Before we begin exploring these passages of Scripture, it will be important to define what we mean when we speak about healing or being healed especially as we approach it from a sense of spiritual healing.
Healing is different from curing. We tend to use 
healing as cure, but the two are different and we see that in the stories of healing in the Bible. Curing refers to the elimination of disease or illness, often through medical or surgical intervention, aiming to restore the body to its previous healthy state. Healing from a Biblical point of view is a holistic restoration of wholeness tending to the body, the mind, and the spirit of an individual or even a community. Rather than just the absence of disease, it represents a return to the state of well-being God intends for God’s beloved children. It also represents having a place to belong.
What does healing as a spiritual practice for discipleship (student/follower) and apostleship (messenger) require? We get clues from our Bible stories this morning.
Psalm 121 is a Psalm of comfort, or assurance of God’s presence in all the times of our lives – the good and the challenging. God is where our help comes from. Do we trust that? Do we have faith that God is present even in our most distressing times? Or are those times so distressing and so far from being healthy that we can’t sense God’s presence?
It is hard to have faith in the worst times of our lives that God is there to walk with us, comfort us, restore us to wholeness. Sometimes we can’t see it when we are in the thick of it, but once we are in a place to look back, so often, we can see how God was there. So perhaps a first step in holding on to healing as a spiritual practice is to remember how God has been present, how God has been a comforter. The psalmist writes: The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore. Let’s put that into our muscle memory and retrieve it when we need healing.
The stories of Jesus healing people are in the dozens and the apostles carried that tradition. Jesus healed to restore wholeness – physical, spiritual and community. In our first story, a man with a skin disease approaches Jesus bowing down and begging Jesus – “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus responded to the man’s request, reaching out his hand, touching him and proclaiming him clean.
For a moment though, I want to focus on the man. He recognized his need for healing – to be made whole, to restore him to community, to a place of belonging. He wants to be healed, and he trusts that Jesus can do so if Jesus wants to. He makes no demands on Jesus but poignantly asks. Jesus in turn shows this man such compassion – he touches him, he connects with him, he makes the man feel welcomed. He restores this man to wholeness. I’m not sure the man followed the instruction to not tell anyone because the stories of Jesus healing people spread quickly and the crowds gathered.
I wonder if we can we be like this man and state what needs to be healed in us, asking Jesus for that return to wholeness. Cleanse whatever is wounded – mind, body, or spirit, connect with us, wrap us in arms of comfort and give us a place of belonging. Can we find the trust that this man had in Jesus? The trust that healing as a spiritual practice requires us to voice what we need in the way of healing. Asks us to say we are not fine when our American rugged individualism would have us telling everyone we are fine.
Telling God, we are fine when we are not. How can we be healers if we refuse to acknowledge our own need for healing? So maybe a healing spiritual practice requires us to get honest with ourselves and with God about our own state of being, our own sense of disconnectedness or our own need for a place to belong. Prayer on our own or with partners can be a great way to help us give voice to our needs. A good spiritual director is another way to help us find our voice.
The next healing story focuses on a community of people working together to bring healing to a paralyzed man. The crowds of folks who have come to hear Jesus teach block the group from being able to lay him before Jesus so that he can receive healing. But they don’t give up – instead they find a way around the crowd by going up to the roof and lowering the man down to Jesus. Their persistence to gain healing for this man matches their faith and trust that Jesus can indeed heal him and he does. This group of men come together as a community to gain healing for someone else.
How do we come together to bring healing to the vulnerable in our community? And at this point, I wonder too if we can see a spiritual healing practice as one that seeks justice for those who are experiencing injustice. To seek justice as a way to restore wholeness to individuals and groups of people – to build a community of compassionate and welcoming healing and belonging. Can we be like these men and use our wits and our courage to lay before Jesus the needs of others? For healing, for justice, for restoration, for a place to belong.
What might keep us from practicing this kind of spiritual healing? What judgments or biases do we hold about seeking justice for individuals or groups that are different from us? We assume that the men carrying the man on the stretcher were his friends, but what if they were concerned neighbors? Members of a community that was concerned about someone else’s needs.
How do we ensure that those in need of healing and healing as justice have a place at our Table? In our congregation and in our community?
How do we stand for healing as justice when the Supreme Court just ended Temporary Protected status for Syrians and Haitians who can now be deported back to countries which are dangerous to return to. How do we stand for healing as justice given a new Department of Justice ruling that argues that the Americans with Disabilities Act does not legally require states to provide home- and community-based care.
I have been dismayed by so many of the comments on Facebook particularly as it pertains to the Syrians and Haitians. Where are the compassionate and welcoming healing practices? Where is the compassion of Jesus that we are supposed to imitate.
How might we hone spiritual healing as a discipleship/apostleship practice? How might such a practice help us live out the three themes from our Mission Study that we have chosen to go deeper into? Questions to reflect on and pray over. Let’s do that. May it be so. Amen.