In our intercessions today (as we do every week)– we will be praying for people who are sick – praying because we wish Jesus to make them well.
If you read the Quran you will find something surprising. The Quran refers on multiple occasions to the miracles that Jesus performed – to him healing the blind, healing a lepper and even to Jesus raising people from the dead. But when it comes to Muhammed no miracles are records. Later legends attribute some miracles to their prophet, but the Quran doesn’t and indeed implies the opposite when it “They say: ‘Why are not signs sent down to him from his Lord?’ Say: ‘The signs are only with Allah, and I am only a plain warner.’ [1]
Its not just the Quran that refers to Jesus performing miracles. Josephus the relatively neutral Jewish historian writing only a few decades after Jesus describes Jesus as “a doer of wonderful deeds” [2] whilst a more hostile Jewish document , the third Century Babylonian Talmud accuses Jesus of “practicing sorcery and leading Israel astray” —ironically affirming that he was known for performing acts that astonished people.
In his polemic On the True Doctrine, the Roman Pagan Celsus claimed Jesus learned magical arts in Egypt and used them to perform miracles. [3]
It seems that the association of miracles with the person of Jesus is an ancient one. Even his enemies accept weird stuff happened around him – they just attribute it to the Occult and to sourcery rather than to God.
It’s in that context that we hear today’s Gospel reading –
Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God
[Luke 10:10-13]
For those of us living in a modern western context – this can be a bit problematic – but miracles are very much a part of Jesus’s ministry.In deed the point of today's Gospel is that Jesus caused a stir – not by anything he said – but by what he did. By the fact he did something and healed the woman on the Sabbath.
The fact that Jesus performed miracles tells us something about Jesus. Not just that he is God – but about what sort of God he is.
But before I come back to that, lets flash forward three centuries to the great theologian St Augustine of Hippo. You may have heard of him? Even if you don't know what he wrote, he's quite a famous name.
Well, before St Augustine was a Christian, he was a philosopher, a neo Platonist. He was initially drawn into Christianity by Platonist leaning Christians. And as a Platonist he had a bit of a suspicion of miracles. Why would a spiritual get involved in our messy physical problems that needed healing. According to Platonists, Spiritual was the opposit of that messy physical stuff. Augustine could just about cope with the idea of Jesus performing miracles – perhaps they were needed to prove Jesus’s divinity to onlookers – but he was deeply uncomfortable with the idea that they might still happen in his own day.
Perhaps because he didn’t realise that miracles aren’t just there for Jesus to tell he is God, but for him to tell us what sort of God he is.
However the longer St Augustine was a Christian- the more real life confronted him with the fact that God was healing people.
“I realized how many miracles were occurring in our own day and which were so like the miracles of old, and how wrong it would be to allow the memory of these marvels of divine power to perish from among our people. It is only two years ago that the keeping of records was begun here in Hippo, and already, at this writing we have nearly seventy attested miracles.” [4]
Don’t get me wrong St Augustine was very clear that these things were rare- if they happened all the time they wouldn’t be miracles – but he is very clear that they were happening.
Here are a few he recounts -
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“In the … city of Carthage lived Innocentia, a very devout woman of the highest rank in the state. She had cancer in one of her breasts, a disease which, as physicians say, is incurable. Ordinarily, therefore, they either amputate, and so separate from the body the member on which the disease has seized, or, that the patient's life may be prolonged a little, though death is inevitable even if somewhat delayed, they abandon all remedies, following, as they say, the advice of Hippocrates. This the lady we speak of had been advised to by a skillful physician, who was intimate with her family; and she betook herself to God alone by prayer. On the approach of Easter, she was instructed in a dream to wait for the first woman that came out from the baptistery after being baptized, and to ask her to make the sign of Christ upon her sore. She did so, and was immediately cured. The physician who had advised her to apply no remedy if she wished to live a little longer, when he had examined her after this, and found that she who, on his former examination, was afflicted with that disease was now perfectly cured, eagerly asked her what remedy she had used, anxious, as we may well believe, to discover the drug which should defeat the decision of Hippocrates. But when she told him what had happened, he is said to have replied, with religious politeness, though with a contemptuous tone, and an expression which made her fear he would utter some blasphemy against Christ, I thought you would make some great discovery to me. She, shuddering at his indifference, quickly replied, What great thing was it for Christ to heal a cancer, who raised one who had been four days dead?”
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“A gouty doctor of the same city, when he had given in his name for baptism, and had been prohibited the day before his baptism from being baptized that year, by black woolly-haired boys who appeared to him in his dreams, and whom he understood to be devils, and when, though they trod on his feet, and inflicted the acutest pain he had ever yet experienced, he refused to obey them, but overcame them, and would not defer being washed in the laver of regeneration, was relieved in the very act of baptism, not only of the extraordinary pain he was tortured with, but also of the disease itself, so that, though he lived a long time afterwards, he never suffered from gout; and yet who knows of this miracle? We, however, do know it, and so, too, do the small number of brethren who were in the neighborhood, and to whose ears it might come.”
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“When the bishop Projectus was bringing the relics of the most glorious martyr Stephen to the waters of Tibilis, a great concourse of people came to meet him at the shrine. There a blind woman entreated that she might be led to the bishop who was carrying the relics. He gave her the flowers he was carrying. She took them, applied them to her eyes, and immediately saw. Those who were present were astounded, while she, with every expression of joy, preceded them, pursuing her way without further need of a guide.”
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In my own 25 years of ministry I wouldn’t say I have seen 70 mircles like St Augustine – but I have certainly seen several dramatic answers to prayer – that it would not be unfair to call miraculous
In the 2019 On Fire Conference my friend Angela Southern stood up and shared her testimony about her cancer. Her cancer was very severe. She was going need first radiotherapy to shrink the lump then surgery to remove it and then possibly ongoing treatment. It was going to be a hard slog. Well while the radiotherapy was going on, her friends were praying for her. Well it came to her operation. They went to remove the tumour - and it was totally gone. The doctors couldn’t believe it. The radiotherapy should have made a little bit of a difference - but not that much. [5]
Or there’s Mandy Pratt who each year brings a group to the Walsingham Youth Pilgrimage. A couple of years back she stood up to share her testimony at the Youth Pilgrimage. She had been diagnosed with severe irreversible Macular degeneration. She was told that in a matter of months or years she would be blind. She was devastated. She began to feel very low and depressed. Her friend became very worried about Mandy’s state of mind. She persuaded Mandy to come with her one quite weekend to Walsingham to ask Our Lady to pray for her. They were jist hoping that the prayer would give Mandy a sense of peace and lift her spirits.
It’s a powerful place Walsingham and when we join our prayers not just with those of Mary but with centuries of pilgrims, there is power in the prayer. And as hands were laid on Mandy, a deep sense of peace came over her. That’s what her friend had wanted - that her sense of devastation would go away and she would be in peace. But the Holy Spirit didn’t leave it there. Mandy went back to see her doctor who did another test and couldn’t believe his eyes. There was no trace of the Macular degeneration at all. Apart from a little bit of short sightedness, there was nothing wrong with her eyes whatsoever.
I could share many of other stories of shall we say “God incidences” – not where people were healed [click finger] “just like that” – but rather the doctors said the outlook was not good, we prayed for them – they received medical care and the result was way better or quicker than it should have been. I think of Rita who left it way too late to go to the doctors about what at some level she knew to be cancer or Terri who got a very aggressive cancer as a young mum – and yet with prayer both slowly and gradually recovered in way the doctors did not think they would….
When we pray for people in our intercessions today – I think that is what we are most of the time expecting – not that “click fingers” they are better just like that – but that treatment will work and God will restore them to fulness of health.
And that I think is part of what today’s reading reveals about Jesus. He cares about the woman. She is a daughter of Abraham and her wants her to be free of her burden, while the Synagogue official only wants her to be healed in the proper way – not on the sabbath.
Sometimes I have come across people who don’t want to be prayed for in their local church – because they have somehow tragically been given the impression that if they are not healed they would be letting down the people praying for them. And certainly sometimes over enthusiastic Christians can give the impression we are much more interested in a dramatic miracle than we are in the person getting better. Like the synagogue official who is happy with the woman bent double being healed – so long as its “done in the right way”.
But Jesus is only interested in the woman. In what sets her free. When we pray for people we should not care whether the healing happens [click fingers] or slowly and gradually under the care of doctors. What we should care about is that the person becomes better.
When Jesus heals people it is not just proof that he is God – but proof of what sort of God he is. He is not a distant God setting rules and regulations and then getting angry when people don’t follow them – like the God of the Synagogue official. No he is a God who comes down among us into the hurt and pain of this woman’s life – and restores her to health . Think of the lepper in that other story, a lepper who has not felt human touch for years. And what sort of God is Jesus ? Does he go [acting very standoffish as if repulsed by the lepper] “be healed”. No the lepper feels God’s arms reach out and embrace, touch him as says in loving voice “Be healed” – this is the sort of God we have who cares for us.
But of course – we have to deal with the elephant in the room. Why is it that we pray and pray and pray for Terri and Rita – and their cancers go away, but we pray and pray and pray for Cheryl, and the cancer doesn’t go away and she dies?
I have heard people preach sometimes as if when Jesus was around everyone got healed and if we had the same faith, everyone would be healed today. But if you read the bible, not everyone is healed.
When Jesus goes to the Pool of Siloam in John Chapter 9 he comes comes across a man lying by the pool. When Jesus talks to him, the man says he wants to get into the healing waters – but there is no one to help him in, and there are so many other sick people around the pool and someone else gets in first. And Jesus takes pity on him and heals him. But what of the other people lying around the pool?. So many sick people and only one of them is healed. Why is it that not everyone we pray for is healed?
Why?
Don’t think I don’t wrestle with the answer. Don’t think that when St Augustine recorded those 70 miracles he hadn’t also seen people he loved and prayed for not healed.
Our world is broken, and disease is part of that brokeness.
God comes into our broken world in the form Jesus. And by the ways he acts he shows what the world will be like – when one day there is no more mourning nor crying nor pain any more. But we are not at that day yet. The world remains broken. When Jesus walks the earth and heals people – he shows that this pain and suffering is not how the world is meant to be. Just as in todays Gospel he shows that putting rules before human beings is not how the world is meant to be. Or in the lepper healed he shows that rejection and shunning are not part of how the world is meant to be. All these are like trailers of film that we are yet watch – a foretaste, but not yet the full reality when it shall all be put right “when there is no more mourning nor crying nor pain anymore” [Rev 21:4]
We pray in our intercessions today, because it is worth it, because it makes a difference. We pray because we care, like Jesus cares. But even as we rejoice in the answers to prayer that we DO see, we carry the pain of those we see unhealed. Just as Jesus does too. And in the meantime, we keep praying.
Amen
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[1] Quran, Surah Al-Ankabut (29:50–51):
[2] Josephus,Antiquities of the Jews (Book 18.3.3). There are some manuscripts of Josephus that appear to say very proChristian things – but most scholars believe those have been edited later by Christians. However this basic reference to Jesus as an alleged miracle worker is believed to be original.
[3] preserved in a quotation by Origen in Contra Celsum
[4] extracts from St Augustine’s City of God Book XX11 chapter 8
[5]https://onfiremission.org/
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