God wants us to be well. Do you believe that? I do.
God does not want us to be sick; our gracious, loving, Father has not wished disease upon us, nor has He orchestrated illness to punish us, nor does He target us with sickness in order to judge us. Our God wants us to be well.
If you read through the Scriptures on this point, you will find scores and scores of references to a God who heals, a Lord who provides health and strength, a Father who renews our youth and our health. He is described as one who brings saving health to all nations. He is pictured as one who offers life and strength and vigor and health. God does not want us to be sick.
Please do not get into telling people that their sickness is God’s will; please do not think you will comfort someone by suggesting that God has used them for target practice. Our God wants us to be well.
When the Lord Jesus comes on the scene, the Gospels picture Him everywhere healing; they bring Him, morning, noon, and night, all manner of diseases, and He heals them. Tired bodies find new strength, when Jesus comes. Twisted limbs discover powers long lost, when Jesus arrives. Dim eyes see again, withered hands move again, even death is not a barrier to Him. When Jesus speaks the word, healing comes. God does not want us to be sick. Nothing is more clear than that.
Why, then, is there sickness? Why so much pain and suffering, if our God has willed that we be well? I cannot pretend this morning to give a complete answer to that. No one is wise enough, no one ought to be presumptuous enough, to speak a final word on that question.
But I do want to say that a part of the answer is that our God is too small. The God we think of, the God whom we imagine, is just too small.
What am I saying? A number of years ago the British theologian J. B. Phillips wrote a fascinating little book which he called, "Your God is Too Small". Phillips told us that we do not think about God in large enough terms. We have assumed that God was somehow not interested in all of life, not capable of dealing with all of life. Our God is too small, and that is one reason we do not deal very well with sickness. We have not yet learned to trust God with all of our diseases.
Several years ago one afternoon I was riding home on a Metrobus. Now believe me, the people’s transportation is the Metrobus. That’s where you hear the real man-in-the-street opinions. Not on Metrorail; that’s much too polite and middle-class. They all hide behind their newspapers or read their legal briefs on Metrorail. But on the bus, the everyday folk talk about nearly everything.
And so on this particular day the fellow seated across from me began to chatter to his seat partner and to complain about the Orioles; I think it may have been during the year when they set a record for the number of games lost at the beginning of a season. Anyway, he was complaining bitterly about his team, and ended the rather one-sided conversation with a theological reflection. Said he, "You know, I actually prayed that those bums would lose another game, just so they could set the record. I actually prayed for them to lose, and you know what, they did!"
He got off at the next stop, and his seatmate, a little embarrassed at having to listen to this tirade, smiled at me – I guess I just look like a preacher – and said, "Now, you know, the Lord ain’t interested in baseball"
Well, maybe not, but then again, maybe He is. Maybe our God is large enough to be interested in baseball and in newspapers and in little kids with runny noses and in overdue electrical bills and in just a whole host of things we haven’t thought about. Maybe our God is concerned with all things. And maybe our great God, our large God, is concerned with sickness, and our trouble is that we have not taken the time to acknowledge that.
The truth is, as the Scripture teaches, that whatever concerns us, concerns God. Whatever gives us pain, gives God pain. Whatever gives us joy enhances the joy in the heart of the Father. Our God is a great God. And He wills all things to be right for us. All things.
The psalmist, the one who wrote the 103rd Psalm, saw the greatness of God. His God was not at all a small God. This psalmist wrote in expansive terms about our God. The psalmist’s favorite word, it would seem, is the word all. All: five times in this psalm he speaks of the "allness" of God, the comprehensive love and care of our God. Listen:
"Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the lord, 0 my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. The Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed."
The allness of God, the largeness and the greatness of God: but we have problems with it, don’t we? Our God is too small. We can have a hard time seeing that God is concerned with the allness of our lives.
Now I’d like you to notice with me that three of these ails in Psalm 103 have to do with what God is about, and two of the aIls have to do with our response. Five times, as I’ve said, the adjective all is used in these verses. Three of these times the Psalmist speaks of the awesome, comprehensive care and love of God; and twice he speaks of the allness of our response.
God’s all-caring is described as: forgiving all iniquity, healing all disease, and working justice for all who are oppressed. Forgiving all iniquity, healing all disease, and working justice for all who are oppressed.
Three ways in which God cares for the whole of humanity; and I would suggest that they are closely related. Our God cares about the whole of our lives: the spiritual side, the physical side, the relationship and emotional side. And any when of these is out of whack, the others give in too. Our God wants to heal us wholly, comprehensively, and so He is at work to redeem us in every way that we need to be redeemed: spiritually, physically, and in our relationships.
I wish there were time to think with you more completely about this theme today. All sorts of books have been written on psychosomatic medicine. All kinds of groups have been brought together out of the need to see the whole picture of the human dilemma. In fact, various religious groups have formed around the idea that God wants to heal the whole person.
I hold no brief this morning for Christian Science or for the Seventh-Day Adventists or for other such groups; they have in their creeds many ideas I find strange and not very Biblical. But this I would think we ought to affirm: that they do know that God wants to heal whole persons. We have bodies, yes, but we have spirits and we have relationships and we have emotions, and when caregivers – physicians, nurses, others – see that, then, like God, they can work toward the healing of all diseases.
Many of us have known people whose illnesses had more than just the physical dimension. I particularly remember the story of a man whose arm just refused to work. Nothing that a physician could do, nothing that a physical therapist might undertake, nothing that anybody could do would get that arm functioning again. But the hospital chaplain found out that this gentleman, who was an accountant, had been embezzling from the firm where he worked; and when that came out, and this patient sought and found the forgiveness of God, and not only that, he restored what he had stolen – for God, you see, works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed – when justice and forgiveness came together, then the arm worked perfectly well again.
Some of us have talked just a little about holding healing services in this church – not at all about circumventing the medical professions, and certainly not about some kind of wild-eyed chicanery. You really couldn’t see me slapping somebody up the side of his head and yelling, "Heal", now could you?! But I believe we could do something with integrity to contribute to the healing of all diseases and the forgiveness of all iniquities and the working of justice for all the oppressed. I really do.
You see, in this church you have already experienced, some of you, the wonder of God’s healing. You have felt physician and caregiver and prayer power working together. In the last conversation I had with Mrs. Susie Beebe before her death she showed me her prayer chart, a memento of the way in which this church rallied around her during a previous bout with cancer, and brought her through. She had no doubt that a great God had worked to heal that disease.
He heals all your diseases. Yes, our great God is working toward that. Now it has not all happened yet. Even a prayer warrior like Susie Beebe did succumb. It has not all come about just yet. But that is where our God is headed, and that is where His church ought to be headed, and that is where the medical professions can be pointed.
If you are working toward healing, you do the work of God, and especially if you are able to help a patient deal with his spiritual life and his relationships. He or she is a whole person, and needs to know the power and love of a God who wills the best for him.
If you are doing research, you are doing the work of God, you are thinking God’s thoughts after him, discovering how God has constructed the tiniest of cells and the most intricate of organisms, but you do that not in a vacuum, not just because something called intellectual curiosity drives you. You do it because it is an expression of love for one of the least of these his children. And it will bring healing and health.
And if you are administering some health organization, if you are running an office or supporting a hospital or handling supplies, still you are doing God’s work if in all of that doing you have seen the human dimension. Do not grow weary in well-doing and do not lose touch with the human need out there.
You see, I do not want us to forget the other two alls; three of the psalmist’s alls related to what God is doing. And two of them speak of our response. "Bless the Lord and forget not all his benefits … and all that is within me, bless his holy name." With all of your being, trust a great God, bless him, forget not what He is about, and the day will yet come when He will heal all diseases.
The day will come when He will heal those diseases associated with poor nourishment and with profound hunger; it will come if we will also see that He works justice for all who are oppressed.
The day will come when He will heal all diseases, even those we associate with the abuse of our bodies … drug abuse, alcohol abuse … those diseases in which we see the depth of human sin, for if his church be faithful, our witness to a great and forgiving God, an allness God, will bring all men and women into obedience to Him.
The day will yet come when He will heal all diseases, even cancer and AIDS and all those we have called incurable, if we trust Him and use the minds He has given us.
That day will come because in Jesus the Christ He has tasted all our ills, borne all our diseases, suffered all our pain, and known even our death. But in Jesus the Christ He has also risen from the grave and has pointed us toward that day when He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more; behold, He makes all things, all things new.
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, 0 my soul, and forget not all – all – all his benefits." "For He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities [and yet], with His stripes we are healed."
