What can this be?”  And now I quote her:  “It is all that is made.”  I marveled that it could last, for I thought it might have crumbled to nothing, it was so small. And the answer came into my mind, “It lasts and ever shall because God loves it.”  And all things have their being through the love of God.

In this little thing I saw three truths.  The first is that God made it.  The second is that God loves it.  The third is that God looks after it.

She doesn’t call this three ways of understanding God’s love the Trinity, but she could have.  The Creator God made it, the Christ God loves it, the Spirit God looks after it.

I don’t know if I have actually seen a painting of this, or if it is from my own imagination, but I have seen a hand, the hand of God, holding the earth, small and round like a ball in this large hand of love. 

We are here as a planet, as a human race because God loves us.  We are here, as Christ Church members, because God loves us.  We are here as individuals, John, Mary and Sue, because God loves us.  And thus, it is only natural that we who have been and are loved and always shall be loved should love back:  the God who made us and sustains us, the neighbor who shares this world with us, and our own precious selves, unique and yet one facet of the image of God.

What could be a better lesson for healing?  It is a reminder of who we are.  We are God’s perfect creations, who through time become tarnished and broken and in need of renewal.

Just as perfect and innocent in the center of our hearts as the day we took our first breath, life has a way of moving us from this center.  We experience discord with others, we betray our own selves, our bodies become ill or disabled in small or great ways, we forget the God who loves us, or God’s promise to love and be with us always. 

And so, we all stand in need of healing.  I know I do.  I know that I have experienced a great healing, both physically and spiritually through my own journey with cancer.  And I know that every day I am grateful to God for this life and for the opportunity to journey to greater wholeness. 

Part of my journey has been to undertake a program of study in Healing Touch.  This wonderful energetic healing was offered to me by a member of my parish in Ohio.  She came to my house every day that I had a chemotherapy treatment.  And I experienced through her loving hands and heart, the immense love of God for me, body, mind and spirit. 

And then when I moved here I discovered that there was a woman at Trinity Church who was giving healing touch treatments, and I signed up to have them on a regular basis.  And the next thing I knew I was training to be able to do the treatments for others.  The God who has healed me has called me to a calling within the vocation of priesthood to be a healing touch practioner.  I have now completed all five levels of spiritual healing touch ministry, and three others in this parish are on the journey of learning how to do this so that I may be offered to you.

The most important part of what we do as any kind of healer, however, is the basic thing that was offered by the early church and is offered in the standard healing services of the church:  it is to set our intention to be channels of God’s healing love and to touch the body-being of one another. A hand on the head, the shoulders, the back, all provides a way for God’s healing love to move into our being.

In a short while you will have an opportunity to come forward to receive communion as you do every Sunday.  Only today you will be fed at the crossing.  You will receive the bread and the wine while standing and then you have a choice to either go back to your seat or go up to the altar rail for the laying-on-of-hands, anointing, and a prayer.  At the altar you will be prayed for by a team of healers who have been preparing for this day for months and who met yesterday to set their intentions to be channels of God’s healing love.  You may or may not say what you want prayers for.  You do not need to go into great detail.  You may ask for prayers for physical healing for yourself or another; for healing for a relationship that is difficult; for a situation in the workplace, the community or the world that is in need of healing.  As you pray for another, healing also comes to you, the instrument of asking.

The Gospel says we are to love our neighbor as ourself.  This implies first of all that it is important and good to love ourselves.  I am reminded of a line from the Gospel of Thomas:  “You do not receive because you do not ask.”  God wants us to ask for what we need.  God may not answer in our time frame or even in the way we think that would be best for us.  I am very thankful that some of the prayers I have uttered fervently were answered in a far different way from what I thought should happen!  But I have always known it is important to ask and to trust God to hear and act.

What greater love can we have for our neighbor than to surround them with healing prayer and laying on of hands?  What greater thing can we do for each other in the body of Christ than to touch and pray?  This is healing by whole community.  Those of you walking to communion, sitting in the pew and singing are part of the healing.  And if there is someone you especially want to be there for, please feel free to come and stand behind that person as hands are laid on him or her.

There is nothing you can do today that would be wrong or in bad form—unless it would be to stay away from the altar if God is calling you to come forward.

To end I would like to quote the words of St. Paul in the epistle for today:

…we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.  So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

                                                Amen!