healing miracles | At Water’s Edge

Lord of the Dance

I am obsessed with the hymn called “The Lord of the Dance.” Do you know this song? It tells Jesus’ story from his preexistence to his resurrection in five theology-packed verses. The tempo and the tune are as jaunty as the refrain, which proclaims that Jesus is the Lord of the dance, and we are invited to dance along. Marvelous!

The third verse is especially meaningful for our Scripture reading today:

I danced on the Sabbath and I cured the lame:
The holy people said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped and they hung me on high,
And they left me there on a cross to die. (UMH 261)

Luke 6 (Common English Bible)

6 One Sabbath, as Jesus was going through the wheat fields, his disciples were picking the heads of wheat, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. ²Some Pharisees said, “Why are you breaking the Sabbath law?”

³Jesus replied, “Haven’t you read what David and his companions did when they were hungry? ⁴He broke the Law by going into God’s house and eating the bread of the presence, which only the priests can eat. He also gave some of the bread to his companions.” ⁵Then he said to them, “The Human One is Lord of the Sabbath.”

When Jesus proclaimed himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath, he shattered all of their preconceived notions of sabbath-keeping. They tried to trap him into performing a healing on the sabbath, and Jesus did not disappoint.

⁶On another Sabbath, Jesus entered a synagogue to teach. A man was there whose right hand was withered. ⁷The legal experts and the Pharisees were watching him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. They were looking for a reason to bring charges against him. ⁸Jesus knew their thoughts, so he said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” He got up and stood there. ⁹Jesus said to the legal experts and Pharisees, “Here’s a question for you: Is it legal on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” ¹⁰Looking around at them all, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he did and his hand was made healthy. ¹¹They were furious and began talking with each other about what to do to Jesus.

This Scripture reminds us that many people solidly grounded in tradition can’t accept that fact that meeting a human need is more important to God than adhering to a tradition, especially one that is faulty in reason and logic. Hosea 6:6 clearly explains that God wants mercy over sacrifice. Loving others has always been more important than any ritual application of rabbinical law that hurts a person. That is completely out of harmony with God’s purpose for us.

Jesus’ bold statement that he was Lord of the Sabbath was a loud and direct claim to his deity. As such, he had authority over the law. Notice that the Pharisees are watching him closely, expecting him to perform a miracle of healing that will violate their rules. This was an acknowledgement that they believed he could do miracles! And of course our Lord responds by schooling them about good and evil and the choice to save a life or destroy it. It is never, ever wrong to do something good. Sadly, the Pharisees neglected acts of compassion and love for the needy, allowing their time to be consumed by the minutiae of man-made regulations.

The Pharisees’ understanding of the sabbath missed the point. The point was about keeping the day holy and entering God’s presence by ceasing your toiling for a day. What better way to worship God and enter into his presence can we find than helping one of his children who is hurting?

Do we as a church ever fall into Pharisaical thinking? Do we put discipline, polity, and process before people? How can we better reflect the goodness of God to all people, even if it violates the Building Use policies?

Jesus invites us to the dance. May we all join and rejoice with the Lord of the Dance.

Nature’s Dance by Kathy Schumacher

Witness Walk

Posted on April 10, 2024 by Betsy

A friend of mine broke her wrist after falling in a parking lot after church. I immediately flashed back to times when I broke a bone and I truly commiserated with her. The process of healing is long and complicated. In my case, learning to walk with a boot and crutches was tricky and exhausting. Many people assured me, though, that a broken bone heals stronger. Have you ever heard that? Apparently it is true, but only applies to the time in the healing process when your body forms a callus around the break, indeed making it stronger for a time.

This made me think about things that actually do get stronger after they break.

I believe that people can get stronger after they suffer a break of sorts. Case in point is a dear friend who came out of a prolonged and contentions divorce much, much stronger due to the break in her marriage. She found her voice in the process, is able to stand up for herself in ways she never could before, found the courage to leave her abusive husband, and discovered God’s redemptive and saving power in ways she would never have experienced had she not been broken so badly. So, there is that. Have you ever been broken and then healed stronger?

In our lectionary passage today, Peter addressed the crowd after healing a lame man. Watch what happened and how the crowd reacts:

Acts 3: 7-10 Common English Bible

⁷Then he grasped the man’s right hand and raised him up. At once his feet and ankles became strong. ⁸Jumping up, he began to walk around. He entered the temple with them, walking, leaping, and praising God. ⁹All the people saw him walking and praising God. ¹⁰They recognized him as the same one who used to sit at the temple’s Beautiful Gate asking for money. They were filled with amazement and surprise at what had happened to him.

The once broken and damaged feet and ankles became strong, and the man began his witness walk. He was a living, breathing example of the power of God to change and make new. Are you that person? Has God taken your brokenness and made you new? How are you proclaiming his power with your own witness walk?

¹²Seeing this, Peter addressed the people: “You Israelites, why are you amazed at this? Why are you staring at us as if we made him walk by our own power or piety? ¹³The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God of our ancestors—has glorified his servant Jesus. This is the one you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence, even though he had already decided to release him. ¹⁴You rejected the holy and righteous one, and asked that a murderer be released to you instead. ¹⁵You killed the author of life, the very one whom God raised from the dead. We are witnesses of this.

Peter takes this opportunity to preach about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. It is important to note that he did not allow any of the attention to remain on himself, but immediately deflected their wonder to the power of Christ.

¹⁶His name itself has made this man strong. That is, because of faith in Jesus’ name, God has strengthened this man whom you see and know. The faith that comes through Jesus gave him complete health right before your eyes.

We know that we are healed in the strong and powerful name of Jesus. We know that when we have faith in Jesus’ name, strength comes to us by his grace.

¹⁷“Brothers and sisters, I know you acted in ignorance. So did your rulers.¹⁸But this is how God fulfilled what he foretold through all the prophets: that his Christ would suffer. ¹⁹Change your hearts and lives! Turn back to God so that your sins may be wiped away.

Peter’s final words are good for us today. How do you respond to Easter? How do you understand healing? How do you account for the strength that you have obtained from God? Changing our hearts is the only way to respond. May our minds be set on turning back to God today as we continue our witness walk in everything we say and do.

Can I Get a Witness by Michelle Robertson

God Heard

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Betsy

Let’s talk about healing today. I find this can be a tricky subject for some. We see many acts of healing in the Bible done by Jesus in his lifetime and even done by the disciples in his name. The Old Testament contains healing stories as well, as God divinely intervenes in a situation to bring healing to a person or a nation. We are taught from early days to pray for healing, and in the book of James we are instructed to come together as a body of Christ to lay hands, anoint with oil, and ask for healing in the name of Jesus (James 5:14-15).

Televangelists have given healing services a bad name. In an effort to extort money from hopeful believers, they have scammed their viewers and falsely proclaimed that they have some mystical power to heal. I remember watching one such televangelist laying on top of a desk piled high with sealed envelopes (containing money along with the prayer requests) and proclaiming that everyone was healed. The only thing he could actually relieve them of was their dollars.

I have been blessed to participate in legitimate healing services in my church. Following our United Methodist Book of Worship, these services are grounded in Scripture and prayer. God’s intervention is sought as we remember together that only God has the power to heal, and we remember that God hears our every petition.

I think that is the key. God hears. He hears the sincere petitions of his people. He hears the unspoken desires of our hearts. He hears our faith as we gather at an altar to speak to him. He hears our needs as we present them before him. And he always answers.

Psalm 116 ( New International Version)

I love the Lord, for he heard my voice;
he heard my cry for mercy.
²Because he turned his ear to me,
I will call on him as long as I live.

This beautiful psalm is a reminder that God hears. When we pray for healing and it doesn’t come, sometimes we accuse God of not listening or being absent. But that is not the case, and this is the tricky part of healing: God may give you an answer that you didn’t expect. The answer may even be “no.”.

When I was a very young and very naive young pastor with the ink still wet on my ordination papers, my church conducted a healing service. I remember it like it was yesterday. Many more people came than we had expected, and by the end of the night I was worn out. One of our church members, who had been absent for two years, was wheeled up by her family for the anointing of oil. She had cancer and had been suffering for months. We prayed over her and anointed her with the virgin olive oil someone had brought back from Israel.

She died the next day.

Confused and uncomfortable, I went to the senior pastor for comfort. I thought it was a failure of our efforts that someone had died within 24 hours of our service. He kindly and gently told me that she had indeed been healed, as her pain was now gone and her body was restored in heaven. He reminded me that ultimately we only find complete healing in death and resurrection. I realized then that she was the first person to receive healing from our service, and that understanding has undergirded my faith ever since.

Healing comes in the way God sees fit. It comes at his pleasure. It comes in his time. It comes in ways that are good for us, even when we can’t see it.

¹²What shall I return to the Lord
for all his goodness to me?

¹³I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord.
¹⁴I will fulfill my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.

This psalm also reminds us that if you have received healing, you are invited to respond with fulfilling your vows, serving God, and offering your thanks. Of the ten lepers who were healed by Jesus, only one thought to come back and thank him (Luke 17: 11-19). Have you remembered to thank God for all of your blessings?

¹⁵Precious in the sight of the Lord
    is the death of his faithful servants.
¹⁶Truly I am your servant, Lord;
    I serve you just as my mother did;
    you have freed me from my chains.

¹⁷I will sacrifice a thank offering to you
    and call on the name of the Lord.
¹⁸I will fulfill my vows to the Lord
    in the presence of all his people,
¹⁹in the courts of the house of the Lord—
    in your midst, Jerusalem.

Praise the Lord.

If you are struggling today, waiting for an answer that seems to not be coming, have faith. God heard you. God loves you. God responds in his time, so take heart! Your redeemer comes.

Path to Healing (by Fayette Piedmont hospital) by Kathy Schumacher

Breaking Free

Posted on August 17, 2022 by Betsy

This summer we took our family to the charming town of Manteo to a place called “Island Farm.” It is a recreation of an 1840’s era family farm, utilizing the land and some of the original buildings from that time. We saw a blacksmith make iron nails, explored the family home with its primitive furnishings, and enjoyed a wonderful storyteller who made the entire experience come to life. We even got to feed a very loud rooster, who snuck up behind me and tried to sample my shoe, much to the delight of the children.

I had been to the farm two years earlier, when the gracious owner allowed my colleague and I to film our Christmas Eve service on the property. We were not able to meet in person due to the pandemic, and so we staged various scenes to bring our service to life. I was filmed reading the children’s message while sitting in the middle of a sheep field, and my partner read the nativity passage standing in front of an open sheep stall as three sheep listened intently.

The stalls by the field were larger, and as we began to film my portion, the keeper opened the stall door. Suddenly I was besieged by an entire flock of sheep, lured to come into the camera range by the placement of sheep food that had been strategically strewn around my feet. I was almost knocked over by their enthusiasm! Lesson learned … don’t get in the way of hungry sheep! Or roosters!

In today’s passage, Eugene Peterson cleverly compares a miraculous healing to being led from a stall in which Satan had bound a woman in for eighteen years:

Luke 13 (The Message)

^10-13He was teaching in one of the meeting places on the Sabbath. There was a woman present, so twisted and bent over with arthritis that she couldn’t even look up. She had been afflicted with this for eighteen years. When Jesus saw her, he called her over. “Woman, you’re free!” He laid hands on her and suddenly she was standing straight and tall, giving glory to God.

¹⁴The meeting-place president, furious because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the congregation, “Six days have been defined as workdays. Come on one of the six if you want to be healed, but not on the seventh, the Sabbath.”

¹^5-16But Jesus shot back, “You frauds! Each Sabbath every one of you regularly unties your cow or donkey from its stall, leads it out for water, and thinks nothing of it. So why isn’t it all right for me to untie this daughter of Abraham and lead her from the stall where Satan has had her tied these eighteen years?”

As usual, the Pharisees were locked in a stall of their narrow understanding of the Law and their extreme piety, unable to see or accept the freedom that God authorized Christ to bring to his people. They would rather see the woman suffer than to have her healed on the Sabbath. But Christ is greater than the Law of small-mindedness, and he set the woman free.

Are you tied up in a stall, locked in by Satan himself? Have abuse, addiction, anger, revenge, jealousy, envy, adultery, or some other sin got you so entangled you can’t open the door to get free?

Take heart. Jesus has the key to the stall door. If you pursue him, he will let you out. All you have to do is ask.

¹⁷When he put it that way, his critics were left looking quite silly and red-faced. The congregation was delighted and cheered him on.

Anointing

Posted on September 22, 2021 by Betsy

I remember my first healing service like it was yesterday. I was a very young pastor, fresh out of seminary, and the prayer ministry had asked the pastoral leadership to do a healing service for the church. There is a service in our United Methodist Book of Worship that involves prayer, the laying on of hands, and the anointing with oil.

I had never experienced a healing service growing up in the Methodist church as a child, and I was very curious about what would happen and how we would proceed. Visions of dramatic and overblown ”healings” from pentecostal television filled my imagination, and I tried to reconcile those images with how we methodical/Anglican-based Methodists would do such a service.

The service began, and after a homily, people were invited to come forward to kneel at the altar and be anointed with simple olive oil from a bowl. The pastors made a sign of the cross on the foreheads of those who came, and offered a prayer for each. As I laid hands on the people who were directed to me by the ushers, I felt the power of God in the words and the anointing as they knelt and received. There are very few moments in a worship setting that can be as powerful as a healing service.

James 5 (Common English Bible)

¹³If any of you are suffering, they should pray. If any of you are happy, they should sing. ¹⁴If any of you are sick, they should call for the elders of the church, and the elders should pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.

This is where churches receive authority to offer healing services. James lays it right out: Call out the leaders. Pray. Anoint. Do it in God’s name.

¹⁵Prayer that comes from faith will heal the sick, for the Lord will restore them to health. And if they have sinned, they will be forgiven. ¹⁶For this reason, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous person is powerful in what it can achieve.

So here was my conundrum. If we all gathered and prayed from our collaborative faith for healing, surely the Lord will restore the person to health. That’s what it says, right? So what happens if healing doesn’t happen after a healing service?

My thoughts were immediately put to the test as a woman in her final days of terminal cancer was brought over to my side. Her husband pushed her wheelchair to the altar, and as I leaned over to anoint her and lay hands on her head, I realized she was wearing a wig. Of course she was. Chemo had stolen her hair many months before that. But that detail has remained in my memory for decades. I can still feel the surprise of that false hair under my fingers and palms.

Two days after the healing service, she died.

So what did that mean? Why wasn’t she healed? What happened to her anointing? Did our prayers not work?

A few days later, her husband sent us a note to thank us for the healing service. He said it was the first time his wife had been out of the house in over a year, and her first time back in the sanctuary since her diagnosis. He went on to thank us for allowing her to receive healing that night. When she got home that evening, she was filled with joy, peace, and hope in ways that she hadn’t felt in years. Her appetite was back and they shared a late night supper. She had confessed her sins at the altar, and knew exactly where she was going the minute the oil touched her forehead. Right before she passed two days later, she told her husband that she was finally healed.

Prayer had healed her. Hope had healed her. Jesus had healed her. Death had healed her.

¹⁷Elijah was a person just like us. When he earnestly prayed that it wouldn’t rain, no rain fell for three and a half years. ¹⁸He prayed again, God sent rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

I am glad that this happened early in my ministry, as it taught me to never be afraid to boldly ask for healing in the name of Jesus from that point on. It also taught me that Jesus will ALWAYS heal….and it may not look anything like what you were expecting.

What aspect of your life needs healing? Remember that the prayer of the righteous person is POWERFUL.

Cornerstone

Posted on April 21, 2021 by Betsy

The definition of the word “cornerstone” offers two meanings. A cornerstone is a stone uniting two masonry walls in the construction of a building. It also describes something that is essential, indispensable, or basic. So you can attend a ceremony where the cornerstone of a new federal building is being laid while recognizing that democracy is the cornerstone of a free society.

I like the fact that cornerstones unite walls. Think about that in a figurative way…people often put up walls around them as they draw lines around their political, religious, racial, and societal preferences. Living in community with people of opposite preferences requires that common cornerstones be used to hold things together.

Jesus is such a cornerstone. Salvation can be found in no other place, regardless of one’s thoughts or leanings. He is the uniting factor that brings disparate entities together.

Our passage in Acts today follows a healing miracle that Peter and John performed in Jesus’ name. They are immediately questioned by the leaders, elders, and legal experts:

Acts 4 (Common English Bible)

⁵The next day the leaders, elders, and legal experts gathered in Jerusalem, ⁶along with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and others from the high priest’s family. ⁷They had Peter and John brought before them and asked, “By what power or in what name did you do this?”

One would think that the healing of a fellow citizen would bring unity to the commUNITY and be met with joy and appreciation. One would be wrong. It only brought division.

⁸Then Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, answered, “Leaders of the people and elders, ⁹are we being examined today because something good was done for a sick person, a good deed that healed him? ¹⁰If so, then you and all the people of Israel need to know that this man stands healthy before you because of the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene—whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead.

Peter is clear that it is only through the power of Jesus’ name that the man was healed. He was also clear that God had raised Jesus from the dead.

¹¹This Jesus is the stone you builders rejected; he has become the cornerstone! ¹²Salvation can be found in no one else. Throughout the whole world, no other name has been given among humans through which we must be saved.”

The message of salvation is a cornerstone of our hope, our belief, and our faith. It is an essential and indispensable teaching of our faith, one that we can build upon.

Whether we allow it to unite our walls or divide us is up to us. Jesus came to save the whole world and salvation can be found in no one else. Let this be the cornerstone of your witness as you proclaim the good news of the one raised from the dead.

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