Is it not striking that the ministry of Jesus, enacting the reign of God on this earth, begins with his mission of healing? He heals in both body and soul, both the blind and the lame and those possessed by ungodly forces. Oddly Jesus calls this ministry of healing preaching. The disciples found him and said to him, "Everyone is searching for you." And he said to them, "Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also; for that is why I came out." And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. Jesus says that he has “come out,” indicating that he has been sent on this mission, as we said, to preach healing. It is his calling, his holy vocation, anointed with the Spirit as the beloved Son and sent by the Heavenly Father to go into hurting Galilee preaching healing. He does so with authority. For it is the good and gracious will of God, the heavenly Father, Almighty Creator, that all his creatures be healed and restored to their holy vocations, no longer impaired by disabling pain in body or soul. God’s Reign takes place, God’s kingdom comes, when this will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven. In the authoritative preaching of Jesus, this saving event of healing occurs in word and deed.
Now it might be typical of us modern skeptics or of us postmodern cynics to ask, “Well, Jesus, what have you done for us lately?” And we know how certain kinds of Christians are quite insistent that the healing miracles of Jesus happen today if only we have enough faith. But that is all wrong. Little faith, great faith, or no faith, Jesus’s preaching, doing God’s will for healing, is for the sake of faith, not on account of faith. In other words, these Epiphany wonders of healing are meant to instruct and inspire humanity, in our world still full of sickness and despair, revealing what is the good and gracious will of God to be done on earth. The healings are Epiphany revelation of our Great Physician, meant both to inspire and to instruct disciples to follow him by taking up the holy vocation of healing. As Jesus sends disciples out to continue this mission, we are instructed also to be little healers in the employ of this Great Physician. So we in our skepticism and cynicism should hardly blame God for our own failure to do what is revealed in Jesus and empowered by his Spirit as our human task, particularly as his disciples! We are to be healers in all that we do. It is part and parcel of our baptismal vocation. To be sure, it is a job that none can accomplish alone but only together as the living body of Christ on the earth.
Now, on the other hand, this commission to be followers of the Great Physician can in the course of events forget that it is the mission of proclaiming the reign of God. In fact we can become so narrowly focused on the good works of healing which are in principle only temporary that we can forget that these such good works are signs that point away from themselves to our Maker and Redeemer in whom our great and final healing rests. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. So the prophet reminded the discouraged of Israel in exile who drew back in fear at the prospect of traversing the desert to journey from splendid Babylon back to the ruins of Zion in Jerusalem. They feared -- journey to healing seemed to them worse than the disease of exile.
Fear not! The prophet’s preaching of the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth as our ultimate healing, I repeat, does not depend on faith but rather is said for the sake of faith, just as faith in such a God is taking courage for the journey to final healing in the mission of healing on our way. In the words of Paul Tillich, courageous faith in God is trust in the power of being overcoming nonbeing, in life overcoming death, in righteousness overcoming sin. Courageous faith in this One who is truly God is the spiritual healing needed and freely given over and above any temporary healing of body and soul on our journey to final healing. All of the persons healed in the gospel stories and restored to life nevertheless died one day. We shall all die because in God’s economy you cannot have a resurrection without first having a death. But we have the courage to face our own hurts along the way and final death knowing that in eternity as in time they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. In this faith we rest in peace to rise in glory!
Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! So we have heard today from the pen of Paul the apostle. I hope by now you are feeling the same and wondering how this missionary gospel of Jesus preaching healing, in time for eternity, might actually be our own today. The first thing to ask about our following of the Great Physician is not, “What would Jesus do?” but rather, “What is Jesus doing?” as he lives and reigns, and continues to do the proclamation of healing in our stricken world. It happens in every gathering around word and sacrament. Much of its abundant fruit, however, goes under the radar in the lives of ordinary Christian people who are alert in their daily lives to the healing word or touch they may lend, collectively in their social ministries which feed the hungry and clothe the naked and build homes for the homeless. And it is right that these good, that is, healing works are done simply for the sake of a hurting neighbor in need and not instrumentalized for purposes of religious or ideological proselytism. Such humility in doing good is fitting; and we do not boast of our good works because we know that, good as they are, the healing is only temporary, a small sign in an ocean of need, pointing then to the great and final healing promised when the reign of God comes in fullness and power.
Consequently the question presses upon disciples about how we today participate in the missionary practice of Jesus’s proclamation of the approaching reign of the LORD, the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth who does not faint or grow weary, whose understanding is unsearchable. I have often pondered this question as I have reflected on the seeming incapacity of our churches to do gospel proclamation to the community outside of the Sunday gathering of the faithful, in the workaday world of Galilee, so to speak, as I have also worried culturally that the church of Jesus is in retreat, losing the spiritual battle for the hearts and minds of people. If we connect the scary word “evangelism” properly to the evangel, the good news, the gospel of the reign of God in Jesus’s proclamation, how do we do evangelism today? Paul’s example of the aforementioned humility is instructive: To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. We too accept people just as they are in the knowledge that just like ourselves they are hurting seeking healing even as we have found healing enough to share.
Now Jesus enters the synagogues to preach and teach and heal. We learn from Luther that it is the Holy Spirit who brings people into the community of faith where the Spirit can preach the gospel of God’s reign to them. And sure enough that is often how it happens. Folks, if I may put it this way, motivated in various ways, wander into the church, checking thing out, not even sure what they’re looking for. This is good, if we are the welcoming people of Christ where they can taste the beloved community of God that they really need for true and final healing. But Jesus didn’t only go to synagogues; he went into the highways and byways and marketplaces of the towns, taking for granted the human hunger for healing in the brokenness of this sad world.
Everyone, just like you and me, is in some way looking for healing. Whether they know it or not, they are good creatures of God but skeptical, even cynical because of lost connections, disabling life -- as we are all in need because we have lost the ultimate connection which gives meaning to the soul and hope to the body. So my suggestion is that we dust off the Lutheran Book of Worship’s neglected Service of the Word for Healing and make it a community outreach event.
No offering other than slips of paper with prayer requests. A brief catechetical instruction on the ABCs of the Christian faith. If the congregation can musically support the gathering including presumably unchurched folks, singing The Great Litany serves to introduce liturgical worship and reinforces the message of healing. Invited, a procession comes forward to the altar for the laying on of hands and anointment with oil with pastor and lay ministers available for personal counsel and prayer. And that’s it! Perhaps an offering of refreshments afterword. But emphatically, no proselytism, just the Jesus proclamation and offering of God’s healing, leaving the harvest to the only one competent, God the Holy Spirit.
The point is that as a community of faith we offer healing publicly in this way just as individually we are disciples of the Great Physician who offer healing of body and soul to every wounded neighbor laid in our path and finally consolation in Christ in the hour of death. All this as the confident proclamation that they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.