Lent 1 2026
2 Cor 12.1-10, John 5.1-15
Throughout the benefice during Lent the decision has been
made to have a theme of healing running through sermons, readings and the
various Lent groups that are meeting.
So, expect to hear healing explored from all sorts of angles,
from whoever is standing here over the next five weeks or so. Healing is a very
appropriate theme for Lent. This is a time when we are encouraged to reflect on
ourselves and our world. We don’t get very far in doing that without seeing
that there are all sorts of things in us and around us which need to be healed.
It may be physical healing we long for, for ourselves or someone else, but it
might equally be healing in our hearts or our spirits, in our relationships, in
our society, in creation itself. All of these are places where we know things
aren’t right, where we often see dis-ease of some sort or another.
But healing isn’t a straightforward issue – that’s pretty
obvious too. We may pray earnestly for someone to be physically healed, and yet
it doesn’t happen. Christian leaders or churches which promise miracles usually
come to grief in the end. Some are exposed as cynical frauds. Others may be
entirely sincere in their beliefs, but are so heavily invested in those
miracles happening because their own worth, their own faith, their own ego
depends on it that when people aren’t healed they blame the victim for not
having enough faith, or not praying right, or they tell them that they must be
sinful in some way or have deserved their illness, or are being punished. Or
they simply increase the spiritual pressure- pray louder, pray longer - until prayer itself becomes abusive. It
sounds a bit strange to say that healing needs to come with a health warning,
but sadly it does.
It seems to me that there are two factors that are often
involved when healing ministry goes awry. The first is that we forget that we
aren’t God. It ought to be obvious, but it isn’t. We like to think we are in
control – life feels safer that way. Of course, there are things we can do to
help ourselves and others to be healthy. Diet, exercise, sleep, access to
health care, clean water, vaccinations, a pollution free environment. But even
if we get all of that right, we can’t guarantee that we won’t fall ill, or be
injured, and (spoiler alert) all of us will one day die. We’re not in control.
We’re not God. And that means that when we pray for healing, we can’t make
promises. All we can do is put ourselves and those we pray for into the hands
of the one who is God. Our prayers for healing need to be rooted not in
our own ego, or our anxious need to feel that we can pull the strings that will
make God act, but in our trust that, whatever happens, we, and those we pray
for are held in his hands and loved eternally. That’s a far more precious gift
to receive, a far more vital lesson to learn.
The second factor that often leads to problems with healing
ministry is that we don’t read the Bible enough – or rather that we don’t read
enough of the Bible. We light upon one healing story, and we think that if
healing came to that person that way, then all healing happens like that. All
we have to do is follow the pattern it gives us. But the reality is that healing
comes to people in the Bible in many different ways. And the
two readings we’ve heard today are a perfect example of that.
If all we had was today’s Gospel reading, what might we
conclude about sickness and healing? The man who was lying by the pool at
Bethzatha had been ill for 38 years, we are told. Do you only get healed if you
have that much patience, if you wait that long? And yet in other stories people
are healed quickly. Jesus asks this man by the poolside, “Do you want
to be made well?” We might conclude that if someone isn’t healed it’s
because they don’t want to be, not deep down, not really. And yet, in
other stories, there’s no conversation at all. Jesus heals the unconscious,
maybe even dead, daughter of a synagogue leader called Jairus. He heals a
centurion’s servant who isn’t even present. Sometimes he heals with a touch,
sometimes with a word, sometimes even with spit mixed with mud – I’d rather
give that one a miss thanks! Sometimes he casts out demons, sometimes not.
A really problematic part of the story we heard today comes
at the end, when Jesus tells the man not “to sin any more, so that nothing
worse happens to you”. Does that mean that disease is the result of sin? That
can play into some really dark and damaging beliefs around healing – or might
it just be that this particular man’s paralysis is the result of something he
did that he shouldn’t have done. Just a few chapters later, Jesus explicitly
challenges his disciples when they ask whether the blindness of a man he is
about to heal is his fault or his parents – it’s no one’s fault, says Jesus. We generalise at our peril.
And our first reading underlines that. St Paul writes to the
Church in Corinth. He talks about the wonderful things that have happened to
him, the visions he’s had, the calling he received from God on the road to
Damascus, and the assurance that gave him of God’s love. “I know a person in Christ” is just a
roundabout way of referring to himself. And yet, he says, that doesn’t mean
that everything in his life is easy. He has a “thorn in the flesh”. We don’t
know whether that’s a physical ailment, a problematic relationship, or
something spiritual, but whatever it is, despite his prayers, despite his
faith, despite his close relationship with God, it hasn’t been taken away. Yet,
he says, he’s come to see that through it he has learned to look for and to
find God’s strength “made perfect in weakness” and that, in turn, has helped
him face the “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities” that
come to him as a result of his ministry.
So where does this all leave us as we start our Lenten
exploration of healing? In one sense, we might be feeling that it’s all more
complicated than we thought. But in another sense, perhaps it’s actually
simpler. Healing, whether it’s physical, spiritual, relational, societal,
cosmic, doesn’t depend on us following this ritual or that ritual, using these
words or those words, or no words at all. It is found – in whatever form it
takes - simply by realising that we are in the presence of God, who is closer to
us than our own heartbeat, who doesn’t expect us to heal ourselves, or to heal
others – because we can’t – but who invites us to find our rest in him as we
pray, and place others for whom we pray into that rest as well, so that, as our
collect today put it, “as you know our weakness, may we know your power to save.”
Amen
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