What Does Fixed Prayer Have to do With Healing?

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part IX of our series on Healing and Comforting

We are continuing our focus on hearing and doing the Work of Mercy of healing and comforting. And you may be surprised where that focus takes us today: to the subject of fixed-hour prayer—that is, praying specific prayers at specific hours every day.

What does that have to do with healing? Prepare to be very surprised!

You may be surprised that we’re even talking about fixed hour prayers at all. After all, praying at several set times throughout the day every day is something that today we may associate primarily with Muslims. But it was a core part of not only Jewish practice at the time of Jesus but Christian practice as well, from the birth of our faith on through the middle ages. Here’s an extremely helpful excerpt from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle:

Centuries before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the Hebrew psalmist wrote that “Seven times a day do I praise you” (Ps. 119:164)….

By the beginning of the common era, Judaism and its adherents, already thoroughly accustomed to fixed hours for prayer, were scattered across the Roman Empire. It was an empire whose efficiency and commerce depended in no small part upon the orderly and organized conduct of each business day. In the cities of the Empire, the forum bell rang the beginning of that day at six o’clock each morning (prime or “first” hour); noted the day’s progress by striking again at nine o’clock (terce or third hour); sounded the lunch break at noon (sext or sixth hour); called citizens back to work by striking at three o’clock (none or ninth hour); and closed the day’s markets by sounding again at six o’clock in the afternoon (vespers or evening hour).

Every part of daily life within Roman culture eventually came, to some greater or lesser extent, to be ordered by the ringing of the forum bells, including Jewish prayer and, by natural extension, Christian prayer as well. The first detailed miracle of the apostolic Church, the healing of the lame man on the Temple steps by Sts. Peter and John (Acts 3:1), occurred when and where it did because two devout Jews (who did not yet know they were Christians as such) were on their way to ninth-hour (three o’clock) prayers. Not many years later, one of the great defining events of Christianity—St. Peter’s vision of the descending sheet filled with both clean and unclean animals—was to occur at noon on a rooftop because he had gone there to observe the sixth-hour prayers….

Such readiness to accommodate circumstance was to become a characteristic of fixed-hour prayer. So too were some of the words Peter must have used. We know, for instance, that from its very earliest days, the Christian community incorporated the Psalms in their prayers (Acts 4:23–30); and the Psalter has remained as the living core of the daily offices ever since….

We know from their writings that by the second and third centuries the great Fathers of the Church—Clement (c. 150–215 a.d.), Origen (c. 185–254 a.d.), Tertullian (c. 160–225 a.d.), etc.—assumed as normative the observance of prayers in the morning and at night as well as the so-called “little hours” of terce, sext, and none…or in modern parlance, nine a.m., noon, and three p.m. These daily prayers were often said or observed alone, though they could be offered by families or in small groups.

Regardless of whether or not the fixed-hour prayers were said alone or in community, however, they were never individualistic in nature. Rather, they employed the time-honored and time-polished prayers and recitations of the faith. Every Christian was to observe the prayers; none was empowered to create them.

So Christians prayed “fixed prayers” (i.e., actual psalms from the Bible rather than their own extemporaneous prayers) at each of the major “turns” in the standard work day—the start of the day, the third hour, lunchtime, the ninth hour, and the close of the work day.

This brings up two questions that we can ponder over the weekend:

1. Why might Christians have prayed psalms and other Scriptures rather than their own extemporaneous prayers during their fixed hour prayer time?

2. Why did Christians—from Jesus on through the Apostles on through the Middle Ages—pray at specific hours throughout the day?

What do you think?

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The Surprising Connection Between Confession and Healing

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part VIII of our series on Healing and Comforting

There’s a wrong way to read some Bible verses.  And, unfortunately, when it comes to experiencing God’s power at work in our lives, we’re prone to do so (of course, we have plenty of help from preachers of health, wealth, and prosperity). We identified one way to read a verse in Monday’s post, by noting that James 5:16 does not mean “you are sick because you sinned.” That’s the wrong way to read that verse.

Here’s the right way to read that verse—and do this word: “The trio of illness, death, and sin are joined at the root. None of these were ever meant to be hosted in the human frame. God’s healing focuses on all three, penetrating spirit, soul, and body. Confessing our sins to one another—and then praying for each other about what has been confessed—isn’t a prerequisite for healing or preparation for healing. It is healing.”

That’s why James admonishes believers to devote significant time to confessing our sins to each other and sharing the assurance of forgiveness from Scripture. It’s not just preparation to take communion; it’s the Work of Mercy of healing…in every service!

John Wesley’s “band meetings” were designed to help others confess to one another, and as a result be healed. Here are the five questions he came up with to ask each other each time we gather together–questions that are built around the confession of sin. The expectation? That as we do this word from James together we’ll experience that form of biblical healing known as holiness:

  1. What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?
  2. What temptations have you met with?
  3. How were you delivered?
  4. What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?
  5. Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?

Wesley experimented with administering these questions in lots of different ways, so we can do the same. In an effort provide a bit more direction to my readers, I’ve come up with three options which I encourage you to try for a week at a time:

Option One:

In the context of a small group (formal or not) elect one person per meeting to answer the five questions. Then have the group pray for the person in light of what has been confessed.

Option Two:

Invite each person present to select and answer the one question of the five that is most relevant to them in light of what God is doing or showing or revealing or convicting them of in their life at present. After each person shares, let each person pray for another person in light of what has been confessed.

Option Three:

Work through the questions over five days of meetings (on, say, a retreat or during a daily journal group meeting). On the first day, ask the first question and have each person answer. Then after each person has answered, let each person pray for another person in light of what has been confessed.

As you do these things, seek to incorporate into your prayers the great assurances of forgiveness found in Scripture, like this one from 1 John 1:8-9:

If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

That’s good news, indeed!

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The Simplicity of Healing in Christianity

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part VII of our series on Healing and Comforting

We talked in the last post about whether healing is a spiritual gift, reserved for only a few Christians, or a Work of Mercy to which all are called.  I place it in the latter category not least because Jesus commands all his disciples (not just a few) to heal the sick in Matthew 10:8.

Wherever you land on that debate, however, I think we can all agree that healing should never to be practiced as mysterious magic. No incantations, spells, potions, dances, amulets, or wild-eyed crazy healer types.

For the Christian, healing is always about simple trust in God and heartfelt petition rooted in the knowledge that God wants to heal. He created human beings to host him, not sin, illness, or death. So check out the simplicity of James’ instructions (in 5:13-16) on how we’re supposed to heal. The script is really simple, memorizable even:

13Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him,anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16Therefore,confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. (James 5:13-16)

Think about how simple, trusting, and God-focused this is; especially in contrast to other religions where healing is pretty complicated! Iowa State University Religious Studies Professor Hector Avalos offers this typical example, from the religion of ancient Assyria for the cure of malaria. In order to perform the healing ritual, a person needed:

    • a figurine of the daughter of Anu (the primary sky god)
    • a figurine of Namtar (a minor god of the underworld)
    • a figurine of Latarak (a little-known figure)
    • a figurine of Death
    • a substitute figurine made of clay
    • a substitute figurine made of wax
    • 15 drinking tubes of silver for Gula (goddess of healing) and Bēletsēri (mistress of the desert)
    • 7 twigs of tamarisk
    • 7 bottles of wine
    • 7 bottles of beer
    • 7 bottles of milk
    • 7 bottles of honey

The figurines of the deities, which were probably assembled in the presence of the patient or in some sacred area, represent the supernatural beings that needed to be appeased. The foods were probably intended as offerings to gain the favor of these deities. Prayers to the deities were probably combined with medical treatments applied to the patient, and the entire ritual might have lasted hours or even been spread over a few days.

What’s the message in that kind of religion? “The healer is very mysterious and powerful; we’d best pay him a lot of money. And the personal effort to overcome illness is significant and depends heavily upon our actions.”

That’s fundamentally different than in Christianity, where the message is, “God is very, very good. He heals when the church (represented by the elders) come together to pray for the sick person and anoint him or her with oil.” And in Matthew 10:8, Jesus directs us explicitly not to charge for that house call: “Freely you have received,” he says, “freely give.” Note how healing is mirroring into the world what we first received from him.

So the direction the Apostle James gives is simple. But in this case, simple does not mean shallow—far from it! In fact, James shares something in that Scripture passage that has been, at best, forgotten by modern Christians and, at worst, badly mangled. Take a look at 5:16:

16Therefore,confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

Here’s the wrong way to read that verse (i.e., how Christians mangle it if they remember it at all these days): “You are sick because you sinned.”

Want to know the right way?  I guess you’ll have to tune in to the next post!

In the meantime, share your thoughts on the right way to read this verse.

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