The Church's Healing Ministry
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THE CHURCH’S HEALING MINISTRY
The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 29, 2024
Are any among you suffering? Are any among you sick? You should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. (James 5)
The late Fred Craddock was a well-known Methodist preacher and theologian who seems to be the originator of the following story. A wise and seasoned minister received word that an older member of his church was at the hospital, gravely ill, and asking for prayers. The minister hurried off, ready to comfort a faithful servant of the Lord in her last hour. He arrived at the patient’s room, and found that she was indeed frail, weak, and apparently not long for the world. He took her by the hand, and told her not to be afraid. He would begin the Prayers for the Dying.
Suddenly the woman’s eyes opened, and with all the strength she could muster she whispered, “Prayers for the Dying? I don’t want Prayers for the Dying. I want you to pray for healing.” The minister swallowed hard because he knew that God’s healing, though not impossible, was quite improbable at this stage in the woman’s life. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to argue with a dying person, so he offered the following safe, lame, lukewarm prayer: O God, if it would please you to make our sister well again, we ask that you restore her to health. But … whether you heal her or not, let us know your presence in her suffering. Amen.
When the prayer was finished, the woman slowly lifted her head off the pillow. She sat up. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and finally stood up. She said, “You know, I think it worked! I think I’m healed!” She walked across the floor, out the hospital room door, and bounded down the corridor yelling, “I’m healed, I’m healed!”
Back at his car again, the minister sat behind the wheel for a long, long time without turning over the ignition. Finally, he looked up to heaven and said directly to God: “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
Today’s reading from the Epistle of James (5:13-20) gives us an important look at the life of an early church. What church? We don’t really know. The author addresses the letter to “the twelve tribes of the Dispersion. Who wrote the letter? We don’t know that either. Some say it was James of Jerusalem, the brother of Jesus. Others say it couldn’t have been James. The Greek is too refined for an uneducated man who spoke Aramaic. What is more, it seems to be not even a letter, but more a collection of teachings, even a list of do’s and don’ts. Nevertheless, what we find in the passage we’ve read today is how a church ought to function in regards to illness and healing. The author, whoever it was, exudes confidence in the healing gifts the church has to offer those who are ill. The question for us today is, are the same gifts still on offer? And if so, do we have confidence in them?
Are any among you suffering? Are any among you sick? You should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. The first thing we see here is the church community working to keep itself knit together. The Offertory anthem that the choir will sing today has to be one of the finest choral motets of the 20th century:
Draw us in the Spirit’s tether,
For when humbly in thy name,
Two or three are met together,
Thou art in the midst of them.
Alleluya! Alleluya!
Touch we now thy garment’s hem.
I remember singing the anthem when I was a young chorister. It speaks of the healing that is possible when we are in the presence of Jesus, as if we can reach out in faith and touch the hem of his garment, as did the hemorrhaging woman, who was healed (Mark 5:21-43). Thus, as we read in James, it is imperative that we keep those who are sick within reach – that they not wind up isolated from the others. In fact, the sick themselves should play an active role in sending for the elders – the elders being the priests.
So the healing ministry of the church comes to fruition in the Christian community, where two or three gather together in the name of Jesus, and pray over and for the sick. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, writes James. Also, according to James, what we see here is a congregation immersed in the Word – in the Scriptures. Note how he mentions Elijah, without having to explain who Elijah was. Many people, then and now, become discouraged with prayer, concluding that only saints and seers can do it effectively. But James calls on the Scriptures to remind us that Elijah, whose prayers were plenty effective, was just an ordinary human being like us. Therefore, all of us ordinary people can persevere in prayer with and for the sick.
Thirdly, James writes of another essential component of the church’s healing ministry: anointing with holy oil. It’s here that I wish to spend a few moments of our time today, because over the years I’ve encountered a good bit of confusion, even suspicion over the church’s use of holy oil. What is it? Quite simply, it is olive oil, blessed by a priest or bishop of the church. In the time and place of Jesus, olive trees were central to life. The tree itself is tenacious, and can flourish with very little water in rocky soil. Wood from the trees was useful in carpentry. People pressed oil from olives and used it as fuel for their lamps and ointment for their wounds. Some thought that olive oil contained medicinal properties. Everyone agreed that olives were a blessing that God provided out of the earth. Life was better because of the olive tree.
The earliest Christians continued the Jewish practice of anointing the sick with oil, as evidenced in the Letter of James. But over time the custom became associated only with those who were dying, and the rite became known as “extreme unction,” or “last rites.” Some people who are sick rightly don’t want last rites, or prayers for the dying. They want healing prayers. Thus the oil became a fearful thing, an ominous sign. When I was in seminary I worked for a summer as a chaplain intern on a medical floor in a hospital. My simple charge was to go from room to room, visit with the patients who were open to a visit, and pray with those who desired prayer. What I learned quickly is that many of the patients were terrified that a chaplain was at their door. It suggested to them that someone thought they were far sicker than they supposed. Next in line after the chaplain would be a visit from the Grim Reaper. No thanks! Save your holy oil for someone who really needs it. What a shame, because the oil is meant for the midst of life, not merely the end of life.
Another way we go awry in thinking of holy oil is to ascribe almost magical powers to it, as if it were an alternative to conventional medicine. It is not. From time to time people will ring at the parish house door and ask if they can purchase holy oil or holy water as if these were an over-the-counter drug to be used at home. For the record, we do not sell flasks of holy oil or bottles of holy water. We do not give them away for free. Why not? Because we administer these gifts from God in the company of two or three who gather together in Jesus’ name. “Come to church,” is what we say to those folks. Join those of us who are reaching out in faith to touch the healing hem of Jesus’ garment.
How, then, shall we think of the holy oil? We can think of it as a sacrament, as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. The outward and visible sign is the oil itself. The inward and spiritual grace is the tenacious love of God that is always present. Are you ready for a semi-silly sacramental illustration? Some of you may remember the old television show, Gilligan’s Island, in which seven castaways were marooned on an uncharted tropical island in the Pacific Ocean. No one could find them. No escape was possible. They would have been completely cut off from society were it not for a common AM radio, the likes of which you could find in every 1960s home kitchen. In many an episode they would gather around the radio to hear news from civilization, even occasional reports on any progress in finding them. The radio signals were all around them at every minute, but they would be deaf to the broadcasts from home without this ordinary thing made of plastic and wire.
Likewise, the sacraments. The ordinary things of oil and water, or bread and wine can awaken our souls to the presence of God. Through them we tune in to the business of heaven. We stop short of saying that they create, or even bring the presence of God. Rather, physical contact with them can open our eyes to see, and our ears to hear, and our minds to believe what is true at all times: that the Lord of hosts is with us. So when we pray, and when we anoint, we don’t put any limits at all on God’s ability to heal. We offer no safe, lukewarm prayers to protect our integrity if it “doesn’t work.” We also know that a physical cure isn’t always the gift on offer. If today’s strange Gospel reading (Mark 28:50) about cutting off your foot and hand has any meaning at all, it is that a physical cure is not the ultimate gift. Entering the kingdom of heaven, being in the presence of God is the highest state of blessedness. Sometimes God heals even through death. It is a mystery. Clearly, medical science has advanced by light years since ancient times. But much of healing remains a mystery, including how our souls and bodies intermingle and participate in it together. Thus, we can think of the holy oil as a gift to soothe and strengthen the soul. We can think of the holy oil as an invitation into the presence of God, whose will for all people is health and salvation.
Earlier in the sermon I mentioned that today’s Offertory anthem reminds me of my days as a chorister. I can safely say that singing in the church choir was a profoundly good and formative experience of my growing up years – one of the best, in fact, that I remember and reflect on still. Christ Church, East Orange, NJ, where my father was the rector, was an urban parish with a music program that punched above its weight. The young choristers consisted of many neighborhood kids that the choirmaster had scooped up off the street. One of the boys was named Val Howze. Val was probably twelve at the time he joined the choir. He had never been to church before. He wasn’t even baptized. But he had a natural gift for music that he might never have known had the church not drawn him into the Spirit’s tether. Undoubtedly, one of the anthems we sang together was Draw us in the Spirit’s tether. What we sang came to pass. Val’s participation in the choir drew in his whole family, who starting coming to church and connecting with other parishioners.
Then one day my father received a call at the church from Val’s mother. Val had become seriously ill. Somehow in his young body a cancer had begun to grow that would take his life within a year. We always had our rehearsals on Thursday evenings. I’ll never forget one time when all of the choristers marched over to Val’s apartment. We would hold our rehearsal there because Val could no longer make it to the church. Not only would we rehearse our anthems and descants, we would also be witnesses to Val’s baptism. Then my father anointed Val’s head with oil, tracing the sign of the cross on his forehead. Then he read the Communion service, and Val, for the first time, partook of the bread and wine of eternal life. I am not a mystic now, and I certainly wasn’t one at age ten or eleven. But even then I perceived that we were occupying a thin place in the veil between heaven and earth, with angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven.
That evening in Val Howze’s apartment took place more than fifty years ago, and he has been gone from this life for nearly as long. The physical cure that we all would have liked did not occur. But Val died immersed in the community of the church. He died knowing that he belonged to God, the Giver of all good gifts, who would raise him up on his last day.
So we close where we began, with the invitation we hear in the Letter of James: Are any among you suffering? Are any among you sick? You should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord.