Why Bother ... with Healing Prayer?
The Rev. Connie Frierson
James 5:13-18 The Prayer of Faith
Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.
Why Bother ... with Healing Prayer, Preached 1-27-13 by The Rev. Connie Frierson
We are asking the question, “Why bother?” in this sermon series. And we are asking that of lots of religious practices. We have asked, “Why bother with worship? Why bother with reading the bible?” So this morning we are asking why bother with healing prayer? So I thought I would start with a tale of two women. Their stories will help us see why we are so doubtful about prayer and whether or not it works. It shows how we struggle to see God involved in everything of life.
These two women were very dear to me. One I had known all my life the other I knew really only two months. Nora- (not her real name) was a wonderful faithful woman. In many ways she set an example for me of how to deal with adversity, how to trust God, how to live and act with kindness. Perhaps one of the most wonderful things she taught me was how to be happy, really happy, even if the externals of life weren’t exactly what we wanted. As Nora grew older she moved into a nursing home and I visited her about once a week. One afternoon I walked into her room and I knew that this visit would be different from any other visit. Nora was in her dying time. I had been through many health crises with Nora, but I knew this one was different. I called home and told my husband that I needed to stay with Nora and asked if he could care for the kids. And so I stayed.
All of us have an idea of how we would like to die. We picture it with dignity. We see death coming gently to us as we are surrounded by loved ones. Perhaps poignant words of love are said at the last. Maybe we hope to see the light of Christ coming towards us or departed loved ones welcoming us home…. Well none of that happened. This was a gritty, panting, painful, sweaty, agitated transition from living to dead. I sat with Nora and tried to hold her hand, but she was in such distress she couldn’t be touched. I tried to read the bible but to tell the truth I couldn’t find the right passages and it just seemed annoying. It was a hard, painful death. Nora struggled so to breath. It was hours of slow suffocation, as her lungs became more water logged. It was terrible. I badgered the nurses but it didn’t seem as though they were able to do anything. I asked them again and again. Finally, in desperation I sang old hymns in my silly, thin reedy voice. I sang, “Into the Garden” The Old Rugged Cross” “Amazing Grace” “This Little Light of Mine” and “Jesus Loves Me” I sang every word of God’s love I could remember. After about the 10th time through “Into the Garden” one of the nurses brought me a dusty old hymnal, (probably out preservation for the little sanity she had left.) Those imperfect, songs in my marginal voice were the prayers that seemed to reach Nora. Her breathing was still agonizing but she seemed calmer. I did lots of prayer that night. The prayer was to relieve this suffering. Eventually Nora’s suffering was lifted and she died. But I thought God was acting about five hours too late.
Years passed and I became a hospice volunteer. One of the reasons I became a volunteer was that Hospice knows how to make people more comfortable. Doctors can really know how to fight disease. Nursing Homes can be good with the chronic problems of aging. But often neither knows about palliative end of life care. Hospice does. I volunteered with Helen at Passivant. But I almost didn’t meet Helen. I got a call from the Hospice office asking me to visit a woman named Helen. And I said, “No, I’m too busy.” A week later, Graham asked me if I would be willing to visit a woman named Helen. And I said, “No, I’m too busy.” Then a week later, a friend of mind mentioned that I really should meet a woman named Helen. At that point I figured God was talking to me. I called Hospice and I became Helen’s visitor.
Our first visits were really fun. Helen had worked in publishing for years and specialized in children’s books. I was reading Harry Potter to her and we were having a ball. But on my third visit everything changed. I came in and she was in terrible distress. Drenched in sweat, chest pains couldn’t breath. Helen looked like a flashback to that terrible night with Nora. I called home to Al again and said I would be late. That I needed to stay. It was so similar to Nora. But this time I was really more forceful with the nurses. I got them to call the doctor and get authorization for stronger narcotics. I bathed Helen’s face with cool cloths and massaged her hands. She turned to me and she said, “I was praying that you would come and you did. God answered my prayer.” It wasn’t what Helen said it was how she said it. She was extreme, concentrated intensity, all or nothing, completely in this moment. I was with Helen that day. She died peacefully. She had the answer to her prayer.
This tale of two women points out the terrible difficulty with prayer and particularly healing prayer. We pray in times of dire extreme need. We focus intensely on the only answer that we want to hear from God. And if that event, healing, moment or sign doesn’t happen then we are baffled, hurt or angry. Does prayer work? Or are we fools. Does prayer change what is outside of us, or does it only change us? If God knows everything then why pray at all, doesn’t he know what we want or need anyway? Those are the questions. Prayer? Why bother?
We bother because healing prayer does work. It always works. But now always in ways we understand or want. In the past twenty years there has been an explosion of studies to prove or disprove the power of prayer. Even ten years ago there were over 130 controlled studies on intercessory prayer, greater than half show prayer had significant effect, 250 studies show religious practice promotes health. The majority of these double blind studies show positive results. But the results still refuse to line up to neatly. So skeptics still get to doubt and believers still get to believe. If you read this literature what you see is that Healing Prayer is a wild card. It appears to do good but they can’t predict it. This reminds me of how the Scots think of the Holy Spirit. The Celtic Spirituality sees the Holy Spirit not as the gentle dove coming down from heaven. But more like the wild goose, loud and brash and with a mind and movement all of it’s own. We want to call in Healing prayer like precision-guided bombs, a surgical strike behind enemy lines. But the wild goose has a direction that we don’t always know or predict. We have no idea how or where or when the healing will take place.
This reminds me of the Story of Sister Mary. Sister Mary was a catholic nun and teacher. She lived in community and had terrible pain in her ankles from arthritis. Sister Mary was rather shy and restrained and the thought of asking for healing prayer was not her cup of tea. But the pain in her ankles prodded her to give this a try. So she met with a healing prayer group and they prayed for her ankles. But in the end her ankles still hurt. But her ear that had been deaf since childhood was healed. She could hear more easily without straining and it made teaching and interacting with other people so much easier. She had no idea that this was a problem, but once she heard better she could live and talk and listen better. But her ankles still hurt. So she went back to the healing prayer group. They prayed for poor sister Mary’s ankles, but nope. They still hurt. But the arthritis in her elbows was so much better. She was able to go to the board in the classroom without that little pang of pain that she had even failed to notice. That little pain meant every time she went to the board, she scowled. The kids saw that and they scowled. But Sister Mary’s ankles still hurt. Later the healing prayer group prayed again, but no ankle healing. Only a marvelous sense of God’s love infused Sister Mary and energized her work. She started to look at her students with a little of that love that she felt God had towards her. It made all the difference. Her work as a teacher was more playful, more joyous, and more compassionate. But, Sister Mary still has sore ankles. But if you ask her she will just say they haven’t been healed yet.
We have lots of problems with our conditions and expectations not being met by healing prayer. So I think some of the guidelines offered by Tilda Norberg and Robert Webber might be helpful. Tilda is an ordained Methodist minster and therapist. Robert Webber is also a minister and together they wrote together a book called "Stretch Out Your Hand; Exploring Healing Prayer." Here are some of their points.
1. Christian healing is not magic. It is not manipulating God to do what we want; rather, it is surrendering to God’s healing work in us.
What a disappointment. I really want magic. We all do, because magic gives us the illusion of controlling the uncontrollable. We crave magic like we crave great wealth or winning the lottery. We think, “ahhh then I will be safe” But the only safe place in the vast universe is the center of God’s will. So healing prayer opens us up to what God will do. We in fact are opening our arms. Giving up what we want to ask God for healing. We can pray specifically and concretely. But then we watch and wait expectantly and expansively.
2. Christian faith for healing is not a prediction of what God will do; it is simple trust that God loves us and is at work in us already.
Thank goodness we don’t have to predict. This is where we fall and fail. We want the certainty of prediction but God wants the relationship of trust. Predicting the future smacks of that same magical thinking that we slip into about our needs. But the uncertainty of what will happen next requires us to be open, flexible and trusting.
Thank Goodness that our healing doesn’t depend on our faith alone. While Jesus occasionally commends a person’s faith it isn’t required. Over two thirds of Jesus healings make no mention of the person’s faith. While sometimes Jesus has said, “Your faith has made you well.” Most of the time there is not mention of faith. Some even confess doubt. Remember the father who cried out, “I believe. Help my unbelief.” This is a great burden lifted from our shoulders. Do you recall the Disney version of Peter Pan? I recall sitting on the floor of my childhood living room on a Sunday night watching Wald Disney at the age of four. In one scene Tinker Bell is dying. Oh! No! We must save Tink! And everyone has to believe in magic and clap his or her hands or Tinker Bell will die. There I was a little skeptical kid, and maybe I was killing Tinker Bell if I couldn’t muster the proper good thoughts. We too often have the same childish misconception about faith and healing. We think it is our faith that heals. So if we can’t screw up our right beliefs system to a proper intensity, then we are doomed. Thankfully, God is willing to work with us on our faith and to help it grow.
3. Christian healing is not to be sought as a spiritual thrill for the healer or the person healed, but it is a way to grow as a Christian.
Have you noticed we seem to turn about everything into entertainment? Perhaps there is a litmus test for healing prayer that we need to use. What is the tip off that this is human hype and not openness to the divine? If there is a great show of spiritual power, if healing requires special hats, powders, religious kitsch, complicated procedure and money, --- run. How much better it is to turn to your friend in the church, an ordinary person in your community who will seriously and calmly pray and just say, “Could we pray together? Will you pray for me?”
Healing is a process not an entertainment event. And the purpose is growth. Ever wonder what happened to all those lepers Jesus healed? What happened? Did they start a club, form a volleyball team, become the living examples of gratitude and trust and wisdom. They were changed. Healing is transformation – individual, inner and outer, communal, societal. I like to think of them as returning home to become the sages of their villages, just little pools of trust and light for their friends and family.
4. Christian healing is not proof that we are faithful or holy but is a sign of God’s love.
Jesus did mainly two things. He preached and he healed. Both of those things were about bringing the love of God into the world. We are in the process of healing right now. So healing prayer is just as simple as this opening to the divine touch. Allowing us to be healed, emotionally, spiritually and physically. It is healing individually and as a community and even as a world.
I started this talk by sharing the story of the deaths of two women and the prayers that surrounded them. As I look back there was healing in both instances. Sometimes it is healing through medical intervention, sometimes through the passage of time, sometimes miraculously, and sometimes through the passage from this life to the next. In both Nora and Helen’s time God was there. Nora was a woman who would have sacrificed anything for others. Her hard death changed me. It changed my commitment to what is important in life. In a crazy twisted path, I am in ministry because or that night. Perhaps in some way Nora needed to face life and death straight on in this heroic struggle. I don’t know but I am willing to trust that Nora is well. In the same way I am willing to trust that Helen is well. In all Helen’s independent, strong life she had not leaned or depended on others. But in this final time, she needed someone to show her love and God did answer her prayer. When you do healing prayer long enough you come to understand that the people you pray with are well and can be well and that even I am well.
One word of advise, don’t wait to open to healing prayer on the last ditch, what the heck, might as well pray final effort. If you do, you miss out on all the healing in between now and then. Amen.
