“Made Well”
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 5:1-9
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
May 5, 2013
It was the fourth event in a full, emotion-laden weekend. On Saturday morning, many of us had attended the Mass Conference’s Memorial Service for Susan Dickerman, a beautiful tribute to her life and ministry. As soon as the final hymn was sung, we had to duck out to get ready for another Memorial Service, this time at Edwards Church, for Wendy Champagne. The sanctuary was packed with people celebrating her amazing spirit, grieving a life cut short, and seeking healing from too many losses. The next morning, our teenagers led the church school in their own memorial time for Sue—with pictures drawn and candles lit and blessings offered.
After all those services, after all those opportunities to name our brokenness and pray for healing, it was fitting that the fourth event that weekend was called “Spirit and Healing in the 21st Century.” We had planned this Open Spirit gathering long before we ever imagined how much healing would be on our hearts and minds that weekend.
The conversation resonated deeply with my experience of the rest of that weekend. It has continued to resonate in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing. So much healing needs to happen: healing for those families who lost loved ones, healing for the injured who face months of rehab, healing of our community as we struggle with a renewed sense of vulnerability.
The day after the big memorial service in Boston, one newspaper’s headline proclaimed, “Let the healing begin.” What does that mean? How does healing happen? Where is God in the healing process? What is our role?
Our Open Spirit gathering didn’t offer simple answers to those questions, but did offer valuable insight into the nature of healing. After our two keynote speakers, we held a panel discussion featuring five local spiritual leaders. Each one offered a glimpse into his or her faith community’s rich healing traditions. As I think back, I find myself associating each of the speakers with a particular aspect of healing.
Rev. Dr. J. Anthony Lloyd is the pastor at Greater Framingham Community Church. He began his reflections by clarifying that healing is not a synonym for cure. Healing is about being well, being whole—and that can mean many different things.
One of the things it means, J. Anthony suggested, is being part of community. He described practices in his church that parallel many of ours. Deacons go out and visit folks who are sick or housebound. Prayers groups meet and prayer chains spread the word. People make casseroles. Each Sunday, there is an opportunity to come forward and receive healing prayers.
J. Anthony’s description of the healing power of community brings to mind the words of the man lying by the pool at Beth-zatha. “I have no one,” he began. He had been sitting by that pool for 38 years, with no one to help him enter the waters. Perhaps what he needed as much as the healing waters was someone who cared enough to help.
To be healed, J. Anthony reminded us, is to be brought out of isolation and restored to community.
Ingrid Peschke is a Christian Science Practitioner, a healer whose tools are prayer and conversation. She began by debunking one of the many misconceptions about her faith. Christian Scientists are not forbidden from seeking traditional medical care; many of her patients also go to medical doctors.
At the heart of healing in Christian Science is the conviction that we are created in the image of God, and so we are good; we are beloved; and we are already whole. Behind Jesus’ question to the man at the pool,“Do you want to be made well?”, Christian Scientists hear a deeper question. Do you want to claim the wellness—the wholeness—that is already yours? Are you ready to awaken to who you really are—an image of the perfect and whole God?
Every day for 38 years the man in the gospel story had waited by that pool. Each day reinforced his self-definition as wounded, broken, invalid. In a Christian Science approach to the story, Jesus’ words challenged him to a different self-definition. Jesus called him to see himself as God saw him—well, whole, beloved.
Healing, Ingrid suggested, is not something that happens to us. It is our rediscovery of something we already are: made in the image of God. Healing is about perception, about identity, about claiming our wholeness.
Shaheen Akhtar added a new dimension to the conversation. When the Muslim chaplain scheduled to speak was unable to attend, Shaheen jumped into the panel with no advance planning. She spoke eloquently from her own experience as a Muslim woman. She told about her family gathered around the bedside of a loved one, and about the healing power of his acceptance of his impending death. It was so peaceful, she said. Everyone there felt the presence of Allah—Allah’s compassion and grace.
The healing power of acceptance—it’s a challenging idea. In our culture, we speak with great admiration about people who fight an illness, who fight to stay alive at all costs, who refuse to give in to limitations. But sometimes our fighting can become just another way we end up being defined by our illness or our brokenness. Sometimes acceptance frees us from that trap and allows us to move forward to a new phase in our lives.
Our gospel story doesn’t tell us the nature of the man’s illness. It doesn’t actually tell us whether Jesus cured that illness. Maybe Jesus was telling this man to accept the reality of his illness, and to stop frittering his life away sitting by the pool. Stop defining yourself by your desire to change something that is not going to change, Jesus said. Instead, get up and claim a new vision of wholeness.
Father Don Pachuta, from the Community of St. Luke, raised the importance of forgiveness. When we hold on to our anger at how someone has hurt us, when we allow that anger to harden into rage or hate, we close ourselves off from the sacred healing energy that yearns to move through our lives. We stew in our own juices; we poison ourselves, spiritually and physically.
Forgiveness is not about pretending something never happened. It’s not about returning to the way things used to be. Forgiveness can be a form of acceptance: accepting that something awful really did happen; accepting that we cannot make another person be who we want them to be. Forgiveness is about refusing to be defined or controlled by what someone else has done to us. Like Shaheen’s acceptance, forgiveness is about moving forward with a new understanding of possibility for our lives.
Community. Claiming wholeness. Acceptance. Forgiveness. Four aspects of healing, or perhaps four ways of opening ourselves to God’s healing spirit.
The fifth speaker, Cantor Jodi Schechtman, spiritual leader at Temple Beth Am, talked about the revival of interest in healing rituals in the Reform Jewish community. She described a range of attitudes and beliefs about prayer and healing that sound quite similar to the range of beliefs we might find here at Edwards. She ended her reflections by singing the prayer for healing used at Temple Beth Am every Friday night. This version of “Mi Shebeirach” was written by a friend of hers, the late Debbie Friedman:
Mi Shebeirach avoteinu, m’kor ha-b’racha l’imoteinu
May the Source of Strength who blessed the ones before us
Help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing.
And let us say: Amen.
Mi Shebeirach imoteinu m’kor ha-b’racha l’avoteinu
Bless those in need of healing with r’fuah sh’leimah
The renewal of body, the renewal of spirit
And let us say: Amen.
May the Source of Strength, the source of all blessing, help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing. That, for me, is the ultimate definition of healing. Healing is so much more than fixing a problem or curing an illness, so much more than feeling good or being happy. Healing is about finding the courage to make our lives a blessing, in spite of or even because of our brokenness and our limits.
Healing, as J. Anthony suggested, is about being pulled out of isolation and restored to community. It’s not enough, though, to enter into community just so we aren’t alone. To be made whole is to discover how we can then be a blessing to that community.
Healing, as Ingrid offered, is about rediscovering the truth of our lives–that we are created in the image of God. God is the Source of all blessing, and so as we claim that truth, we claim that we are blessing for our world.
Healing, as Sheheen pointed out, may mean acceptance. That sometimes means accepting the reality of limitations that are not going to change. It may mean letting go of the kind of blessing we thought we could offer the world. To be healed, to be made whole, is to recognize that we still have something to offer, to open ourselves to new ways we can be a blessing.
Healing, as Don lifted up, involves forgiveness. It involves choosing not to poison ourselves with our own rage or hate. It involves choosing not to poison the world around us. Instead, we offer blessing.
Community. Claiming wholeness. Acceptance. Forgiveness. Blessing. Each of our five spiritual leaders offered unique insight into the nature of healing. How do these insights speak to your experience of healing, and to your need for healing? Which insights ring true to you? Which challenge you to broaden your vision of healing? Most importantly, which ones call you to open to a new pathway for healing in your life?
God’s healing spirit is at work in our lives and in our world, as surely as the leaves on the trees emerge each spring. Whatever our struggles, whatever illnesses or wounds or limitations we face, God yearns to work through us, offering blessing to our world.
May the Source of Strength, who blessed the ones before us, help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing. And let us say Amen.