Scripture Mark
2:1-12
A few days later,
when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come
home.
They gathered in such
large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and
he preached the word to them.
Some men came,
bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.
Since they could not
get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above
Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying
on.
When Jesus saw their
faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Now some teachers of
the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves,
“Why does this fellow
talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Immediately Jesus
knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and
he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things?
Which is easier: to
say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take
your mat and walk’?
But I want you to
know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So
he said to the man,
“I tell you, get up,
take your mat and go home.”
He got up, took his
mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they
praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
Here ends this reading of the Word of God for the
People of God. Thanks be to God!
Let us pray: “Holy Spirit, take my words and speak
to each of us according to our need. Amen.”
Message Why
Healing?
This is our first healing service
since I began serving you at Trinity Christian UCC. Welcome to our inaugural
healing service. This type of worship service is a little foreign to us,
Protestants of the Mainline Churches. I checked my books of worship this
week. The United Church of Christ book
of worship has an order of worship to use at the time of dying. But, it doesn’t
have an order for healing. The UCC comes from a merger of two other
denominations. The Congregational-Christian book of Worship just has funeral
services, not healing services. The Evangelical and Reformed Book of Worship
has an order for the Visitation of the Sick which includes prayers for the
restoration of health. But, it contained no worship outlines for services like
we are at today, worship services where we ask God’s Holy Spirit to work within
us, to heal our bodies, our minds and our spirits.
For many of us, inviting God to heal
us has been a private affair. We pray for healing. We pray that others will be
restored to health. We pray that God’s Holy Spirit will guide and lead us. But,
when we talk to God with these prayers, we often do so either privately or in
the midst of a Sunday morning worship service that is not exclusively focused
on healing.
When Jesus sent his disciples out two
by two, he commanded them to heal in his name. Healing was major part of what
Jesus did. Jesus healed people of blindness, bleeding, deafness, leprosy, and
all other sicknesses. Jesus restored people to health who were on the verge of
death. Jesus healed people with injuries and Jesus healed people born with
physical disabilities. Jesus healed Jewish people, and Syrophoenician people,
and Roman people, and Greek people, and Samaritan people. Healing was part of
what Jesus did, along with teaching, preaching, baptizing and miracle working.
And, one of the acts Jesus told his
followers to continue after he was no longer able to live among them was to go
out into the world and heal people. The
Apostles were able to invite the Holy Spirit to work within sick people to
restore them to mental and physical health. In his letter to the early
Christians who lived in Corinth, St. Paul said that the Holy Spirit of God
distributes a variety of gifts to the followers of Christ. These gifts all work
for the common good of the Christian people – some Christians are given the
gifts of healing by the Holy Spirit. So,
peppered among the people of the church are individuals who have the gift of
healing.
We have all met people who are called
by God into a vocation of healing. In
our midst are nurses and doctors, physical therapists and speech therapists,
counsellors and dentists, massage therapists and respiratory therapists. We
know God works through people who God calls into vocations of healing.
But, in addition to God working
through modern-day healers, we also need to set aside time to invite the Holy
Spirit of God to be in our midst while we gather it this place of worship. Here
we are invited to come together and ask God to heal us. We come together to lay our burdens at the
feet of God. We come together to invited the power of God’s Holy Spirit to heal
our bodies, our minds and our spirits. We come together to ask God to transform
us – to change us so that we are restored to wholeness in our spirits and in
our bodies.
Tonight, I pray we will each leave
this place feeling better. I pray we will each leave this place knowing we are
not going out alone because the Holy Spirit of God goes with us. I pray we will
feel refreshed and restored, that our burdens will be lifted from our shoulders
and we will know that we are God’s beloved, precious children, forgiven and
cherished, and free from the burdens that plague us.
May it be so. Amen.
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