The Ultimate Healing

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Mark 5:21-44

Today’s message is a re-run, slightly modified. It addresses an important topic and got many comments when I shared it three years ago. A friend of mine once said, “If the Holy Spirit inspired you to preach something, there’s a good chance that it’s still worth preaching.” That seems especially true of this message.

Some people read or hear passages like our gospel lesson for today and ask why the God we know in Jesus doesn't heal people today? One guy asked me, “When did God stop performing miracles?” The answer, of course, is that He’s never stopped. God still does miracles. The God we know in Jesus Christ still heals.

And the empirical evidence for that seems to increase all the time. 

In an October 25, 1999 article of The Archives of Internal Medicine, seven physicians, a hospital chaplain, a social worker, and a scholar associated with leading hospitals from around the country, presented the findings of their research on the connection between intercessory prayer—prayer offered on behalf of others--and the recovery of coronary patients. (I have a particular interest in this, as you can imagine.) 

The researchers set up what’s known as a “double blind” experiment on those recovering from heart problems. There were 990 patients in the study. Prayers were said for some of them. Prayers were not offered for the others. The doctors treating the patients didn’t know who was chosen to be prayed for and the subjects of the prayers didn’t know either. 

But a list of first names was given to people in local churches who prayed for those on the list each day. Neither the people doing the praying, nor the people being prayed for, nor the researchers knew who had been chosen to be the target of prayer. 

And what happened? Those for whom prayers were offered recovered more quickly. As the researchers put it in the conclusion of their abstract, “This result suggests that prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care.”

Now, if this were an isolated study, it wouldn’t mean much. But in recent decades, literally hundreds of objective scientific studies, conducted at major hospitals and universities, have been done looking into the connection between things like faith, prayer, and worship attendance on the one hand and healing and health on the other. The results are stunning.

A few examples: 

A 1972 study of 91,909 people in Washington County, Maryland “found that those who attended church once or more a week had significantly lower death rates from…coronary-artery disease (50 percent reduction), emphysema (56 percent reduction), cirrhosis of the liver (74 percent reduction), suicide (53 percent reduction).”

“A 1978 study of 355 men in Evans County, Georgia showed that those who attended church one or more times per week had significantly lower blood-pressure readings than individuals who attended church less often. The positive link between church attendance and lower blood pressure held up even if the church attenders were smokers!”

Many of you in this sanctuary this morning would affirm that the God we know in Jesus Christ is still in the healing business. I can’t possibly count how many times I’ve had people tell me, “I can feel the prayers people are offering for me.” 

Certainly, God uses doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to bring His healing. And I thank God for them. But, as study after study has confirmed, their efforts are enhanced by prayer.

Many health care professionals know this. One surgeon I met years ago made a point of asking when I would be joining the patient he was operating on for prayer before surgery. “I want to be there when you pray,” he told me. “And would you please pray for me, too?” I was happy to do that.

It’s not uncommon for medical personnel to ask if they can join me when I pray with church members before their surgeries. One morning, as I visited for prayer with a Living Water member, the family and I were asked by both the surgeon and the anesthetist if we would pray with them. So, we had two prayers before the procedure!

After I'd had a heart attack eight years ago, it was determined that I had a 100% blockage in the left anterior descending artery. (Cardiologists have a nickname for that blockage. They call it "the widowmaker.") Two weeks after the attack, I was in the Cath Lab at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus. I was awake during the procedure, of course. As it unfolded, my cardiologist told me, "I found," referring to the blockage, "but I don't know if I can get through it." "Oh," I told him and those assisting him, "I pray you can." I had visions of otherwise having to undergo open heart surgery, which some of you have had. A few moments later, the doctor told me, "I got it, buddy." "Thank God!" I said, and addressing everyone in the room, "And thank all of you." "No," my doctor told me. "Just thank God."

The God we know in Jesus Christ would still be God, still loving, still powerful, even if "the widowmaker" had killed me eight years ago. But I'm convinced that he spared me death then so that I could be here this morning and to do whatever else He has in mind for me to do to spread the Gospel and give Him glory.

God is still in the healing business. In his book, The Faith Factor, Dr. Dale A. Matthews tells the true story of Barbara, who suffered from cancer. Barbara was in worship one Sunday at the Anglican church she attended when the priest read our gospel lesson for this morning, including the account of the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. Barbara considered how the woman had so much faith in Jesus that she thought to herself, “If only I touch the hem of His garment, I will be healed.” And her faith in Jesus was rewarded; she was healed. 

As Barbara prepared to go to the altar to receive Holy Communion, a thought crossed her mind: “I could be like her.” She looked at her priest who was, she thought, “standing in” for Jesus as He presided over the Eucharist. “She decided that she would touch the priest’s robe when he gave her the communion wafer.” 

As Barbara tells it: “I touched his robe, and [unlike Jesus] he couldn’t have known that I did, though he did know about my cancer. He did something in that moment that I had never seen him do before: he put down the paten with the communion wafers and came over to me; laying both hands on my head, he prayed for my healing.”

Barbara wasn’t healed instantly. But she knew that God was healing her. As she explains it, though at that point her healing wasn’t physical, her heart was healed. “I had complete trust in God and his love, something [God] knew I needed far more than any other kind of healing at the moment.”

Of course, you and I know that not everyone for whom we pray is healed. Other than Jesus, Who rose from the dead, the ratio of births to deaths in this world remains 1:1. 

Even more than that, Pastor Mark Dahle, a Lutheran pastor who has written and spoken about his California congregation’s healing ministry, reminds us, everybody for whom we pray will eventually die. We live in a fallen and imperfect world. Death comes, as does suffering of all kinds. Faith in Jesus is no insurance policy against the reality of living in a dying world.

So, why did Jesus raise Jairus’ daughter from the dead and the woman with the long-standing hemorrhaging in today’s Gospel lesson? Why does Jesus heal today?

We get at least one answer to that question from an interchange that happens between Simon Peter and Jesus before dawn, the day after Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law. The disciples had been frantic to find Jesus, Who had gone off for some quiet time with God the Father, so that He could go back into the town He’d preached, taught, and healed in the day before. But Jesus tells them, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” (Mark 1:38) [Emphasis mine]

For Jesus, healing was never an end. It was only a means. 

John’s Gospel constantly refers to Jesus’ healings and other miracles as signs. Signs point to something more significant, more meaningful than themselves. 

The miracles of Jesus point us to the simple, powerful fact that Jesus has power over life, death, suffering, disease, sin, the devil, our sinful selves, and every other one of our enemies.

What Jesus came to do during His time on earth was, through His words, life, death, and resurrection, share a plain message, one that will change our lives forever if we let it. Jesus puts it this way in Mark 1:15: “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” 

Jesus says, in effect, “Turn from sin—repent—and trust in Me to give you life forever—fuller life today and totally new, restored life in eternity with God.”

Jesus’ miracles assure us that it’s safe to do that, to turn from our favorite sins, our abiding fears, our need for control, and to simply, completely trust in Him. 

If Jesus has control over life and death, do you really think that He’s going to lose you? 

Or lose His Church? 

Or lose the eternity He won on the cross for you and guaranteed by His resurrection from the dead? 

Repent. Trust. That’s Jesus’ message in a nutshell. 

Its validity and power to change a life for eternity are underscored by HIs miracles, by His suffering death on our behalf, and by His resurrection.

Jesus once asked an important question. “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” [Matthew 16:26] Today’s lesson, I think, asks a similar question: “What good is it to have perfect health, but not have life with God?” "What good is it to have everything you want in this world, but not have life with God?"

Jesus Christ heals. And, by the power of His death and resurrection, the ultimate healing, the one that matters for all eternity, is the healing of our broken relationships with God, with others, and with ourselves. The healing that Christ brings to those who repent and believe in Him will be our joy for all eternity. 

The daily lifestyle of "repent and trust," what Luther called "daily repentance and renewal," can also, even now, be our comfort, our strength, our hope, our power, our reason for waking up in the morning with faith and peace instead of fear and apprehension. I hope that sounds as good to you as it does to me. Amen

[I am the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Reds Ascending!

I didn't see the game today, but what a win! After dropping the first two in the weekend series against the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers, the Reds win big. The highlight, of course, was a grand slam by pitcher Michael Lorenzen, the second such homer in two weeks by a Reds pitcher. (Anthony DeSclafani did it last week, becoming the first Reds player to hit a slam since the 1950s!)

June could be called "Reds Ascending." They finish the month at 14-11, the first month of the season in which they've recorded a winning record. Reds batters hit .281, leading the majors. 

The key in recent weeks, apart from the hitting, has been the fact that starting pitching has begun to take hold. Starters are staying in games longer, taking the load off of our excellent bullpen.

I'm excited to see what July brings. If the Reds can win tomorrow's game, they'll split the weekend series. I'd take that, for sure.

It's been two years since I've been to a game in Cincy. I hope to find some time to make it to Great American Ball Park before the season ends. Go, Reds!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

We Can't. God Can! (AUDIO)

Here.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Psalm 94:20-23

20 Can a corrupt throne be allied with you—
    a throne that brings on misery by its decrees?
21 The wicked band together against the righteous
    and condemn the innocent to death.
22 But the Lord has become my fortress,
    and my God the rock in whom I take refuge.
23 He will repay them for their sins
    and destroy them for their wickedness;
    the Lord our God will destroy them. (Psalm 94:20-23)

Four Promises from God

[This message was shared today at the funeral for a young woman and mother of three whose death came suddenly.]

Psalm 23
Romans 8:31, 37-39
John 3:16
For all who knew and loved Kelsey, this is an unimaginably hard time. All of you, especially Kelsey’s children, are in my prayers for the days ahead. Her mother and grandmother have both told me about how Kelsey struggled in this life to find herself, to find her place. Her Facebook page confirms that. In the introduction there, she wrote: “God is life. My [babies] make it worth living.” In what little I know of Kelsey, I hear the story of a young woman who adored her three children, even as she yearned, in her own way, for both God and for some happiness in her life.

In the days, months, and years ahead, you who grieve will struggle. And you will yearn to see Kelsey. It would be unnatural for you not to grieve, even wrong. And it would be abnormal for you not to want to see her. You will also have struggles.

I’ve followed the Lord, sometimes well, sometimes poorly, for more than forty years. In that time, I’ve tried to pay close attention to His Word. Despite these things, let me begin today by telling you what I don’t know: I don’t know why this has happened.

But let me also tell you what I do know: God didn’t cause this. We live in an imperfect world in which people get hurt, desperate, and lost. That's what happened to Kelsey.

But there is hope!

That’s why today, I want to share four promises from God that you can hold onto for strength and encouragement as you face the future.

The first is this: The God we meet and can know in Jesus Christ understands all about our struggles, our griefs, and burdens. He understands what you’re going through and what you will be going through in the days and years ahead better than anyone else possibly could.

The Bible says of Jesus that He was: “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” (Isaiah 53:3). Jesus, God in human flesh, is God’s guarantee that whatever pain, grief, or challenge you confront in life, God gets it.

He understands your grief not as some far-off observer, but as One Who has been exactly where You are today. If you will turn daily to Jesus, bringing to Him your pain, your unanswered questions, your grief, and even your sin, He will understand. He will give you strength. He will give you peace, forgiveness, and hope.

Jesus once said; “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) That promise is for you today and for the days ahead.

Here’s another important promise from God: When you don’t know what to do, this God we know in Jesus can lead you in the right direction. In the passage I read a few moments ago, from Psalm 23, the psalmist writes “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.” (Psalm 23:1-3) When, in our grief, we turn to Jesus, He will lead us.

Here’s another promise I hope that you’ll hold onto today: Nothing can separate you from God. If you will fall into His loving arms, He can carry you through the grief and whatever else you face in life. I know this from first-hand experience.

In the New Testament book of Romans, we’re told: “...neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

Reach out for the God we know in Jesus. As long as you want Him in your life, He will never let you go! Never.

And there’s a fourth promise from God that I want to share with you this evening. No matter how many times we break down...no matter how many times we fail...we have a promise that cannot be taken away from those who trust in the Lord. Jesus shared it late one night with a man who came to Him looking for answers. This is what Jesus told them: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Jesus went to the cross to take onto His shoulders all the pain, death, sin, and darkness that meet us in this world. He voluntarily accepted the defeat handed out to us by these things so that, in sharing them, He could lead us out of our slavery to them and into new life.

When Jesus rose from the dead on the first Easter Sunday, He was making it possible for all who surrender to Him to have eternal life with God.

That life breaks into this world when we trust in Jesus and rely on Him to take us through this life.

And one day, all who have trusted in Him--believed in Him--will live in His perfect kingdom where, as we live in God’s direct presence, pain and death will be banished, all our tears will be dried, our grief will be no more, and we will know that one thing for which Kelsey always yearned: perfect peace with God...with ourselves, with others.

May these four promises from the God we know in Jesus--that He will always understand us; that He will lead us when we turn to Him; that nothing can separate us from His love given to us through Jesus; and that He will give eternity to those who dare to believe in Jesus--give you strength, encouragement, peace, and HOPE in the days and years ahead. God bless you. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Help Me, God, Not to Forget You!

This is the journal entry for my quiet time with God this morning. To see how I approach quiet time, which I learned from the Navigators, see here.

Look: “And he said to them, ‘Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?’ And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.” (Luke 2:49-50, ESV)

When Jesus was twelve, He went with His extended family from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the Passover. This was a yearly pilgrimage.

The Passover ended, the Nazareth contingent packed up and headed for home. But Mary and Joseph, having assumed that Jesus was with other members of their family, discovered one day into the trip that Jesus wasn’t among them. The went back to Jerusalem, where they spent three days looking before they stumbled on Him in the temple.

There’s a note of chastisement in Mary’s words to Jesus at the moment she and Joseph find Jesus: “Son, why have you treated us so? [she asks] Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” (Luke 2:48)

Mary’s concern is understandable. But her concern for Jesus quickly gives way to concern for herself (and for Joseph). Jesus, she says, has caused the two of them “great distress.”

Jesus’ response foreshadows the one He would have to the distress the disciples exhibited when they were caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus asleep in the stern: “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” He asks the fishermen. (Mark 4:40)

The twelve-year-old Jesus is mystified that Mary and Joseph would have spent so much time frantically looking for Him when it should have been obvious to them where He would be: in His Father’s house, the house of God the Father.

But it wasn’t obvious to Mary and Joseph: “And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.”

I read those words and am tempted to laugh at Joseph and Mary. I mean, they were both told fairly emphatically by the witness of angels and circumstances and the Word of Old Testament Scripture that their Child wasn’t really their Child: He was God in the flesh, the Messiah, the Christ.

Yet, they seem to have completely forgotten Who Jesus was or their role in the drama of God saving all who trust in Jesus as their Savior and King. Mary had once exalted God for regarding her as worthy to play her small part in God’s salvation plan, bearing and nurturing from infancy God the Son as He made His journey from manger to cross to empty tomb (Luke 1:46-55).

But, in the course of twelve years, she seems to have come to see Jesus as her kid, like all the other children to whom she’d given birth. The others came about by the usual means. But this Child, she seems to have forgotten, was conceived in her womb by the Holy Spirit before she had ever had sex.

Listen: When you get involved in everyday life, it gets easy to forget God.

We take our blessings for granted.

We take our role in God’s plans and God’s kingdom for granted.

We turn ourselves into the subjects of our lives’ stories, forgetting that we’re objects loved by the One Who gives us life, gives us life made eternally new and makes this earthly life worth living.

We get caught up in ourselves and our daily to-do lists.

I find myself easily drifting into this mindset and the resulting behavior all the time.

After I had the heart attack seven years ago, it was clear that God had intervened to spare me.

“You shouldn’t even be here,” more than one cardiac care nurse told me.

“I can’t explain why you had the heart attack and I can’t explain why you survived it,” my able cardiologist told me.

“You must still be here for a reason,” my GP told me.

“Yes,” I thought. “They’re right. I’m just me. But there must be a reason God has spared my life.”

So, I set out to get into the best physical shape of my life. I ate right and lost weight.

I resumed my role as a pastor with a renewed sense of call and devotion to being a faithful minister of Word and Sacrament with a passion for reaching those who don’t know life with God with the good news of eternal renewal and freedom from sin and death for all who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus.

But some days, I forget.

I eat too much.

I eat too much of what I shouldn’t eat.

I fail to pray for or use opportunities to share the gospel with the spiritually disconnected people I encounter every day.

I get lulled into spending less time in God’s Word and less time in prayer in Jesus’ name than I need to if I really want to bear good fruit for the God I know in Jesus, if I want my life to glorify the God Who saved me in a cardiac cath lab and more importantly, saved me on a cross..

I waste minutes and hours and I waste the salvaged body that God has given to me for His purposes, by pursuing trivial ends.

Yet I know for sure that it's only in pursuing God’s purpose for my life that I lead a purposeful existence.

It’s way too easy for me to get distracted, which I’m sure breaks God’s heart and delights the devil.

But God also understands my (our) penchant for forgetfulness about Him. It’s why He commanded ancient Israel to constantly remind themselves of Who they were and Whose they were. Speaking of His Torah, His commands, God told Israel: “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-8)

Ancient Israel was told to constantly remind themselves and each other of God’s undeserved grace: how God had made Him His own people, a light to the nations, not because of the people’s goodness, but because of God’s goodness; how God had delivered the people from 430 years of slavery in Egypt not because of their goodness, but because of God’s goodness; how God intended to use His people to bring His saving good news--in Jesus--to all the world; how God stood (and stands) by those who believe when they (we) go through dark, painful, or tragic times; and how God, out of concern for the well-being of His people, had given them the Torah, the law, the way, His commandments, to show them the best way to live their lives in grateful response to His undeserved grace.

The Old Testament shows the sorry history of how ancient Israel forgot God until it lost its land and, once more, became wanderers without a home.  

Respond: Help me, Lord, not to forget. Help me to remember this day how much you love me, how much you have done for me, how much you love all my neighbors, and how you have deputized me as your baptized disciple to share the good news of new life for all who turn from sin and surrender to Jesus.

Give me the chance to share Your gospel with a spiritually disconnected person today.

Help me to take the time to pray for the needs of the whole world and get my focus off of me, onto You and Your purposes.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Psychopath Capital of America?

Ryan Murphy, a Southern Methodist University economist, recently set out to determine which state, (including Washington, D.C. as a fifty-first locale) is the "psychopath capital of America."

His study used what is called "the big five" major personality traits as evidenced in people's actions.

According to Dictionary.com, a psychopath is "a person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests as amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc."

Murphy's study says that Washington, D.C. is America's most psychopathic place. One of the big reasons for this, per an article from Politico, is that the denser a population (denser as in more people per square mile, not denser as in thick-headed), the more psychopaths there tend to be. It's a simple matter of demographic odds.

But, Politico also points out that wherever there are more people deemed "successful," inevitably there will also be a higher number of people with psychopathic tendencies...you know, the kind of person who would walk all over their grandmother to get what they want.

D.C. must have a lot of grandmother-stompers, because Murphy's study says that it has twice the psychopathic rating as the next two states on the list, Connecticut, and California, combined.

Before any of us who live in flyover country start bragging about how nice we are, it should be pointed out that there's a tie for fifth in psychopathy between two states, New York and Wyoming.

The five least psychopathic states, according to Murphy, are West Virginia, Vermont, Tennessee, North Carolina and New Mexico.

I don't know if I buy all of this, although as a pastor through the years, I've observed that different communities have different prevailing personality traits and worldviews. Whether that bears a relationship to psychopathy, I wouldn't know.

But, speaking for myself, I like Washington, D.C., Connecticut, and California. And I love New York. Some of the friendliest and kindest people I've ever known were from these states. I've never been to Wyoming and spent little time in New Jersey, which also made the top five. But I'm sure that there are nice people there too.

But the Murphy study will give some people the fodder they need to criticize places and people they don't like.

By the way, Ohio is ranked the country's 21st. most psychopathic state, while Michigan comes in at 26th. Maybe Murphy's study is onto something. (Only a joke.)

To see, Murphy's paper, go here.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I am a sinner saved by grace. I'm trying not to be a psychopath.]