I don’t know if any of you have ever seen the Steve Martin Film “leap of Faith” from the early 90s. It perhaps perpetuates the stereotypes that many non-christians would have about the Christian healing ministry.
Steve Martin portrays a travelling pentecostal faith healer called Jonas Nightengale. he wears a sharp suit. He has a typical; American Pentecostal choir. He preaches in a packed tent. The worship is clearly evangelical in style . He preaches in a packed tent. His preaching is loud with a lot of shouting.
The films actually interesting because Jonas starts the movie as conman - doing all this Christian stuff just to take people’s money. And then a boy called Boyd, the brother of the girl Jonas fancies , comes forward for prayer. Boyd can’t walk. Jonas is desperate not to let Boyd come forward because he isn’t one of his plants and he can’t fake a healing - but much to Jonas’s total amazement God actually does heal Boyd and Jonas the conman preacher is converted to Christ.
But aside from that interesting stuff about Jonas the conman being converted - there is a stereotype there that all healing ministry is big glitzy loud and evangelical.
What about those of us who don’t come from that sort of church?
My first experience of the healing ministry was again in a big trendy evangelical Anglican Student church in the early 90s. It was a place with a Sunday congregation of over 600. It was a place with little liturgy. Clergy rarely wore robes. Communion wasn’t celebrated that often. Yet here it was that I first experienced the healing ministry in a very moving way.
I remember a young ordinand who had come from HTB describing powerfully how healing ministry had begun there. How the AMerican preacher John Wimber had turned up and had a small setting with not many people present, had had a word of knowledge that a couple there with infertility would conceive a child. This being knightsbridge and people not talking about that sort of thing, a highly embarrassed couple sidled forward to admit this was their problem. John Wimber prayed for them and 9 months later a baby was born.
And the ordinand there began to share words of knowledge and I saw people there being healed. this being a student church, people weren’t suffering from particularly life threatening illnesses, but they were healed and I saw it happen. I remember a friend called Mark for example who had really badly sprained his leg and was hobbling and could not walk properly - and just like that he was healed.
But this was a big trendy evangelical student church. What about those of us who go to churches that aren’t like that?
How many of us go to churches that have under 150 people on a Sunday?
Ok, and whatever our own personal spirituality, how many of us go to churches which might be described as high of centre? anglo-catholic? sacramental?
So the stereotype is that healing ministry is only for churches that are “not like ours”. I want to suggest the opposite. That churches like ours, churches that have the mass, communion, the eucharist every Sunday, where robes are worn and candles are lit - that healing ministry should be there, and that if it isn’t, it is like … that missing piece [have a giant jigsaw piece] that when you put it in the picture is completed. Without it there is a hole, and with it, the picture is completed.
Long before evangelical churches got involved in the ministry of healing, it was anglo-catholic churches that first rediscovered it.
It began with this stuff [hold up Holy Oil]
at the end of the 19th century priests were going around praying with dying people. And following centuries old tradition, they would get out their Holy Oil and anoint the dying person. And then some of them began thinking “hang on, what’s going on here?” Because now we are only anointing people when it’s too late - but back in the early church and back in the letter of James, people were anointed not because they were goners but as a sign of hope - as an act of prayer for healing. And so around a hundred years ago a number of priests began healing services. in those days it would only be priests doing it. there would be laying on of hands and anointing with oil for healing. organisations like the guild of health and the guild of st raphael were started. places like walsingham began pilgrimages of healing.
In fact you have probably heard of Walsingham and Lourdes and Fatima, but there is a wonderful little place in South Africa called the shrine of Our Lady of Nongome, where in the 1950s a nun had visions of Mary. I don’t think anyone outside of KwaZulu Natal let alone South Africa has heard of it. But if you go there you will find a pin board full of testimonies of people who went there to pray …. and God healed them.
Healing ministry isn’t just something that people like us who happen to go to high churches might happen to get involved with. It is as I said [hold it up] the missing piece of the jigsaw - sacramental christianity makes more sense with healing ministry than it does without.
you see - catholic Christianity - whether we are talking anglo-catholic christianity or roman catholic christianity or assyrian iraqi christianity or ethiopian orthodox christianity or whatever other form - catholic christianity is a very earthy gritty touchy bodily form of Christianity.
After all for us, what is the heart of worship? It is not thinking nice thoughts about Jesus. It is not even singing songs about Jesus.For us it is meeting Jesus in bread and wine - that moment that is like God hugging us and telling us he loves us, that very physical moment of God touching us in bread and wine.
For Catholic Christians, whether Anglican, Roman or other, the whole gospel is very earthy, gritty, touchy, bodily.
First God creates the world with it’s waterfalls and babies smiles and buttercups and smell of freshly ground coffee …. and he looks at it, and behold it is very good.
But then through sin and selfishness the fall happens. And it is not just us human beings who are affected. The whole of creation goes ajar. we see it in the modern example of climate damage. But the Christian tradition tells us it goes further than that. Illness and earthquakes, tsunamis and childhood cancers - are not part of God’s will for the world. They are part of the brokenness that has in some sense come about through the fall.
So what does God do about it? He comes born bodily as a human being and lives among, he eats with people and heals the bodily sick. And then to redeem us, to take the consequences of our actions, God dies bodily on the cross.
Three days later he rises - yes you are get it - he rises bodily from the dead.
40 days later - as we celebrated on Thursday - as a sign of taking our humanity to the right hand of God, Jesus bodily ascends into heaven
And at the last day we are told he will return bodily to raise bodily from the grave and give us new bodies in heaven.
The second century Christian St Irenaeus was arguing with a bunch of nutters known as the gnostics. They thought all that was important was what was up here (point to our heads). I think their idea of heaven was a bit like one of those aliens in Star Trek that is a disembodied cloud of a mind floating in space.
Irenaeus’s key argument against the gnostics - why would Jesus bother healing people’s bodies if he didn’t think our bodies were important. That’s most of what Jesus does in the New Testament - healing the lame, healing the blind, healing the deaf, healing people with skin diseases that meant no one would touch them, healing paralysed people, healing people with embarressing bleeding diseases. So says Irenaeus why would Jesus bother healing people’s bodies if he didn’t think our bodies were important?
And Jesus still thinks our bodies are important - which is why he still heals people today.
Our worship as catholics is very physical. Churches full of incense, robes, servers, statues, the blessed sacrament, stained glass windows and more. Even if we are only praying by ourselves for someone - chances are, we light a candle to pray for them.
And when we come to offer prayer ministry, we pray for people’s inner and emotional needs - but we pray also for their physical needs, and we do so not just with words - but with centuries old symbols, such as laying of hands and anointing with oil.
