Sermon:(Re)CreatingChurch: Healing Power
April 26th, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: Acts 3:1-14 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
You know, if this isn’t the day we need to hear about the healing power of Jesus, then I don’t know what is! I would love to have Peter and John show up in hospitals all around the world! But this story isn’t just about Peter and John – it’s also about us as disciples of Jesus. So I have to say it’s a little intimidating to preach this passage today – it feels like there’s some pressure to live up to the example of Peter and John. So it’s tempting to let ourselves (myself!) off the hook a little by saying that Peter and John had special power because they were apostles, part of those chosen Twelve who studied directly under Jesus. Perhaps they had learned a healing secret from Jesus. But Peter and John themselves make it very clear the amazing transformation of the lame man was not because the two of them were exceptional in any way.
Let me pick up where Ron left off, and tell you what happened next: The people all rushed out in amazement to Solomon’s Colonnade, one of the courtyards in the temple. The healed man was holding tightly to Peter and John as he hopped around and praised God. Seeing the interest of the crowd, Peter recognized an opportunity to witness, so he spoke up. He said, “People of Israel, why does this take you by such complete surprise? And why do you stare at us as though we made this man walk by our own power or godliness? No, it is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the God of all our ancestors – who is bringing glory to His son Jesus by doing this. The same Jesus you turned over to Pilate. The same Jesus Pilate called innocent. The same Jesus you rejected and had a murderer released in his place. You killed the Author of Life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this fact! Faith in Jesus’ name put this man on his feet – and you know how crippled he was! Yes, faith and nothing else but faith put this man healed and whole right before your eyes.
Peter does not hesitate to use the healing as an opportunity to be a witness for Jesus. Aas he explains what happened, Peter makes clear that Jesus’ healing work is continuing! During his life, Jesus often stopped along the way to heal people, like the lame man. And it’s now evident that Jesus’ death did not stop that. Jesus’ returning to his Father in heaven does not end it. It continues; only now it continues through the disciples and through their faith in Jesus’ power.
In the shadow of a deadly virus, we are more aware than ever of our healers, our health care workers, the EMTs and medical researchers, as they confront the COVID illness on the front lines of caring for those who are sick and dying. We are hearing from them in news reports as they share the strain they are under and explain what needs to be done. We see them standing their ground in the midst of those who are failing to understand the cost of their self-centered actions. Many of our healthcare workers are literally giving their lives in the process of trying to save others.
Historically, we know that many, many hospitals and medical schools around the world were started by those who were motivated by faith in Jesus and a calling to bring healing in Jesus’ name. The teaching hospital in India where my father and grandfather worked was started in 1900 by a young woman named Ida Scudder who experienced God calling her to healing work and to train others to be Christ’s ministering hands. I remember being taken to surgery in that hospital when I was 6 years old, and before I was taken into the operating room, the doctors and nurses gathered around me to pray. The heart of that hospital is a chapel where services are held each morning. At the start of every shift the nurses pray for one another and for their patients. It is truly a place where the healing power of Jesus is seen on a daily basis through a combination of excellent, medical practice and prayer.
The Bible tells us that healing is one of the special gifts that the Holy Spirit gives out to believers. Paul includes it in his lists of spiritual gifts (1Cor.12). But Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit is to all those who put their faith in him. This means that every Christ-follower is empowered with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, the same power that Peter and John called on to heal the lame man. That same healing, transforming power is available to us today! Do you believe that?
By your prayers I know some of you do, but in general our modern, western society has become very skeptical of miracles. We are more likely to believe in the healing power of essential oils than the healing power of Jesus. Typically our first instinct is to help others by giving money, to take an offering – not to pronounce the power of Jesus’ name over the situation. I’m not knocking helping others by giving financially. Sharing our financial resources with those in need is very important and certainly helps to bring healing in many situations. By giving of your financial resources you have supported the healing work of counselors with youth at the Milwaukee Christian Center and the healing work of the New Life Center in Thailand for young girls who have been traumatized by trafficking. The early church took up offerings, too, but they recognized that they also had something else, something even better to offer, the transforming power of Jesus’ name. However, if we think we are done after we write the check then we are neglecting to share our best resource. If Peter and John had had silver and gold I doubt it would have replaced their gift of healing through faith in Jesus.
So what does that look like? What does it mean to share our best resource with people, the resource of the power of Jesus, even as we share other resources? How do we reimagine and recreate the healing work of the church without our church building? What does it look like to be the church, as a people, offering the healing power of Jesus to others in a way that complements the healing work taking place in hospitals?
A man named Henry Cloud has dedicated his life to helping churches become places of healing that people can turn to with the brokenness in their lives rather than a place they run away from or are pushed away from. As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Cloud’s focus is on mental health and wholeness, through a movement he calls “Churches that Heal”. On his website he writes, “Now, more than ever, it is the time for the church to rise up and be the place (I would change that to ‘the people’!) where the hurting can find the healing they need.” There will be so many with wounds of grief, wounds of isolation and depression, wounds of trauma from domestic violence, wounds that need healing.
We are so used to doing church by sitting in rows, facing forward, sometimes singing but mostly listening, that we don’t often think of the church as a place where healing should be happening. Or we think of it as the work of specially gifted pastors and leaders, rather than a task for the church as a whole, or for the church as a people going about their day-to-day lives. But take a look again at today’s story – the lame man is not inside the temple, he is outside, outside the entrance! Peter and John are not conducting a healing service; they are still on their way into the temple. That’s perfect for us, right now, the one who needs healing is not inside the church building; he is outside – where we all are right now, where those in need of healing usually are – outside the church walls.
So let’s get practical now because I can almost hear Will’s voice asking me in his pragmatic way, “So what are you asking us to do?” I actually think Will is a great example of what it looks like when the church, as a people, put Jesus’ healing power to work. Will spent hours and hours during the winter months with the men of the homeless shelter. His presence, his experience as a social worker, his listening ear, his warm acceptance but persistent urging and questioning, moved many of those men toward greater health and wholeness.
Healing is not just a physical cure, it is much more. There is a pastor I know who lost both legs as a result of a childhood cancer. He recently shared that as a 10-year old, the thing that was even harder than fighting the cancer was dealing with the sense of rejection and abandonment by his friends. Kids who had previously played with him stopped communicating after he got sick, perhaps his illness made them uncomfortable or because they just didn’t know what to say. For him, the greatest healing came not from the doctors but from the ones who still showed up, who tried to include him in what they were doing, who accepted him despite his cancer, who when they didn’t know what to say, just said “I love you.” You can offer that kind of healing of inclusion, of acceptance. You can offer the healing of love, in the name of Jesus.
I was really touched by a power example of a mother offering her daughter Georgia that deeper, fuller wholeness and healing at the end of a day that may have been filled with all sorts of little injuries. You may have seen it too, on ABC World News Tonight on Monday, but I want to share it with you again now.
“Georgia is…” …kind, important, strong, smart,… loved!
The healing power of knowing that we are loved!
Death is still a reality in this world. The healing power of God did not stop Jesus from dying, nor did it remove his wounds. Yet in Jesus, the power of God to give life overcame the power of death. In Jesus, the Author of Life loved us so much that He was willing to suffer and die in order to offer us true healing, complete healing! So that by faith in Him, we might share the best kind of healing with the world.
Closing Song: “Amazing Grace” led by Chuck Carman
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