December 24, 2007 - Healing - Frank Alton

Matthew 1:18-25

Tonight we celebrate the fact that the greatest Christmas present that exists is that Jesus came to be our salvation. During the season of Advent we looked at salvation not as a legal transaction to appease an angry god, but as a healed relationship. All year long we tell stories that reveal Jesus’ salvation through stories of healing individuals damaged by sin It’s no coincidence that having been announced as the one who makes God known (John 1:18), Jesus spent the vast majority of his ministry healing people. "Where ever he went - into villages, towns or countryside - they placed the sick. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak; all who touched him were healed." (Mk 6:56) Where Jesus is present, healing is going on. I believe that is still true today.

We can’t have a proper understanding of the life & ministry of Jesus without realizing that salvation means healing. When blind Bartimaeus shouts out to Jesus, asking to receive his sight, Jesus replies: "Go, your faith has healed you." (Mark 10:52). Through his healing he was saved; receiving God's salvation he was healed.

Ephesians 2:8 describes God's salvation by grace. If we replace the word "saved" by "healed" the well known verse becomes, "By grace you have been healed, through faith.” Jesus came to win our trust so that because of his gracious nature he could then heal (save) us, revealing God’s desire to heal us, not just physically, but spiritually.

When we root healing & salvation in grace everyone has the same access to them. That mattered a lot in the early church where Gentiles & Jews fought for position. It mattered in the Middle Ages when the church actually tried to sell salvation. It matters in our world when we too easily accept systems that make healing more accessible to some than to others.

During the years our family lived in Mexico bringing Christians from the U.S. to experience God’s presence among the vulnerable, there was a period when we would take groups to the garbage dump and then the Sisters of Charity orphanage in a part of Mexico City called Santa Fe. We would talk with parents raising children in the dump, facing infection and sometimes inevitable death. In the orphanage, many of the children were disabled – physically &/or mentally.

At the end of each day we would spend time reflecting on & trying to make sense of what we had witnessed that day. That was a challenging feat for people who lived in comfort. I remember one person trying to connect her worlds, which were suddenly fraying at the edges. She said, “It seems that some things are the same whether you are rich or poor. To have a sick child, to lose a child, is the same heartbreak for a parent.”

After a respectful silence in the group I asked the group if they thought it was the same. One person finally responded: “I don’t think it is. In my world when a child dies, you know that you have done everything you could for the child. You have provided the best that doctors can offer. In the dump, when a child dies, the parents know that it is because they couldn’t afford the few
pesos to buy the medicine to save him. That strikes me as a very different heartbreak.”

To pray for healing means to pray for ourselves and our own children; and it means praying for children being raised in garbage dumps, orphanages, urban homes, and for a world where we have come to believe that there is not enough healing to go around. When Jesus offers salvation, he offers healing; when he offers forgiveness he offers salvation; and he offers all three to everyone. For Jesus healing goes way beyond a cure. It’s neither easy nor cheap; but it’s available and it’s free.