A Homily on Healing

Isaiah 11.6- 9

Romans 8:18-25

James 5:13-16

Does God heal today? My Christadelphian in-laws would say a clear No. They believe that miracles of healing were only for the early church, and that we are now in what they call a different dispensation. On the other hand, some out and out charismatics would say a resounding Yes. They claim to have witnessed dramatic healings through prayer and laying on of hands, which is what we are going to do today.

I’m going to sound like a fence-sitter here but I want to say Yes and No. The best way I can explain this is to tell a few stories.

Story one. When I was last working for Third Way magazine, my editor, T, got leukaemia. This was his second battle with cancer: the first had been 12 years earlier when he had had Hodgkin’s Disease. He went through chemotherapy with some success, but abnormal cells were still showing up. At this point the doctors didn’t know what to do with him, because only seven other people in the country had had the combination of diseases he had had, and the other six were dead. So they decided to just zap him with a bit more chemo and see what happened. And amazingly, he got better. And although he once told me he didn’t think he’d see forty, he’s still around today at the age of 56. He travels all round the world teaching radio management, and last year I went to his ordination into the Anglican ministry.

T is a popular man, and there were people all round the country, probably all round the world, praying for him. So was he healed by prayer or by medicine? I don’t know, and I don’t think he does. In a way, does it matter? If we thought only medicine could heal, those of us who prayed would still have prayed for him. The important thing is that he was healed. And God created medical researchers and doctors as well as calling us to pray.

So I suppose the first thing I want to say about healing is that we will always want to pray for it, and that God honours our prayers. That passage from James, 5:13-16, tells us that. Now for another few stories.

Stories two: An old friend of mine had Crohn’s disease, which causes chronic inflammation of the intestines. She was even due to have an operation to remove part of her bowel. Then one evening she was praying with friends in a general sort of way and she felt a strange warmth in her abdomen. All the symptoms of Crohn’s completely disappeared.

I also knew another young woman who was a talented musician but was crippled by juvenile arthritis. At only about twenty, she could only walk with a stick, and was becoming unable to play her violin. Again, she and others prayed and miraculously her arthritis disappeared. She went on to have a good career, playing in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Thirdly, the story of the writer Jennifer Rees Larcombe is fairly well known. She had been in a wheelchair for 8 years with ME or CFS. Eventually she had a strong conviction that she would be healed by prayer. About three months later she was speaking at an event and after her talk she went up to a young woman in the audience and said ‘I think you’re the person who’s meant to pray for me’. The young woman was a bit nonplussed as she’s only been a Christian a short time. But she prayed for Jennifer, and Jennifer got up out of her wheelchair and walked. That night she was up till midnight baking a cake and standing on a table to put up decorations for her daughter’s birthday.

Stories like this are rare, but many of us have encountered them. And I think because of them we can say that yes, God does sometimes heal miraculously. The one who made the laws of nature is free to override them sometimes. And this is a phenomenon not confined to the New Testament or the Gospels.

However - I hate to say it but to be honest I have to add a ‘But’. We all know people who have had hundreds of sincere prayers said for and by them, but have not been healed of illness. This side of the grave, there are no guarantees. A few are healed, many are not. We don’t know why - that’s God’s prerogative. Perhaps we could say that God can heal, God does heal, but God doesn’t have to heal. There’s no divine slot machine which will come up with the goods if we put in the right words.

And that’s in keeping with God’s role as a father. Children often ask for things that, for various reasons, they can’t have - and it’s not always possible for them to understand the parent’s reasons for saying No. Yet every good parent would want their child to keep on asking.

Stories three. Finally, I want briefly to tell my own story. As some of you know, when we first came to this church Ed and I were trying for a baby. It had been two years, and nothing had happened, and in fact soon after we came here I had a breakdown with the stress of it all. I knew I was in a safe place to have one.

Then both of us read Dr Kenneth McAll’s book Healing the Family Tree, and we both independently concluded that we should have a service of healing focused on my maternal grandmother, who died in a concentration camp. My grandmother was actually infertile herself, or her husband was, so my mother was adopted.

After about a year of investigating our family trees, we held the service in the chapel of the London Mennonite Centre. As it happened, just before the date we’d set, I found there was a weekend on healing the family tree at the Grail retreat centre, so I went to that as well. And lo and behold, soon after the service I began to feel sick, and amazingly, it turned out I was pregnant. In fact I believe John was conceived between the healing weekend and the service.

Now here’s another ‘but’. I had a baby, but I don’t believe exactly that my infertility was healed. It was a one-off: three years later I got pregnant again, but lost the baby after 10 weeks. And of course John turned out to have special needs, and I haven’t been healed of my depression despite asking many times - both of which make bringing up John harder. Meanwhile, my friend, who was healed of Crohn’s Disease, went on to develop anorexia when she lost both her parents within three months of each other. And my former boss T has diabetes caused by all the treatment he’s had. And author Jennifer Rees Larcombe’s husband left her for another woman after many years of marriage and six children.

Complete healing from everything that hurts and limits us is not something we can have in this life. We’re all going to die at some time, of something. Ultimately, though, God’s plan is to heal the whole of creation, as portrayed in the passages we read from Isaiah and Romans. Perhaps sometimes, our illnesses or flaws or disabilities are what make us into people who can participate in healing the world. The important thing is that we know we worship and follow a healing God; and whether the immediate answer is Yes or No, God will never rebuke us for asking. So let’s ask.