Isaiah 35.3-6; 2 Timothy 4.5-17; Luke 10.1-9

The Rev’d Sarah Hillman 

Today is St Luke’s Day, when the Church has traditionally focused on the ministry of healing.

The Christian Church has always been associated with healing. We all know that the Gospels are full of stories of Jesus healing the sick. He passes this task on to his disciples, both the 12 and others, as we see from the 70 who were sent out in today’s reading.

In medieval times, monastic communities were usually the prime source of medicine for ordinary people, apart from witches, and as late as the 19th century, surgeons had to seek permission from the Church before they could operate.

Before the Advent of the NHS, there were three types of hospital – private, voluntary and workhouse. Many of the voluntary bodies had Christian connections – now all that is left is probably a chapel, a chaplaincy and sometimes the name – St Mary’s, St Thomas’s, St George’s, St Peter’s, St Michael’s, St Catherine’s and so on.

Back in the time of Jesus medicine was in a very different state from today. There were doctors – Luke was one – but their methods were primitive, and many people went uncured. Jesus’s healings were part of his wider ministry of bringing in the kingdom of God – healing the sick on this earth was a foretaste of the time to come when sickness would be no more.

But today, things are very different. Millions of pounds are spent on curing the sick, researching new medicines and the causes of disease. Modern medicine is truly a miracle, and I firmly believe that God works through our doctors, hospitals and so on.

I also firmly believe that miraculous healings through prayer still occur, but, as in the time of Jesus, not everyone who prays is healed.

This raises difficult questions. Why are some healed and not others? There are various possible answers – not enough faith on the part of the sick person or the ones praying, God chooses not to heal, the person is seen as sinful and therefore not worthy of healing until repentance has occurred, God doesn’t heal directly any more.

And, there is, of course, the answer that I find I have to wrestle with most – I don’t know.

I don’t know why God allows some people to suffer years of pain. I don’t know why children get sick and die. I don’t know why babies die in the womb or at birth. I don’t know why young people with everything to live for are struck down in their prime.

I don’t know why some are born blind or with limbs that don’t do what they should. I don’t know why some people have severe mental disabilities or why others have to live with the torment of mental illness, which seems never to be cured. I just don’t know.

There is so much that modern medicine can do, but there is so much that it can’t yet solve.

Sickness is part of our imperfect world. One way of coping with it is to look to the world beyond – the new heaven and new earth where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, death and sickness will be no more, pain will be forever banished. That may offer hope that the pain will end – one day – but focussing only on the world to be means that current life passes us by.

Another way in which people survive is by allowing their world to shrink. They become so wrapped up in their suffering that somehow there becomes no room for anything outside – people get pushed away or taken for granted and past interests no longer are important.

I’m well aware that the inability to see beyond oneself is one of the symptoms of a number of mental illnesses, but it is also something into which others can sink too.

And people pray for themselves and for others, and God seems to go silent. Doesn’t God care? Why is God so far from us?

And, of course, those sentiments are nothing new – the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” which Jesus uttered on the cross came from Psalm 22.

Illness may seem meaningless but I believe that with God’s help it needn’t be a purely negative thing. God doesn’t desert us when we are sick, even though it may feel like it. When we pray for others and for ourselves, we often pray for God’s healing, for God to make them or us well again. And we should not assume that because the person’s health is not fully restored that God is ignoring us.

Praying for the sick is important. God should be in every corner of our lives, and therefore when we pray it is natural to talk about those for whom we care, and express our wishes that they recover, just as we might do when talking to a friend.

And sometimes God does restore people to physical health – sometimes miraculously and sometimes through the power of modern medicine. But sometimes God doesn’t.

Healing is about more than physical fitness or emotional well-being. True healing is about our whole selves – our bodies, minds and spirits, our physical, emotional and spiritual life. Sometimes when we pray for healing we miss the answers because we’re looking in the wrong place.

There’s a story about two male churchwardens in a parish where a new vicar has just arrived. It’s the first time they’ve had a woman priest, and these two men are a little confused as to how to welcome her. In the past they’ve always taken the vicar fishing for a day. “Will she like fishing?” they wonder.

In an age of equality and not wanting to patronise her, the wardens decide to invite her fishing as they would have done a new male priest. She agrees to go with them.

The day arrives and they get into a boat and sail out to the middle of the lake. After a while of sitting still fishing, the vicar says: “Actually I’m a bit cold. I’m just going to go back to my car and fetch my coat.”

So she gets out of the boat, walks across the water, gets her coat, walks back across the water and climbs back into the boat. “Typical women,” says one of the wardens, “they always forget something.”

So focussed are they on the inadequacies of women that they have quite failed to notice her walking on water. And we’re sometimes a bit like that with our healing. Sometimes we miss what God is doing in our lives because it’s not what we think it ought to be.

My own experience is, as most of you know, of mental ill-health. I’ve suffered depression on and off for about 30 years since I was 12, and I’m still recovering from the bad bout I suffered about 18 months ago.

Recovery is a very up-and-down process. Struggling on when I’m feeling rubbish is not easy; keeping going when all I want to do is stay in bed is hard. It affects my whole self – eating, physical well-being, spiritual life, relationships with others, sleep, mood, stamina, my work and so on and so on.

I would not wish my experiences on anyone. I have prayed many a time for God to heal me. It hasn’t happened. Symptoms can be controlled more or less with drugs, but they don’t cure the disease. And yet, God has been with me and transformed my experiences into something positive and useful.

When I was student I wrote a letter in response to an article about suicide in the university. It was the sort of letter that is often written anonymously. But I thought it was important that people heard from a real person.

As a result of that letter I was able to help someone else who wrote to me at my college because she too was depressed and didn’t know what to do. After our contact, she sought help.

That’s a specific incident, but I also know that I am only a priest because of my experiences. They have enabled me to develop certain gifts and skills – not least empathy and an ability to listen and understand suffering – which would never have happened without what in itself is a horrible and dark place in which to be.

And I know of many others who have developed interests and careers and voluntary agencies relating to a whole host of ailments, who help others, because of their own experiences. And that in its own way is healing. And others find whole new career paths or skills not related to their sickness but the discovery only happens because of it.

God’s healing is about transforming our whole selves. It is about healing from physical disease, but when we see it only as that, we limit God and the concept of well-being. Of course, we are right to pray for healing for others and for ourselves. But let us not be too limited in our vision that we miss God’s answer to our prayers, which may not come in the way that we expect. Perhaps a better prayer would be for God to transform our suffering into his glory.

And when we do experience or witness healing, in whatever form it takes, let us give thanks that God’s light and hope can indeed redeem the darkness and the sadness and the suffering, and bring something good out of the pain and blackness that many face.