What About Healing?

[A heavy snowfall hit our area shortly before today's worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church happened. A few folks were able to make the drive. Below you'll find both the message prepared for our two services and the live stream video. Have a blessed week, friends!]

Matthew 4:12-25

A member of the first church I served as pastor–we’ll call him John–had a machine shop. There he fabricated farm equipment.

One day, two neighbor boys brought John a big barrel they wanted to have cut in two. John said that wouldn’t be a problem.

He cleaned out the barrel, which had previously contained some kind of chemicals, then took a torch to the barrel to cut it.

When the flame of the torch made contact with some of the chemical residue, the barrel exploded, crashing into John’s skull. He was life-flighted to a hospital forty miles away.

On arriving at the ER, I was ushered in to see and pray for John. He looked like someone from a war zone. The doctors said there was a 90% chance John would die that night; if he survived the night, he likely wouldn’t live long; and if he did survive, he likely would be severely damaged, mentally and physically.

I’m sure that because of Jesus, Who was invited to heal John by hundreds of praying people, John experienced miraculous healing. He thrives today.

John stands for dozens of people I’ve encountered through the years who have been given healing by Jesus, each of those healings a testimony to the power and grace of God given in Christ.

But through the years, I’ve been baffled and driven to ask God why some of the people for whom I and others have prayed through the years didn’t receive their miracles.

Why did six year old Isaac, who delighted the entire congregation during children’s sermons, die from a brain tumor within months of being diagnosed?

Why did Karen, a true disciple of Jesus, who had been a Peace Corps volunteer, worked as an environmental engineer, played guitar in the praise band, and gave every evidence of living in daily repentance and renewal, die at the age of thirty-seven after a painful fight with cancer, leaving behind a husband and two children?

Why did Sarah, after being diagnosed with leukemia at the age of fourteen and surviving two bone marrow transplants and five setbacks and remissions, whose faith in Jesus compelled her following one long hospitalization, to preach the Easter sermon at my former parish, die at the age of 21?

I have asked God about these and other deaths and tragedies I’ve seen Christians endure. Maybe you’ve done the same thing.

There’s a reason I mention all these people from my life and ministry.

Our gospel lesson for this morning is Matthew 4:12-25. It recounts early moments in Jesus’ earthly ministry.

Because it’s not yet time for Him to go to the cross, when He hears that John the Baptizer has been arrested, Jesus heads to the area in which He grew up, Galilee.

He begins His ministry there, fulfilling the prophecy given by God to Isaiah, that the Light of God’s new life and salvation would appear in Galilee, where people lived in darkness and the shadow of death.

After that, Matthew says that Jesus called four fishermen–Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John–to follow Him and they do.

With these four in tow, Jesus begins to go all around Galilee, where He does three things. He preaches, teaches, and heals.

Jesus’ message, conveyed through His preaching, teaching, and healing, was: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 4:17)

Jesus, the Messiah promised by God, came into our world and our lives to bring the Kingdom of heaven to us.

Now, the term translated as kingdom is, in the Greek in which the New Testament was written, basileia. Literally, it means reign, R-E-I-G-N. But unlike worldly kingdoms or empires, the kingdom or reign of God isn’t confined to an ethnic group or to a geographic spot on a map. People live under the reign of God when the good news, the gospel, of Jesus comes to us and, despite the sin, death, and darkness of the world, we find ourselves believing in Jesus. The kingdom of heaven comes to us when we trust Jesus for everlasting forgiveness, life, help, and hope from God!

Now, no human being can decide to follow Jesus: Trusting God instead of ourselves is foreign to our nature. In our gospel lesson, for example, the four fishermen didn’t decide to follow Jesus; Jesus came to them and called them, giving them enough faith to set aside their nets and trust Him.

This is how God’s kingdom comes to us: Jesus and His Gospel Word envelop us in grace and, despite ourselves, we trust and follow.

The Small Catechism reminds us: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit [the One the risen and ascended Jesus has sent into the world] has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith.”

When the Gospel of new life through faith in Jesus comes to us, causing us to turn from sin–to repent–and to believe in Jesus, we become citizens of a new, non-geographic kingdom. The passport, as Pastor Brian Wolfmueller notes, that allows us to emigrate from the kingdoms of sin, death, and hopelessness into God’s kingdom, is repentance and faith in Jesus that God gives us through His Word and through water, bread, and wine.

The kingdom of heaven is eternal. And yet those who believe in Jesus, live in it right now! This is the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed when He preached, taught, and healed.

But, you might say, “Pastor, I hear and read God’s Word. The miracle of repentance and faith are being worked in me. But what about healing? Are all those TV preachers right who say that if you’re not in perfect health or experiencing perfect happiness, you’re not a Christian?”

No, friends, they’re not right!

You’ll know that just by considering today’s gospel lesson. John the Baptizer, who faithfully proclaimed God’s good news and pointed to Jesus as “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world,” is in prison and will soon be executed.

And Jesus, God the Son, will soon go to a cross and receive the death sentence for our sins.

Life in this fallen old creation will bring suffering and death to everyone!

But the Kingdom of heaven has a strange quality. It’s both already and not yet.

Jesus has already come into our world.

He has already claimed you in Holy Baptism, won you to faith in Him by the power of His Word.

But until His second advent when He will call all the dead from the ashes and judge both the living and the dead, sin, death, and the devil still attack the human race, working to drive us away from God’s reign in which all who believe in Jesus will one day, live in perfect wholeness and health.

In His Kingdom, God will bring us everlasting healing, freedom from the afflictions of our sin-bound nature. When Jesus healed and when Jesus heals today, He points to, He gives a sign of, the final consummation of His kingdom in which there will be no more death or crying or mourning or pain. (Revelation 21:4)

The apostle Paul wrestled with the reality of suffering and death that comes even to those who, by faith, are part of Jesus’ kingdom. But, in the face of suffering and death, he also proclaims Jesus’ resurrection victory, a part of which belongs to all who live in the kingdom of heaven. Paul writes, “as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:22-26)

The point is that, through His death and resurrection, Christ has already conquered sin and death. He already has given everlasting citizenship in His Kingdom to all who believe, even to those like Isaac, Karen, and Sarah, whose suffering and death despite Jesus’ power over these things and prayers for their healing in Jesus’ name, so hurts those who grieve for them.

While, thank God, Jesus has already brought His kingdom to us by the Word, Baptism, and Communion, that kingdom has not yet come in its fullness.

God’s ultimate healing will, at a day and hour none of us know, come to all who repent and believe in Jesus.

Until the return of Jesus, our call is to trust and follow Him…and pray, as He has taught us, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 12

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 9

Ten Healed, One Saved

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio on Sunday, October 13.]

Luke 17:11-19

Our gospel lesson for this morning, Luke 17:11-19, is particularly well-known among Lutheran Christians, I think because it often serves as the text for our Thanksgiving celebrations.

The lesson does talk about being thankful.

But if we come away from this passage thinking that if we’re thankful, Christ will save us from sin and death, we completely miss the point. 

Such an interpretation would turn Jesus into a lawgiver who demands that we earn salvation. 

But, good Lutherans that we are, we know that we cannot be saved and will not be saved by anything that we do. Nor can we be made holy by anything that we do. 

To those tempted to think that we can be saved by works, the Scripture speaks clearly. 

Romans 3:21-22, for example: "But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” 

Ephesians 2:8-9: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”

If we could be saved from sin, death, and futility by good things that we do or by the attitudes we adop, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to go to the cross to offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. 

And we would have no need of the Word that makes it possible for us to trust in Him or to be claimed by Him in Holy Baptism, where the Word of Jesus meets the water, or to receive Him in Holy Communion, where that Word meets the bread and the wine to yield the body and blood of Jesus Himself. 

Christ has done everything needed to save you and me from sin and death in His own death and resurrection. 

Then the Holy Spirit, preaching the Word about Christ to us in the Word and in the Sacraments, brings us the gift of faith, the capacity to believe that Christ did this even for you and me. 

This is how we are saved and how we are set apart to grow as people of God: by God’s grace through a faith in Christ constructed within us by the Holy Spirit. 

Listen: God doesn’t need our thanks. 

God doesn’t need our faith in Christ. 

But when we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ, we will be thankful. 

Thankfulness to God will be present in those who have been saved from sin and death, saved to live with God for all eternity.

I remember seeing this movingly exemplified in a man at a funeral visitation years ago. I watched him as he showed particular empathy to a young widow whose husband had died suddenly and tragically. Later, this man and I talked. He himself was a widower who had lost his wife about ten years earlier. He had been a devoted husband and her death had devastated him. But he had the hope of the gospel. I remember him telling me, “Pastor, every night before I go to bed, I kneel down on my bedroom floor and I thank God that He loves me and saves me even though I’m a sinner.” 

This man wasn’t trying to earn brownie points with God (or me). He wasn't abasing himself and serving up a fake humble pie. His words were the expressions of a man in whom God’s great grace given in Christ had created a great faith in Christ that resulted in great thankfulness to Christ.

We see this very phenomenon happen in a seemingly unlikely person in today’s gospel lesson. Take a look at it, please. Verse 11: “Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’”

In those days, you know, lepers were forced to move away from their families and communities for fear that others might be afflicted with the same often disfiguring skin condition. They lived in colonies on the edges of towns, dependent on people who, from a distance, might bring them food or other necessities. This particular colony of ten included both Jesus’ countrymen and at least one Samaritan. Samaritans were, as you know, often hated and disdained by Jesus’ fellow Jews. But when people go through common horrors, the petty prejudices we stoke when we don’t feel vulnerable often evaporate. I have often seen bigoted people with loved ones hovering on the point of death in hospital ICUs bond with the families of other ICU patients despite differences in their colors or religions that would have, under different circumstances, have had nothing to do with each other. When life knocks you down and reacquaints us with the fact that we are not invincible, it’s easier for us to see that we are all human beings made in God’s image. So, it was with these lepers all desperate for Jesus’ help.

Verse 14: “When [Jesus] saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed.” Jewish ritual and civil law required that a priest had to certify that a leprous person had been cured before she or he could resume their normal lives or be in worship at the temple or the local synagogue. That’s behind Jesus’ directive to the men.

But more to the point of today’s gospel lesson, we should ask ourselves, “What exactly did the lepers do to deserve to be healed?” 

We might all ask: “What did I do, what could I do to be saved from sin, death, and darkness?” 

I could ask myself a similar question: “What did I do that God spared me from a heart attack that should have killed me?” 

The answer to these questions and others like them that we might ask is the same: NOTHING! 

There is nothing that we can do to earn God’s grace, His undeserved favor, or any of His blessings. 

As the ten lepers should have learned that day on the frontier between Galilee and Samaria, the blessings God gives through Jesus are not deserved and cannot be earned.

Ten lepers were cleansed--or healed--that day. But only one of them, it seems, came to believe in Jesus as God the Son, the One and the only One we need for salvation from our sins and life with God that starts now and goes on in perfection beyond the grave. Nine seemed to view their return to normalcy as only their just due, taking good health as something God or the universe owed them, even though this is a fallen world in which ill-health or tragedy or difficulty can strike any person at any time. But one man had a different perspective.

Verse 15: “One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well.’”

Those last words of Jesus in this passage are the key to understanding the whole thing. 

Jesus tells the Samaritan first, “Rise…” Here, in the original Greek in which Luke and the other New Testament writers composed their works, Jesus tells the man, “Ἀναστὰς…” This is a variation on a noun commonly used in the New Testament, anastasis. It often means resurrection. Jesus is telling the thankful Samaritan more than to rise up from the ground. “Rise,” Jesus is telling him, “from sin and death and futility. Rise!” And then Jesus says, “go,” go about your new life.

Now comes the absolutely most important thing Jesus says in this whole passage: “your faith has made you well.” 

Now, we may think, “Weren’t the other nine made well too?” 

No, they were only purged of their leprosy. 

The word Jesus uses of the end to all ten men’s leprosy is ἐκαθαρίσθησαν, meaning they were made clean. But when Jesus tells the grateful Samaritan man “your faith has made you well,” He actually says, “Your faith has saved you.” The word our translation renders as made you well is sozo, which means save. 

Friends, you can bet your whole life on this fundamental truth: WHETHER YOU ARE IN GOOD HEALTH OR BAD, WHETHER YOU LIVE OR DIE, YOUR FAITH IN CHRIST SAVES YOU!

Ten of the lepers were healed, but only one of them was saved. 

Ten received grace; one had faith. 

Ten heard the saving Word of God in Christ; one believed. 

Ten had the kingdom of God come to them; only one entered that kingdom. 

The thankful Samaritan wasn’t saved because he was thankful; he was thankful because Christ had saved him by giving him the gift of faith. He came to faith in Christ the same way we come to faith in Christ: His Word comes to us and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we believe!

Thankfulness is a hallmark of all disciples of Jesus. The Samaritan was so overwhelmed by God’s grace and goodness that not giving praise to God and falling at Jesus’ feet would have been unthinkable to him. 

Is it that way for us? I know that it isn't always for me.

In speaking of Psalm 147:12, which directs God’s people to “Extol the Lord...praise your God,” Martin Luther observed, “We have to be yelled at before we start praising the Lord. Even animals don’t live that shamefully! Pigs recognize the person who gives them their food. They’ll run after her and cry to her. But the world doesn’t even recognize God, let alone thank and praise him…”

It was based on these words of Luther that we used to tell our kids that the reason we prayed at mealtimes was so that we wouldn't be less than pigs. One day when our kids were about seven and four, we were out at some restaurant. The server brought us our food and Ann and I set out, as you do with younger kids, to cut up their portions and just get them generally ready to eat. Then we dove in. At that point, Philip, the older of the two realized we hadn't prayed and said, "We're pigs!"
When the Word of God came to the leprous Samaritan, he was desperate enough, helpless enough, and vulnerable enough, that when God’s undeserved grace came to him through Jesus, he proved to be precisely the kind of good soil that Jesus says elsewhere is needed for the seed of faith to take root and grow. 

The gift of faith in Christ made him thankful for being healed and that faith made him well; it saved him. 

May we always be desperate enough, helpless enough, and vulnerable enough for faith to take root in us, to grow in us, to make us eternally well, right with God. 

And may we always be thankful. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Ultimate Healing (AUDIO)

Here.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Ultimate Healing

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Mark 5:21-44

Today’s message is a re-run, slightly modified. It addresses an important topic and got many comments when I shared it three years ago. A friend of mine once said, “If the Holy Spirit inspired you to preach something, there’s a good chance that it’s still worth preaching.” That seems especially true of this message.

Some people read or hear passages like our gospel lesson for today and ask why the God we know in Jesus doesn't heal people today? One guy asked me, “When did God stop performing miracles?” The answer, of course, is that He’s never stopped. God still does miracles. The God we know in Jesus Christ still heals.

And the empirical evidence for that seems to increase all the time. 

In an October 25, 1999 article of The Archives of Internal Medicine, seven physicians, a hospital chaplain, a social worker, and a scholar associated with leading hospitals from around the country, presented the findings of their research on the connection between intercessory prayer—prayer offered on behalf of others--and the recovery of coronary patients. (I have a particular interest in this, as you can imagine.) 

The researchers set up what’s known as a “double blind” experiment on those recovering from heart problems. There were 990 patients in the study. Prayers were said for some of them. Prayers were not offered for the others. The doctors treating the patients didn’t know who was chosen to be prayed for and the subjects of the prayers didn’t know either. 

But a list of first names was given to people in local churches who prayed for those on the list each day. Neither the people doing the praying, nor the people being prayed for, nor the researchers knew who had been chosen to be the target of prayer. 

And what happened? Those for whom prayers were offered recovered more quickly. As the researchers put it in the conclusion of their abstract, “This result suggests that prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care.”

Now, if this were an isolated study, it wouldn’t mean much. But in recent decades, literally hundreds of objective scientific studies, conducted at major hospitals and universities, have been done looking into the connection between things like faith, prayer, and worship attendance on the one hand and healing and health on the other. The results are stunning.

A few examples: 

A 1972 study of 91,909 people in Washington County, Maryland “found that those who attended church once or more a week had significantly lower death rates from…coronary-artery disease (50 percent reduction), emphysema (56 percent reduction), cirrhosis of the liver (74 percent reduction), suicide (53 percent reduction).”

“A 1978 study of 355 men in Evans County, Georgia showed that those who attended church one or more times per week had significantly lower blood-pressure readings than individuals who attended church less often. The positive link between church attendance and lower blood pressure held up even if the church attenders were smokers!”

Many of you in this sanctuary this morning would affirm that the God we know in Jesus Christ is still in the healing business. I can’t possibly count how many times I’ve had people tell me, “I can feel the prayers people are offering for me.” 

Certainly, God uses doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to bring His healing. And I thank God for them. But, as study after study has confirmed, their efforts are enhanced by prayer.

Many health care professionals know this. One surgeon I met years ago made a point of asking when I would be joining the patient he was operating on for prayer before surgery. “I want to be there when you pray,” he told me. “And would you please pray for me, too?” I was happy to do that.

It’s not uncommon for medical personnel to ask if they can join me when I pray with church members before their surgeries. One morning, as I visited for prayer with a Living Water member, the family and I were asked by both the surgeon and the anesthetist if we would pray with them. So, we had two prayers before the procedure!

After I'd had a heart attack eight years ago, it was determined that I had a 100% blockage in the left anterior descending artery. (Cardiologists have a nickname for that blockage. They call it "the widowmaker.") Two weeks after the attack, I was in the Cath Lab at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus. I was awake during the procedure, of course. As it unfolded, my cardiologist told me, "I found," referring to the blockage, "but I don't know if I can get through it." "Oh," I told him and those assisting him, "I pray you can." I had visions of otherwise having to undergo open heart surgery, which some of you have had. A few moments later, the doctor told me, "I got it, buddy." "Thank God!" I said, and addressing everyone in the room, "And thank all of you." "No," my doctor told me. "Just thank God."

The God we know in Jesus Christ would still be God, still loving, still powerful, even if "the widowmaker" had killed me eight years ago. But I'm convinced that he spared me death then so that I could be here this morning and to do whatever else He has in mind for me to do to spread the Gospel and give Him glory.

God is still in the healing business. In his book, The Faith Factor, Dr. Dale A. Matthews tells the true story of Barbara, who suffered from cancer. Barbara was in worship one Sunday at the Anglican church she attended when the priest read our gospel lesson for this morning, including the account of the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. Barbara considered how the woman had so much faith in Jesus that she thought to herself, “If only I touch the hem of His garment, I will be healed.” And her faith in Jesus was rewarded; she was healed. 

As Barbara prepared to go to the altar to receive Holy Communion, a thought crossed her mind: “I could be like her.” She looked at her priest who was, she thought, “standing in” for Jesus as He presided over the Eucharist. “She decided that she would touch the priest’s robe when he gave her the communion wafer.” 

As Barbara tells it: “I touched his robe, and [unlike Jesus] he couldn’t have known that I did, though he did know about my cancer. He did something in that moment that I had never seen him do before: he put down the paten with the communion wafers and came over to me; laying both hands on my head, he prayed for my healing.”

Barbara wasn’t healed instantly. But she knew that God was healing her. As she explains it, though at that point her healing wasn’t physical, her heart was healed. “I had complete trust in God and his love, something [God] knew I needed far more than any other kind of healing at the moment.”

Of course, you and I know that not everyone for whom we pray is healed. Other than Jesus, Who rose from the dead, the ratio of births to deaths in this world remains 1:1. 

Even more than that, Pastor Mark Dahle, a Lutheran pastor who has written and spoken about his California congregation’s healing ministry, reminds us, everybody for whom we pray will eventually die. We live in a fallen and imperfect world. Death comes, as does suffering of all kinds. Faith in Jesus is no insurance policy against the reality of living in a dying world.

So, why did Jesus raise Jairus’ daughter from the dead and the woman with the long-standing hemorrhaging in today’s Gospel lesson? Why does Jesus heal today?

We get at least one answer to that question from an interchange that happens between Simon Peter and Jesus before dawn, the day after Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law. The disciples had been frantic to find Jesus, Who had gone off for some quiet time with God the Father, so that He could go back into the town He’d preached, taught, and healed in the day before. But Jesus tells them, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” (Mark 1:38) [Emphasis mine]

For Jesus, healing was never an end. It was only a means. 

John’s Gospel constantly refers to Jesus’ healings and other miracles as signs. Signs point to something more significant, more meaningful than themselves. 

The miracles of Jesus point us to the simple, powerful fact that Jesus has power over life, death, suffering, disease, sin, the devil, our sinful selves, and every other one of our enemies.

What Jesus came to do during His time on earth was, through His words, life, death, and resurrection, share a plain message, one that will change our lives forever if we let it. Jesus puts it this way in Mark 1:15: “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” 

Jesus says, in effect, “Turn from sin—repent—and trust in Me to give you life forever—fuller life today and totally new, restored life in eternity with God.”

Jesus’ miracles assure us that it’s safe to do that, to turn from our favorite sins, our abiding fears, our need for control, and to simply, completely trust in Him. 

If Jesus has control over life and death, do you really think that He’s going to lose you? 

Or lose His Church? 

Or lose the eternity He won on the cross for you and guaranteed by His resurrection from the dead? 

Repent. Trust. That’s Jesus’ message in a nutshell. 

Its validity and power to change a life for eternity are underscored by HIs miracles, by His suffering death on our behalf, and by His resurrection.

Jesus once asked an important question. “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” [Matthew 16:26] Today’s lesson, I think, asks a similar question: “What good is it to have perfect health, but not have life with God?” "What good is it to have everything you want in this world, but not have life with God?"

Jesus Christ heals. And, by the power of His death and resurrection, the ultimate healing, the one that matters for all eternity, is the healing of our broken relationships with God, with others, and with ourselves. The healing that Christ brings to those who repent and believe in Him will be our joy for all eternity. 

The daily lifestyle of "repent and trust," what Luther called "daily repentance and renewal," can also, even now, be our comfort, our strength, our hope, our power, our reason for waking up in the morning with faith and peace instead of fear and apprehension. I hope that sounds as good to you as it does to me. Amen

[I am the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]