Healing

           The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed.  For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” (Matthew 8:8-9) 

          When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.  (Luke 9:1-2) 

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two^[others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.  He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. (Luke 10:1-3)

God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.  (Acts 19:11-12) 

Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses. (I Timothy 5:23) 

As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you, and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. (Galatians 4:13-15) 

For [Epaphroditus] longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill.  Indeed he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow. (Philippians 2:26-27)

 

This morning’s reading in Hearing God had to do with authority. The Centurion understood authority. His emperor or his governor or his commander told him to do something, and he did it. He told his subordinates to do something, and they did it. Why wouldn’t it be that if Jesus had the authority to heal, He would have that authority whether he was touching the person, or half-way across town?

It was probably later that Jesus sent the twelve and then the seventy out with authority. It was even later that the disciples weren’t able to cast the demon out of the boy. As we move into Acts, the apostles raised the dead. Diseases were healed both in person and at a distance (involving the handkerchief.)

There are those who claim that such healing was only for that time. There are those who claim it’s very much for today as well. The latter say it’s all very simple – if you enough faith, and that faith happens to be of the sort they approve, of course you’ll either be healed or be able to heal others. Yet even those who believe that aren’t universally free of illness, and they have not gone out into the world and healed everyone.

Some might suggest that this is sufficient reason to throw the whole idea of God into the trash. If He doesn’t follow the rules we set for him, “Adios.” That’s too simplistic, reductionist, naïve, and arrogant.

The idea that I’m facing this morning is that God didn’t always heal even in the first century. Paul preached in Galatia because he was sick. Timothy had to be advised to drink some wine because of his ailments. Epaphroditus was so sick he nearly died. Would anyone outside of friends and family really care if I died? Would it do harm to the work God is doing? Would it glorify Him? Would His healing me have a bigger influence? On the big scheme of things level, neither healing nor not healing or even allowing to die seem to be significant.

What of the smaller scale? Does healing equal loving and not healing equal hate? Not if Paul, Timothy, and Epaphroditus got sick. As I considered these ideas this morning, I found myself with two options. The first is to become someone who advances the Kingdom in a visible manner. If I became an Elizabeth Eliot, maybe God would find it useful for me to be healed or to heal others through me. The other option was to stop being jealous of those who heal or are healed. And the reality is that both those options would be hard.