St. Michael and All Angels
We seek to be a light of Christ in the community, where all are welcome to experience God's love and blessings.

September 27, 2024 - Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

This week, the theme that courses through our readings is healing. God heals in many ways and through diverse peoples. There is no one healing path or modality; there is no particular religious or medical tradition that has a monopoly on divine healing. God heals not only through prayer, but also through penicillin; through medication and meditation; through chanting and chemo. Wherever healing and truth are present, whether or not God’s name is mentioned, God is the source. Full stop.

To focus on healing, we have to skip over the reading from Esther; in order to truly understand the passage from Esther, it needs to be the primary passage and put into context with other passages from Esther. This means telling the entire story of Esther, her sense of vocation, and God’s care for the Jewish people. It’s a remarkable story, but I can’t do it justice.

This week’s reading from James focuses on the life-transforming power or prayer. James guides us to pray about everything and in every season of life. Every state of mind or mood is a call to prayer. In sickness, and in health – pray. When you feel shame or guilt – pray. When you are happy – pray and give thanks. When you are depressed – pray and ask for healing. James introduces the role of anointing in the healing process. Whether it is laying on of hands or anointing with oil, a healing process is opened that opens us up to a great flow of divine energy.

The author of James – like Paul – counsels us to pray without ceasing. Prayer should be as natural to us as breathing and should accompany every action. Nothing is off limits for prayer, and prayer can transform our cells as well as our souls.

Do you think that we are committed to prayer? Does it really make a difference and can it really alter our physical and emotional selves? Can our prayers change our weather patterns, like James suggests? Are the impacts of our small actions – like our prayers – impacting larger processes in place, like physical and political events? Can we, like Mahatma Ghandi is reported to have said, “be the change you wish to see in the world?”

But James also reminds us not to judge the sinners amongst us. Our calling is to EMBRACE the lost and the broken, to encourage them to confess their sins, and to get right with God. James affirms that when you save a soul, you save the world, and when you bring a soul back to God, you are sharing in God’s vision of world harmony and peace.

The writer of Mark reminds us to expand the circle of healing and inspiration beyond our own community boundaries. The disciples were pleased with themselves because they had preserved the purity of the Jesus movement by silencing the healing ministry of an outsider, and they were surprised when Jesus scolded them for their narrowmindedness and limited understanding of Jesus’ healing. No matter who it is, anyone who promotes abundant life is on God’s side. Divine healing is truly found outside of the church as well. Grace can be found in the most unlikely of places.

Jesus said, “I am the vine. You are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing…. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide in my love” (Jn 15). Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John describe what is happened when we are connected with the divine energy of love, which like the sap flowing through the vine, gives life and fruitfulness to all things. If we turn away from God’s healing energy, we wither from lack of spiritual nourishment.

In light of today’s scriptures, we need to see God’s healing touch in Christian worship and laying on of hands and also in Western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, reiki healing touch, yoga and qigong, and meditative and stress reduction techniques. God’s quest for life – and life abundantly – takes many forms and I think we need to explore them before we critique them. When we interpret other healing techniques and spiritual practices from other traditions in the context of Jesus’ healing ministry, they can help to deepen our Christian faith and provide even more hope for the hopeless.

We need healing individually, corporately, nationally, and as a planet. Healing can only occur through peace.  The healing we need and the healing warring nations need calls us beyond self-interest to work for wholeness and peace in every aspect of our lives and the peace we channel to the world may become a catalyst for international healing. The world is healed one prayer and moment at a time.