Cured and Healed

 There is a correlation, a correlation is showing something is connected, but the cause is unknown. There is a correlation between church attendance and long life. On average, regular church goers live about 15 years longer than those who don't stated an article I read about 15 year ago. I shared in my church in Ipswich, SD, and one elderly woman replied that she is not longer coming to church because she doesn't want to live another 15 years. We have a couple of doctors in our church so I may be corrected later, but there a book about 20 year ago that cited some studies done with prayer for heart surgeries, and those that were prayed for had shorter times on the operating table, less post-op complications, and left the hospital sooner. I was trying to find the name of the book on Ecosia, a new study from Harvard took over the page saying there isn't any connection. I can share some stories of personal experience and in the church setting where prayer worked and I can share stories where they didn't seem to be answered. 

What we cannot deny, though we definitely don't focus on it in mainline protestant churches is there was a lot of healing going on in the gospels. Jesus talked about money 50% of the time, and seemed to spend about 50% of his time healing people. We have made lots of allowances about the miracles and exorcisms that don't jive with modern Western medicine or our experience. What we should be able to agree and take away from these stories is that Jesus cared about people's health, our bodies, and if we were doing and feeling well. He just wasn't worried about our souls, but all of us, and our whole lives. 

In today's gospel, Jesus calls Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John to go fish for people. They immediately being to preach, proclaim, and curing every sickness and disease! If some are interested, it would be a good journey to go through and see how many different ways people were cured and healed throughout the gospels. Sometimes he just spoke, sometimes Jesus laid hands on them, one time he even spit in the dirt to make mud and placed it on their eyes to cure them from blindness. In many ways 'the church' has continued this ministry in all of the Lutheran and Catholic hospitals we have in the mid-West and Methodist hospitals in the South. But it has in many ways been removed from the local church. Yes, we have our prayer list and prayers on Sunday morning, but we have lost in may ways the urgency for that to be a part of the church, only a part of the prayer time. 

Oh, if I could only realize, "Physician, heal thyself!" with 15 years of being diagnosed with fibromyalgia and decades more of not a diagnosis. But we deal with prayer and faith, not with magic or science. Thank God!  Yes, thank God for vaccines, antibiotics, MRI's, and all the knowledge and skill of doctors, nurses, and healers. There is also heart, will, love, and something more in healing as well. I have been to a healing service in a Pentecostal church, in a UCC church, worked with healing touch, reiki, and Spring Forest Qi Gong, and the energy/spirit/chi feels the same and I have felt it work through my body. I believe, and I hope most of believe, that no matter what we call it or how it is practiced, there is something universal that can heal, restore, and do something extra-ordinary. 

Without digging too deep into it today, I am not expecting that people are going to rise up out of their wheel chairs and those who were blind will now see. But, I have a hope and inkling that if we practice this enough and open ourselves to the Spirit and to the adventure, something may happen that most would call a miracle. If nothing more, may we feel the touch of the Spirit, or the love of God and this congregation, or not feel so isolated, alone, or disconnected from God or the world in which we live. 

I invite those those want after our meditation to come forward for anointing. You may come for healing, courage, blessing, or forgiveness. Anointing is a practice that goes back even before Jesus to open ourselves to God, to confirm God's calling on us, or to bring us closer.