Do the Word

It’s not hard to figure out when you’re searching for something against the Google grain.

When you type “How To Heal Others When You Are Sick,” for example, you get hits like:

• How to Heal the Sick
• How To Send Healing Over A Distance
• Divine Healing – It IS God’s will to heal you! Find out how to receive it!

Google “prayers by the sick” and you’ll end up with dozens of sites focused on prayers for the sick.

Sum it up and say: There is an understandable tendency for us to fold up on ourselves like broken lawn chairs when we are sick. When we are sick, we want to get well. We want others (including God) to help us get well. We have little time to focus on anything else but our illness.

But in this concluding post for this month of focusing on the Work of Mercy of healing and comforting it is important to affirm that Christianity does go against the Google grain: Ours is the religion that claims with Isaiah,

But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.

So the Savior did his saving through his wounds. And we do not believe that he suffered so that we don’t have to. We believe that when we understand his suffering we will willingly choose to suffer also, in his name, for his sake, taking up our crosses daily. We say with the Apostle Paul that we are

always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

This doesn’t mean that we neglect or ignore our own health and illness. Of course not. We’re stewarding his body, after all–it doesn’t belong to us in the first place. But just as care for our own family does not preclude care for others, care for our own body does not preclude healing and praying for others who are sick when we are sick. In fact, the two are far more interconnected than we typically recognize.

So how can we heal others when we are sick? We begin by focusing on praying for the healing of others when we are healthy, employing all of the disciplines of prayer and giving and service in relation to others that we’ve been talking about this month.

Then we continue to keep up those spiritual disciplines and Christ-mirroring focus even when we face small ailments–headaches, colds, sore backs, upset stomachs. These are the minor irritants that tempt us to curl inward at the edges. When we do that in the face of small ailments, of course we’ll fold like lawn chairs in the face of bigger ones.

But faithfulness with a little–in this case, interceding for the healing of others and visiting the sick even when we are sick (though hopefully not contagious!)–is what yields the ability to be faithful in a lot, as we saw in the story of Shery Lim in a blog post earlier this week.

Here again I want to commend you getting a good personal prayer book with prayers that you can grow into as you pray. You will be remarkably uncreative and Sudafed-groggy when you don’t feel well, so having a prayer book to keep your prayers for others bigger than the size of your Alka Seltzer tablets will be a real help. I use several from different traditions, and they tend to be easy to find on amazon.

And one last great resource for you this month: check out this article on Praying Beyond the Sick List. If your prayers for the sick essentially consist of saying “Be with _______,” this article will help you understand what God normally likes to talk about when it comes to illness.

Generally when financial giving is mentioned in the context of healing, it is mentioned in the most deplorable way, namely, that televangelical way of encouraging people watching at home to send in their money today as the necessary and sufficient sign of their faith that God is going to heal them.

But in spite of such widespread abuses, there is a fascinating connection between healing and finances. You can see it in the story of Shery Lim, a 56 year old who is a two-time cancer survivor (including a survivor of fourth stage breast cancer). About the second bout she says,

“At that time, I couldn’t lift my handbag, I could not carry a one-month-old baby, and I couldn’t even lift a glass of water to my lips,” Lim says.

Even bathing was an excruciating experience. “When I showered, droplets of water will hit my breastbone and it was very painful. I couldn’t bathe standing up because I would be very tired.

“For one and a half years, I sat on a small stool with a ladle and a pail of warm water beside me every time I bathe, and poured the water slowly to control the flow,” she says.

“I took very long to bathe, but I had no choice. Now, I still cry whenever I am in the bathroom because I remember the experience. However, now it is not so much tears of sorrow, but rather, tears of thankfulness.”

On top of that, chemotherapy and radiotherapy had left her with nine ulcers in the mouth and she was on six painkillers a day. Even then, the pain due to the tumour caused her to scream and yell at night, and she was forced to ask her husband to sleep in a separate room to avoid disturbing him.

A devout Christian, Lim felt it would be wrong to give up on hope and give in to despair. But even more remarkably, notice her philosophy on healing:

“From the moment I was diagnosed with fourth-stage cancer, I told God that I didn’t want to die, and I want to believe that he will heal me. But if I’m going to get healing, it should not be for me only.

“I feel that when I am healed, I don’t want to live a life for myself. I want to live a life for others by reaching out to others,” she says.

There is an understandable tendency when we are ill to curve inward, but the Spirit of God within us will not permit it. His life within us is geared toward pouring out his life in the midst of suffering. It is when he does his best work, both personally and through us.

With that aspiration in mind, Lim went on to write a faith-based book titled There is Hope even when she was undergoing treatment. The book, launched in June 2007, chronicles Lim’s personal journey through cancer and provides information about cancer along with tips for caregivers of cancer patients.

“There are some testimonials of other patients as well. It is a book of encouragement and comfort,” Lim says.

One month later, Lim set up the Elpizo (the Greek word for hope) cancer support group. “We share our experiences, and we will invite professional doctors to give talks about topics like ‘cancer and diet’ or ‘how to fight depression’,” she says.

“We also have pastors coming in to give us a word of encouragement for healing,” she added.

In between her treatments and support group sessions, Lim visited cancer patients in the hospital to cheer them up.

How did Shery use her money while ill? To create a healing environment for others. She learned this, she says, from Proverbs 11:25:

“When I focused on others and helped them, the pain started to disappear and the tumour started to become smaller. This year in February, although the tumour was as small as a hazelnut, it was still not free from cancer. But in August, this hazelnut-sized tumour was pronounced as residual fibriotic tissue. It is no longer cancerous!” she beams.

“Little did I know that when I was encouraging others and delivering hope to them, healing actually occurred within me.

“That’s why God says that ‘those who comfort others, he himself will be comforted. Those who refresh others, he himself will be refreshed.’ That is the energy that has kept me going!” she says.

Now, someone may read a story like this and think, “Ah, so when I bless others, God is on the hook to bless me.” But re-read Shery’s words, above: “Little did I know…” In other words, she did not use her money to heal others so that she would be healed. Instead, she discovered that moving beyond self-preoccupation is always wise because we need not be obsessed with ourselves and our needs for God to be maximally good to us. It is simply his nature. And when we mirror his nature, we become maximally good to others even in the midst of our own suffering.

Like Jesus.

Last word to Shery as we contemplate how to overcome the self-obsessed nature of our finances in order to expose others to the healing and comforting of Christ:

“I used to do a lot of shopping but now I don’t shop. I used to buy expensive clothes because I needed them for work, but now I buy simple T-shirts and still look good. It is a matter of adjusting and humbling yourself,” she says.

“You have to ask yourself, what is the point of gaining the whole world but lose your soul or lose your life?” she says.

One does not have to google very long to find an order of worship for a special church service on healing. Be slow to employ these. Jesus never did a special healing service, and the reason why is very telling.

First, a Scripture, Mark 3:1-6 from the NIV:

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. ² And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.³ And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” ⁴ And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. ⁵ And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man,“Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

At first it’s hard to imagine why the Pharisees and the Herodians are so eager to destroy Jesus just for healing a man on the Sabbath. And then we come to a realization.

Jesus hadn’t been invited to preach in the synagogue that day.

In essence, Jesus blows up someone else’s service. Busts in and while someone else is preaching their three-points-and-a-poem sermon, sees a sick man and looks around, incredulous that everyone else is simply staring forward listening to today’s encouraging message and not lifting a hand to help. So instead of taking his seat and listening quietly, he heals the man and throws the service into chaos.

Try that in any church this Sunday and see how well it goes for you.

For Jesus, the idea of a special healing service would be passing strange. Not because healing ministry would be passing strange but because engaging in worship while oblivious to the pain or physical need of the person sitting next to you would be to him an outrage.

To Jesus a “special healing service” would be like saying “Today is a special service for the poor!” or “Today we reconcile with each other before we partake of the Lord’s Supper!” There are certain things that ought never to be relegated to the status of special. Healing is one of them. For Christians, healing and comforting is normal. It has always been our hallmark across the millennia to heal those who are sick, to share our bread with the poor, to be at peace with others so far as it depends on us. These are not special worship service themes. They are daily service opportunities.

So next time you walk into a worship service and see a person who is suffering, signal for a time out in the pastor’s message, call over an usher or two and maybe even a few elders, and pray for the one who is sick.

It won’t be popular. The worship planning committee would rather you wait for next month’s special healing service. But in doing it you will mirror the love of Christ, who never walked past an illness without regarding it as an interloper in the human frame.