Paralysis

    Question to consider: What do you/we need in terms of healing?

    One  of my favorite movies  is Monty Python's The Life of Brian.  The comedy is about
 a man named Brian, who was born at the same time as Jesus, and throughout his life and death,
is  mistaken for Jesus Christ.
     Today's reading puts me in mind of scene in which there is an energetic beggar, radiating health, begging alms of Brian:
    “Alms for an ex-leper?  Alms for an ex-leper?”
    Brian offers to give him 2 shekels, but the man insists on ten.  Then it sinks in.
    Brian:  “Did you say you're an ex-leper?”
    “Yes.  All those years, I had a steady income, begging, as a leper.  I didn't ask to be healed!  And then Jesus comes along and heals me!! Now, I can't make a living!
    Brian says, “Well, I guess there's just no pleasing some people.”
     The ex-leper:  “That's just what Jesus said.”

    Don't you wonder,  about this man who has been  ill for  thirty-eight years?  He doesn't ask to be healed.  And when Jesus asks him, “Are you willing to be healed?”–he evades the question.  But despite that, Jesus tells him:  Stand, take up your mat and walk.
    If we were to go on with the story, we'd read that when he is accused of carrying his mat on the Sabbath (a day in which there is to be no such work), he blames Jesus.  And then, when he figures out who it was that healed him, he goes to the religious authorities and tattles on Jesus as the one who healed him on the Sabbath.    There's just no pleasing some people, is there?    A part of this story that we might easily overlook in our time is that not only was the man ill, but an outcast in his society.   By his own admission, part of why he's been stuck by the pool, is because he's had no one to help him get to the water.  He's an outcast.  And for thirty-eight years, which is essentially a generation—,no one can remember this man ever being whole. 
    He's the invalid  by the shepherd's gate, with no family, no friends.  No one to help.  This is a situation where not just an individual needs healing, but a community needs healing.  The scene is set in the third verse: there, in the heart of power, the city of Jerusalem, right at the gate, there are many invalids–blind, lame and paralyzed.   The most needy  people are lying at the gate, with no one to help.  The powers that be are failing in caring for the needs of  the people.  It would be like arriving in Salem, or Washington, DC   and finding the center surrounded by lame, paralyzed and homeless people– a clear picture of a system gone wrong.
        A question that lingers then, and now is this:
    “Are you willing to be healed?”
    Are you willing to be healed:
    Healed from the dysfunction in your family?
    Healed from the grip of addiction?
    Healed from depression?
    Healed from a habit of anger and rage?
    Healed from a broken relationship?
    Healed from living a system in which I’m comfortable, but in which others have their basic needs for food, housing and health unmet?
    Healed from racism; healed from discrimination of all kinds?   
    I don’t know about you, but when I hear  those questions, I begin to feel defensive.  Maybe when we’re feeling that way, we can begin to understand why Jesus was making such a stir among the religious authorities.
    Despite our longing for wholeness and healing, we might be something in us that evades the question.  Is it because of  fear– fear even to hope?  Fear to trust that the healing may look different than what we’ve expected?
    It has been suggested that most American Christians are "functional atheists". While we believe in God, we don't expect God to break into our lives. We don't expect God to be involved in our congregations.  We can hear this question as individuals, and we can hear it as a church: 
    Are you willing to be healed?
    Intercessory prayer  is the type of prayer where we are naming to God the things we want changed.    I must tell you, that as I’ve prepared this sermon, I’ve had a list of people I love  that we’ve been praying for in intercessory prayer: prayers for healing and wholeness, despite words from physicians that have given little cause for hope.
     “Are you willing to be healed?”  Can sound  horribly blaming for those of us in the position of finding the medical avenues limited or exhausted. 
    Are you willing to be healed? -- I have come to hear this as a question about our capacity for hope.
    Theologian Walter Wink wrote about intercessory prayer:
    “Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the reality for which it longs.  The future is not closed. . . . There are fields of forces whose interactions are somewhat predictable.  But HOW they will interact is not.  . . An aperture opens in the praying person, permitting God to act without violating human freedom.  A change in even one person thus changes what God can thereby do in the world.”
    Ruben Alves said it like this:

    “Hope is to hear God's melody for the future;
    Prayer is to listen for it;
    Faith is to dance it. “
 
    Another movie that came to mind this week, as I was thinking about these issues, is a  movie called “Bruce Almighty.”  In it, Bruce, a self-centered man, played by Jim Carrey, temporarily receives the powers of Almighty God.  The intercessory prayers that come his way are so numerous and overpowering that Bruce  decides to set them up as a huge email account to which he replies “yes” to everything.  That has unintended consequence, as you can imagine.  (One of them being that ALL the people praying for the lottery won–$14 dollar, each.  Rioting ensued.)

    When we pray, we are not sending a letter to a celestial White House, where it is sorted among piles of others.   Rather, we are engaged in co-creation with God, when we open our hearts and our selves; when we become translucent, clear, channels for God’s healing, a radiating of love and possibility. . .

    Walter Wink noted that “ all of this is arrogant bravado, unless we recognize that it is God's power, not ours, that answers to the world's needs.  God is always already praying within us.  When we turn to pray, it is already the second step of prayer.  We join with God in prayer that is already going on in us and in the world.” 
    Romans 8:26-says
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit. . .”

    “We do not know how to pray as we ought. . .”  One of our members recently learned that he is expected to  die within 6 to 8 months.  This is a huge shock to the family, as he is young and full of life.   They are all doing their best to prepare.  It has created a new perspective and an urgency on a particular issue, regarding our denomination.  This man has hoped that in his lifetime, the PC(USA) would graciously make clear that a faithful, qualified candidate’s sexual orientation should not be a barrier to being ordained as elder, deacon or pastor.  This is important especially to him, because someone he loves has received the message that our church doesn’t love them and that he’s not  welcome.  Westminster has been seeking to show our welcoming and open stance, but our denomination hasn’t yet opened those doors.    I know that not everyone here agrees on this issue.   We’ve been debating it in our denomination since the 70s–really, a generation in the life of the church.  In fact many of us can’t even remember a time when it’s wasn’t a painful, divisive issue.  Respecting our different views on this,  isn’t it possible that just one person feeling more loved and welcomed and part of the body of Christ, can change what God is able to do in the world. . .?

    But now, for this faithful member–his “lifetime” may be quite short.  And the hope/prayer is urgent!       
       

    What would the world be like?  What would our lives be like?  What would Westminster be like if we joined in God’s prayer that is already in us, prayer for what needs mending?  Prayer for the needs of the world?
What might we see change in this congregation and our denomination?
What might we see healed in our personal lives?
What if we joined God in the prayer that is already going on in us and in the world?  What then?