Sermon: “A Place of Healing Prayer”

Can you remember being sick as a little kid, the feel of Mom’s cool cloth upon the forehead, or the ice chips on the tongue?  What is it about water and healing?  There’s nothing like it.  No wonder washing in water works so well as a metaphor for a new start in life – an initiation rite both for Judaism and Christianity.  For Jews, it’s the mikvah, a ritual immersion bath for purification, which was where we get our own Christian baptism.  Bathing is a ritual in many cultures – from Japanese hot springs to Native American sweat lodges and Scandinavian saunas, because peoples the world over recognize the cleansing and healing powers of water.  We have a natural human instinct, I think, to seek out special spiritual sites – especially those with springs of water – as places for healing prayer.  (In Connecticut, our United Church of Christ has Silver Lake Conference Center; where I grew up in North Carolina it was John’s River Camp.)

So spiritual refreshment and healing what those gathered at the pool of Beth-zatha were looking for, there at the place of healing prayer Jesus found in Jerusalem.  Its Hebrew name means “house of mercy.”  It’s interesting that the man who had to wait so long for his turn, and ultimately took up his mat and walked, didn’t have to actually get into the pool.  God’s mercy came to him not in a traditional Jewish mikvah, but through an encounter with Jesus and one simple command, “Take up your mat and walk.”  Who knows?  The poor man may have been relieved he didn’t have to even get his feet wet – because not everybody likes to take a bath. 

My neighbor’s St. Bernard was always remarkably patient when I’d see her out on their front lawn getting a bath.  That huge dog would just sit there patiently to be scrubbed and rinsed – looking like a small VW bug compared to the family’s 3 little girls.  But our little Yorkie Cookie kind of turns into a scramble of floppy hairy arms and legs when we try to bathe her.  And don’t get me started on what it’s like to bathe a cat!  My point is, in this story in Acts of Lydia’s conversion by Paul, a lot is left unsaid in that line, “¹⁵When she and her household were baptized…”  How did her “household” feel about that?  Did her kids complain that they got dragged to church, like some of ours do? 

So the truth is, some people are spiritual dogs and some are cats.  Some of us go running and leaping toward God and are happy to jump happy and splashing into the waters of the Holy Spirit.  If you’re one of those, you don’t mind getting your hair wet.  We New England Congregationalists, like Episcopalians and Presbyterians, are much more like spiritual cats than dogs.  If it’s necessary to get ourselves clean, we’re very happy to do it ourselves.  We’re independent and self-reliant and tend to resist being splashed too much with a lot of messy religion.  We’re inclined to circle around the edges of the waters of God’s grace – to lap up what we need and leave the rest.  Paul and other observant Jews of his time were a lot like that.

But that’s OK.  The Good News is Jesus comes to us right where we are.  Jesus comes to us right where we are, as he does to the sick man there by the pool of Beth-zatha – this poor man who had been sick and looking for healing for 38 years.  The Bible doesn’t say he’s lame, by the way.  He’s not missing a leg or deformed.  I’d not noticed that before.  He is just sick, and unable to get down to the pool to be healed, or so he says.  We have to take his word for it.  But Jesus challenges him.  He asks him, “Do you want to be made well?”  “Do you want to be made well?”  That’s a big question.  Jesus left the choice up to him.  He didn’t FORCE the man to be healed.  He didn’t throw the poor guy into the deep end, way above his head and expect him to sink or swim.  Jesus didn’t touch him or pray for him or even help him down into the water, as the man might have expected.  He just asked him, “Do you want to be made well?”

And the man doesn’t respond the way you might expect.  Isn’t it strange that after 38 years, the guy didn’t just say “Yeah.  Sure.  You bet I want to be made well!”  But no.  Instead he tells Jesus why a miracle couldn’t possibly happen to him:  “But sir, I have no one to put me into the pool.”   That’s when Jesus just looks at him and says, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”  And he did!  He didn’t think he could do it, but something about the love of Jesus spoke to him and he picked up his mat and walked!  I tell you, that question, “Do you want to be made well?”  That is a powerful question. That man at the pool said yes.  And so did Lydia, after she listened to Paul preach and teach down there by the river in Philippi – HER town’s special place of prayer.

But here’s my question: Do you think either one of those people – the sick man at the pool or Lydia down by the riverside – do you think they got up that Sabbath morning and went to their place of healing prayer saying to themselves, “Today, God’s love is going to change me forever?”  I don’t think so.  I think it was a habit with them –going to worship.  I mean, it was their Sabbath.  That’s what people did.  That’s what people of faith still do.  Maybe that’s what you do – at least once a year.  Some of us, like that poor man sick for 38 years, many of us keep getting up on the Sabbath and dragging ourselves over to the outskirts of the Holy City of God.  The sick man went to the pool over by the Sheep’s Gate of Jerusalem and Lydia trudged down to her place of prayer just OUTSIDE the city gate by the river.  It’s the Sabbath, so we go to where we can be just a little nearer to the Spirit of God – but we’ve come to not expect very much.

But here’s the thing – saying prayers doesn’t do very much.  Going through the motions of worship, that doesn’t do very much either.  But coming to a place of healing prayer to meet Jesus, to listen for God’s own voice “still speaking” – that makes ALL the difference.  This John passage records for us a miraculous healing, when something profound shifted inside that man and he stopped making excuses for himself and actually listened to what Jesus commanded him to do and picked up his mat and walked.  And this Acts passage records another miracle –the birth of the Greek Church, the first European Church – when Lydia found Jesus too, at her place of prayer.  Paul’s preaching opened her heart to a new way of being with God, in relationship with Jesus. She didn’t expect that to happen – probably she came to pray there every week – but in that oh-so-ordinary act of just getting herself out one more time to Sabbath worship, she found new life in Christ.

Did you know our church is also a place of healing prayer?  Maybe that sounds very fancy to you, or evangelical, or like what happens at some remote monastic shrine.   But think about what has been happening here over the past year – especially as we have focused on our “Pray” priority of our new Vision Statement, Make Jesus Your Mentor: Pray, Share, Welcome.  When our Vision Task Force went around this spring to visit committees and see how you were doing with the “Pray” priority, people were talking about real changes in their lives.  Some of you took joined a book or Bible study or adult education class for the first time.  Some of you tried new ways of praying on your own.  Some of you got more comfortable asking for prayer for yourself or others, or just saying to a friend who was hurting, without apology, “I’m praying for you.”

You may not come to church expecting to be healed, but healing is happening here anyway.  Jesus is still meeting us here, right here in this meetinghouse, right where we are.  And he’s not trying to push us into the Kingdom of Heaven.  He never forces our head down under the waters of baptism.  No.  Jesus, we remember, is the guy who stands at the door and knocks.  And if we open that door, even just a little bit, we’ll find Jesus waiting there, asking us that same question, “Do you want to be made well?”  “Do YOU want to be made well?” Jesus is still asking us that question – and new life in Christ is still being offered to us, right here at this place of healing prayer. 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

Acts 16:9-15

⁹During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” ¹⁰When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. ¹¹We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, ¹²and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. ¹³On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. ¹⁴A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. ¹⁵When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.

John 5:1-9

5After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ²Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. ³In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. ⁵One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” ⁷The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” ⁸Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” ⁹At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath.