Healing Faith

Delivered June 19, 2011

I Corinthians 12:1-11; Mark 5:21-43

I have a friend who is a faith healer. He wasn’t always a faith healer. He used to be an ordinary Baptist pastor. We graduated from the same seminary at about the same time; our first churches after seminary were a few miles apart in Southern Illinois. We got to know each other well and became good friends. Over a period of four years, we had lunch together at least once a month, and we preached at each other’s churches. Then in 1982 I moved up here to NH to this church and after a few years we lost touch. Today he heads up a huge international healing ministry. Last month he was in Honduras and Mozambique. Soon he will be heading to Brazil, where he seems to spend a lot of time. This fall he will be going to South Africa, Australia and Sweden, as well as many places around this country. He travels the world leading large events of thousands of people, and his focus is on physical healing.

We had not talked in years, but recently we reconnected through Facebook, and he called me up – after arranging a time to talk through one of his assistants. We had a long conversation shortly before Easter, catching up on what has been happening in our lives, families and ministries. Near the end of our conversation I asked for prayers for my daughter who has chronic health problems. He called her up later and prayed with her. But I will be honest with you – I don’t know what to think about faith healing. If I didn’t have a friend who is a faith healer, I would probably think they are all charlatans and hucksters. But I know this man and he is no charlatan or huckster. He is an honest man of faith who believes in the power of prayer and the ability of God to heal. I also believe that God heals, but I might describe it in different terms than he does.

In a previous sermon, I explained that I do not understand miracles as God breaking or suspending the laws of nature or science. I don’t think God sets up the universe to operate according to certain natural laws and then breaks them on special occasions. I don’t think God makes exceptions to the laws of physics or biology. I see miracles as God using natural laws in ways we do not yet understand. In this manner I believe in what we would call miraculous healings. I have never personally witnessed an instantaneous physical healing. I am not saying it can’t happen; but I guess I need to see it to believe it. But I have witnessed a lot of people praying for people and many times those people get better. Maybe they would have gotten better anyway. The scientific studies I have read on the efficacy of prayer appear inconclusive. But I pray for people, and I believe that God answers prayers for healing. 

That is what our scripture lesson today is about. Jesus was a faith healer. I don’t think these healing stories are just myths or legends invented later. A verse in Luke’s gospel describes Jesus ministry in these words: “And the power of the Lord was present to heal them.” I believe that the power of God was present in Jesus to heal. I believe he still heals. I believe that God heals through the body’s natural healing process, through the physicians’ skills, and also in ways that physicians do not understand. Sometimes people get better when they shouldn’t according to medical science, and doctors do not understand how or why. They use terms like spontaneous healing, spontaneous remission or spontaneous regression. They may call it the placebo effect. People are healed today in ways that medical science does not understand. I think this is God healing, and I would use the term miraculous to describe it.

Our scripture lesson today includes two accounts of miraculous healings. Both happen in the context of faith. Jesus says to the woman with the bleeding, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” What does that mean? He says to the father of the dead girl (according to ‘Luke’s account) “Do not be afraid; only believe, and she will be made well.” Today we are going to look at these accounts of healing and the role of faith in the stories.

1. First, faith drives us to our knees. Jesus had just arrived by boat from the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and he was ministering by the seashore. A man named Jairus, one of the leaders of the local synagogue approached him. Verses 22-23 say, “And when he saw Him, he fell at His feet and begged Him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter lies at the point of death. Come and lay Your hands on her, that she may be healed, and she will live.” Here is a religious leader prostrating himself before Jesus. This man is desperate. His little girl is at the point of death. When my daughter Sarah was an infant she had Grand Mal seizures. She still has them, but they are under control with medication. Back then we did not know what they were. All I knew is that my three-week-old daughter was in my arms stiff and not breathing and turning blue. I thought she was dying. As a father, that scares the heck out of you. That is what this father was feeling. His daughter was dying, and it scared the heck out of him. He fell on his knees before Christ.

2. Second, faith asks for help. Our text says, “he begged him earnestly.” The equivalent today of falling on your knees and begging Jesus is prayer. In my experience the chapel is the most unused room in a hospital. Often times it is even hard to find the chapel. It is often tucked away in some out-of-the-way corner. Many times it is no more than a closet and looks neglected. I am one of the few people who actually seeks out and uses hospital chapels. After visiting a patient in serious condition I will often go to the chapel to pray privately. I almost always have the whole room to myself. I can think of only a couple of times in my life that I have actually found another person in the chapel when I go in. Once I found a man sleeping in there, but that doesn’t count. You would think that a room dedicated to prayer for healing would be the busiest place in a hospital with all the seriously ill people, but the reality is that it does not get a lot of use.

Prayer is an acknowledgement that there is a limit to what humans can do by themselves. Prayer admits that we can’t handle things by ourselves. But prayer is more than that. A lot of people know things are beyond their control but they don’t pray. Prayer is an act of faith that things that are out of our control are in God’s control. Prayer is an acknowledgment that there is a Power greater than ourselves who cares and hears us when we call out. That is an act of faith. We can’t prove that is true. This might be just wishful thinking. Physicist Stephen Hawking made news recently by his remark that heaven is “a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” Maybe prayer is no more than wishful thinking for people who are afraid of the dark. Or maybe it is seeing a light in the darkness that others cannot see. Hebrews describes faith as “seeing Him who is invisible.” This man in our story had faith that Jesus would be able to heal his daughter.

3. Faith is touching Jesus. In our story the scene shifts from the man begging for healing for his daughter to a woman wanting healing for herself. Jesus agrees to go to the home of Jairus, and on the way something happens. The story says, (v. 24-28) “²⁴ So Jesus went with him, and a great multitude followed Him and thronged Him.
²⁵ Now a certain woman had a flow of blood for twelve years, ²⁶ and had suffered many things from many physicians. She had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. ²⁷ When she heard about Jesus, she came behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment. ²⁸ For she said, “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.” This woman’s faith caused her to reach out and touch Jesus. She believed that all she had to do was touch the hem of Jesus’ garment and she would be healed.

Of all the descriptions of faith in this story, this is my favorite. Faith is not just believing God; it is touching God. When we have faith it is as if heaven and earth touch.  It is like Michelangelo’s painting of the creation of man on the Sistine Chapel showing God and Adam touching fingertips. Faith is stretching and touching the fingertip of God. At that moment the power of God is present to bring healing and life.

4. Faith accesses the power of God. Faith connects us to that life-giving power which first brought life into this universe. In our story, the woman simply touches the hem of Jesus garment, and it says that power went out from Jesus. Verse 29-20 “Immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the affliction. ³⁰ And Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that power had gone out of Him, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My clothes?”  This is such an interesting miracle because Jesus did not intentionally heal the woman. He never even saw her; he did not even know who she was. But she touched him and was healed. By faith we can connect to the life-giving power of God.

5. Next, faith tells the truth. Jesus looks around for who touched him and it says, (v. 33) “But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth.” Faith tells the truth. There is a lot of dishonesty in religion. There is a lot of faking. There is a lot of pretending. This is what Jesus hated the most about religion and he often calls the religious people of his day hypocrites. We need to be very careful to tell the truth to God and others about what we know and what we don’t know, what we are certain about and what we are not so certain about. It is all right not to know!

Faith is being honest and transparent to God – doubts and all. That is why the figure of the apostle Thomas is one of my favorite characters in the Bible. So many times the apostles faked it – saying they would never deny Jesus or betray him, arguing about who was the greatest and maneuvering to sit at Jesus right hand and left hand in the Kingdom of God. But Thomas is honest. I think we ought to call him “honest Tom” instead of “doubting Thomas.” He told the truth and the end result in his life was faith. Faith tells the truth about what we think and feel. That is why I love the Book of Job. He is the most honest guy in the Bible – arguing with God, fighting with his self-righteous friends, telling it as he saw it. Faith tells the truth.

6. Faith calms fears. The story shifts back to the synagogue ruler and his daughter. Jesus says to the woman, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.” Then it says, “³⁵ While He was still speaking, some came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” ³⁶ As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, He said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not be afraid; only believe.” He calms the woman’s fear and then he immediately calms the fears of Jairus when he hears the news that his daughter is dead.

Can you imagine what the father felt when he got this news? A sinking despairing hopeless feeling. His twelve year-old daughter had died. There was nothing more that could be done. When the situation seemed absolutely hopeless and lost, Jesus says tro him, “Do not be afraid; only believe.” These are amazing words under the circumstances! In the presence of death, Jesus tells the man not to fear but believe. Death of a close family member is one of the most traumatic experiences any of us will ever experience. At such a time as that Jesus invites us to transcend fear and believe. He doesn’t go into details here about exactly what to believe, but just to trust him. Likely the father did not even dream that it would end up the way it did. We are not invited to believe something, but to believe someone – Christ.

7. Seventh, faith brings life out of death.  This story ends in a most unbelievable miracle. It ends up with the girl alive and restored to her mother and father. What happened here? Was she dead? The family members said she was, but Jesus said she was only sleeping. Interpreters are divided here concerning the condition of the girl. Some think she was in a coma or close to death. Many think this was a Near Death Experience – that she was clinically dead for a few minutes. It happens today, and people are revived by physicians in the hospital. That is what I think happened. The girl was clinically dead for a short time, and Jesus the Great Physician brought her back to life. In any case the meaning is clear: Jesus brings life out of death. It has meaning far beyond Near Death experiences. It foreshadows Easter and life on the other side of death.

8. Eighth, faith amazes. Verse 42 says that after the girl was revived that all the people “were overcome with great amazement.” A few moments before, these people had been ridiculing Jesus for saying the child was just sleeping. Now they were overcome with amazement at what he had done. Faith is the most amazing thing in the universe. It is amazing because it puts us in contact with the amazing power of God. Jesus constantly surprises us. One thing about the spiritual life is that it is not boring. A lot of people think it is boring. They think religion is boring, Christianity is boring, church is boring. Unfortunately they are right a lot of the time. A lot of religion is boring! But God is not boring, and Christ is not boring. When we truly connect with the Holy Spirit, then the spiritual life is anything but boring. Just the opposite. It is amazing!

9. Finally, Faith is humble. Look at Jesus’ last words in the story. Verse 43 “But He commanded them strictly that no one should know it, and said that something should be given her to eat.”  This small detail about Jesus wanting to make sure the girl got something in her stomach is touching and realistic. But I want to call our attention to the other detail – that Jesus told them not to tell anyone about this miracle. Well, they didn’t listen to him. Somebody talked, because we have it in the NT; in fact we have three different forms of this story in Matthew, Mark and Luke. But it reveals that Jesus did not do this for the show – for self-aggrandizement – to make a name for himself. He did it out of compassion and love, and he would rather if no one knew. Jesus was humble.

People of true faith are humble. Some Christians aren’t so humble. We can be pretty arrogant and self-righteous sometimes, thinking we got it and others don’t. We are right and others are wrong. Faith doesn’t act like that. What the apostle Paul says about love in the famous Love chapter is equally true of faith: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; ⁵ does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; ⁶ does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…. ¹³ And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”  The greatest of these may be love, but faith is right up there in the top three.