With a few remarks on our mothers as healers.
Worth Green, Th.M., D. Min.
7 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? 31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts. 1st Corinthians 12:27-30
Last week we spoke of the gift of the spirit that we call healing. We saw that there are at least three kinds of healing.
First, immediate healings such as those Jesus performed in the New Testament. I told you that I thought I had had an immediate healing in seminary when I managed to slough off the flu on my mid-day run after my running partner had prayed for me. That seems a minor thing. It has been said that no surgery is minor if it is happening to you. The same can be said of a healing. I might also mention that Jesus’ healing of Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever is recorded in the 1st chapter of Mark’s gospel. (Mark 1:30) Papias, one of the 2nd century fathers of the church, tells us that Peter is the authority behind Mark. Perhaps Peter’s mother-in-law insisted that Peter include her story in his telling of the gospel?
Second, gradual healings such as those associated with doctors, nurses, hospitals, and medical care of all kinds. God has built marvelous healing properties into our bodies, and the skilled physician can unlock these properties. Last week we noted how Jesus worked with and not against the medical authorities and customs of his day. The same is true of the church today. Some of the great hospitals in our city, state, and nation are associated with the church. A great many secular hospitals include professional chaplains on their staff, and augment them with volunteers.
Third, the final healing that we call the resurrection healing. In the New Testament the resurrection of Jesus is no mere resuscitation of a lifeless corpse. It is the transformation of his dead body into a whole new order of being. God transformed the body of Christ’s humiliation into a body of glory. In 1st Corinthians 15 St. Paul says there is an earthly body, then there is a spiritual body. As Christians we believe that the resurrection healing is the final healing after which death will be no more, and good health can be taken for granted. Christ’s present is our future.
This is Mother’s Day. It is Sunday. On Saturday morning, Cynthia F________’s mother, Mrs. Annie E__________ was promoted into the higher service of her Lord. She was 91 years old. Given the choice of having her leg amputated and living a few more months, or letting her disease run its course, and dying within six weeks, Mrs. E. chose to accept death. (A younger person would have made the opposite choice as another of my friends did, just this week.) Annie lived just over a week, and I had opportunity to visit with her several times over the course of that week. She was a remarkable woman. My Father told me that during World War II Annie had been at the Battle of the Bulge as an Army nurse. When I asked her about it, Annie herself told me that she landed in Europe on D+2 and participated in five major battles in Europe. She was a genuine hero. Yet, at no time was she any more heroic than she was during the final days of her life. She was a person of great faith, and great dignity. She told her daughter that she wanted to face death in faith, demonstrating with her life that there is nothing in death for a Christian to fear.
Last week, we noted that there are at least three kinds of healing, and we also faced the fact that healing is not for everyone. Some of God’s choicest servants have had to face great challenges to their health.
In 2nd Corinthians chapter 12, St. Paul notes his own thorn in the flesh. It was almost certainly a physical ailment that scholars have suggested might have been anything from poor eyesight to epilepsy. In verses 8 and 9 the apostle writes:
I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. 9 And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. KJV
I would also mention General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. When he was going blind it fell to his son Bramwell to tell him. “General Booth responded, “Then, in this life; I shall never see you face again? No matter. I have served God with my sight; I will serve God with my blindness.”
There are several members of this church who could make that same statement. They are among my personal heroes.
There is no doubt that faith plays a part in healing, whether that healing is physical or divine. However, those who say that all can be healed if only they have enough faith, do not understand the economy of God.
Last week we talked about gifts of healing. This week we want to talk about healers, about those who posses gifts of healing, not for themselves, but for others.
In the first century, healers were given a prominent place in the church. They ranked behind apostles (No. 1), prophets (No. 2), teachers (No. 3), and workers of miracles (ranked but not numbered); but they ranked ahead of administrators and tongues speakers. In our day and time, the more spectacular gifts of the Spirit get most of then attention; but it should be noted that Paul values teachers over healers, and good administrators over those who speak in tongues.
In 20th and 21st Century America, the healing ministry of the church has attracted a great deal of attention, and not all of it was good. I remember watching a prominent faith healer on television, and being almost embarrassed that he and I were both preachers of the gospel. This man was just too flamboyant for me. I did not like the way he dressed, or the way he talked. I disagreed with his method, and I thought some of his claims were outrageous. I read in the paper how he had conducted a healing crusade in Charlotte, and a member of his audience had dropped dead of a heart attack.
There is much controversy over the effectiveness of these dramatic healers so-called. When I was at Unity Synod, I spoke with a Moravian pastor from Tanzania who had lost many members of his church to one of these healers. He said that within a year they were all back: the symptoms and complaints of those who were “healed” had all returned. The man’s church melted away as rapidly as he had built it.
Though I can give other examples of healing ministries that I don’t like, there are many that I do. I would again mention the late Bishop Herbert Spaugh, a Moravian Bishop. As I mentioned last week, Bishop Spaugh was a member of the Order of St. Luke, an order of the Episcopal Church dedicated to spiritual healing. When I knew Bishop Spaugh in the year before his death in 1978, he had two women who served him as volunteer secretaries. They helped with his newspaper column, “The Everyday Counselor.” Both women were cancer survivors, and both women credited Bishop Spaugh with being a big part of their cure. One woman told me that it was the Bishop’s caring ministry was that gave her the courage to have a radical surgery that probably saved her life. The other told me that it was Bishop Spaugh who would sit with her and read to her when she was so sick with chemotherapy that she thought that death might be a welcome relief. I have no doubt that Bishop Spaugh read to her from a little book of scripture verses to encourage the sick that he patiently compiled and then printed for distribution. These women valued the professional medical attention they received, but they also valued the ministry of Bishop Spaugh. I would also mention Oral Roberts. I was never a fan of Oral Roberts. I have never studied his healing ministry, but I take my hat off to him for building a great university in Oklahoma that includes a fine Medical School. I would also mention the late Kathryn Kuhlman, who died in 1976. She was controversial, but there are those who thought much of her and her healing ministry. Dr. James Forbes, until recently the pastor of Riverside Church in New York City and one of the most respected preachers in America, relates in his book, “The Holy Spirit & Preaching,” how he once shared a platform with Kuhlman in 1974 in Jerusalem, at the international conference on the Holy Spirit. He preached, then she ministered healing, and 200 people came forward to claim it. Dr. Forbes relates how one man was actually healed of deafness. He had come to see Kuhlman, but was healed as Dr. Forges was preaching. Forbes was pleased to note in his book that Kathryn Kuhlman insisted that she did not heal, God did. She said that the healing ministry belonged to the Church, and not to a single individual.
It is hard to argue with that. I think that most pastors are engaged in a healing ministry of some kind. Forgive me if I use my own experience as an example. I use it because I am not an exception, but a fairly typical pastor. Dave or John could claim a similar experience. In my 32 years as pastor, I have visited in hundreds of hospital rooms each and every year. Remembering the advice of Bishop Spaugh, I have never left a hospital room without asking if the patient wanted me to have prayer, or at least pronounce a blessing. I have been refused only once. It has been said, there are no atheists in foxholes. I would add that I have never found an atheist in a hospital bed. I like to think that I have had a positive effect on the sick that I have visited. I follow the rules laid down in my course on Clinical Pastoral Education at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky. Like doctors, I seek to do no harm. I don’t sit on the bed. I keep my visits short and to the point. I refrain from the temptation to make a diagnosis; I leave that to the doctors. I try to encourage people. Over the years I have told many people who have just received a hard diagnosis that, “diagnosis is the first step toward cure.” I have seen many people recover from illnesses that are serious, and not so serious. I have watched with others as they waited for and received death. People ask me how I face this over and over again. My grief can never match that of a family member. I have grief, but I still love the dying, and am touched by them. They and their families mediate faith, and courage, and hope, and I understand what the late Henry Nouen, a Catholic priest and Harvard theologian meant when he said, “The dying are a sacrament in the world; they bring us closer to God.”
Let me say again that my experience is typical of most pastors. John and David also visit the sick, and David visits our shut-in on a regular basis. Likewise many of you have been involved in a healing ministry. I will not name you, but you know who you are. You are those who visit the sick, and take in meals, and pray, and sit with those who are ill, and you are many.
Many health care professionals are a part of the healing ministry of the church, and we have had many of them associated with New Philadelphia over the years, nurses, doctors, pharmacists, researchers, technicians, and dentists, etc.
I believe that many health care professionals have both a gift and a call from God. Let me tell you about the late Dr. F.I. Dorestt. Dr. D was one of my father’s best friends, and he became one of my best friends. He never belonged to this church, he belonged to a little Reformed Church way down in Davidson County, and his wife belonged to Central Terrace Methodist Church that sits on the top of the South Main Street Hill. But for a number of years Dr. D visited here regularly, and he sure took care of this pastor. Dr. D was my doctor from the time I was 14 or 15 until the time of his death less than ten years ago. Dr. D kept office hours at night. I asked him why he did so. He told me it was because his practice consisted mostly of patients who could not afford to take a day off work to come to the doctor. He was the last doctor to make a house call at my house, and when he retired, in his 80’s, I took my ’66 Ford truck over to his office and helped him empty it out. Dr. D never got rich doctoring, but he was a gifted healer. For several years in the late 1980’s I suffered fatigue and tiredness. I had even gone to several specialists in hopes of finding out why. None had been able to help me. I had avoided Dr. D. for several yearsbecause he no longer filed insurance, and he would never allow me to pay for a visit. Finally, I went by on a whim, and told him of my problem. He looked at me over his thumb, saying, “Your face has gotten blocky. I think you may have hypo-thyroidism. Let’s get some blood work. “ I had the blood work. His diagnosis was bang-on. Within days I was on the proper medication, and within several weeks I was feeling 200% better. Others have told me what Dr. D meant to them. One woman credits him with saving her life on her wedding day with a very insightful diagnosis of a rare blood disorder.
I was Dr. D’s pastor as he was dying. Each time I would leave him, he would say to me, what he had always said at our partings, “The Good Lord has been gracious unto me.” I once asked him why he became a doctor. He said, “Out of gratitude.” He meant, “Out of gratitude to his Lord.”
Dr. Albert Schweitzer went to the Congo because he had a call. Schweitzer was 35 years old at the time he left Europe. He was already a successful musician, the world’s leading authority on Bach. He could build an organ from scratch or repair one that had grown old and tired. He was a master theologian, and one of the world’s leading authorities on the study of the New Testament. More recently he had become a physician, and his reputation as a healer was growing. Schweitzer went to the Congo at the age of 35 hoping he would live to the age of 70, saying that he wanted to serve God with the 2nd half of his life. When asked why he went to the Congo, Dr. Schweitzer answered, “Because Jesus sent me.” A theological liberal, Schweitzer went to the Congo with an Evangelical mission. He had the call.
I believe that the call to medicine in all its forms is a very definite call of God. Martin Luther told his barber that he could cut hair for the glory of God and his doctor that he could heal people for the glory of God. William Barclay said that carpenters could build their Christianity into their houses. Jesus was a carpenter. There is a dignity in most work, and most can be done for the glory of God.
Many health care professional have a call, though they may express it in different ways. On Friday, as I made my rounds at the hospitals, I decided to make a survey among the nurses who were working with the patients I visited. I asked seven nurses why they had gone into medicine. Six of them said, “I want to help people,” “It is a matter of the heart,” or “I just had to do it.” One of the six noted it allowed her to help people, and to be on the cutting edge of science. The seventh, the only man I questioned said, “I need a job! I had been a medic in the Air Force, and I need a job.” I told that to one of the other nurses and she said, “Just like a man!” I don’t think so. I have several friends who are male nurses for the same reason the six women became nurses. They wanted to help. It is a matter of the heart. Many would say, “It is a calling.”
We have already noted how teachers rank ahead of healers in Paul’s hierarchy. It is little insights like this that convince me of the inspiration of scripture. Paul does not say it, but I wonder if he ranks teachers ahead of healers because as wonderful as a healing is when it comes, no cure is good as prevention. Wise teachers—including health care professionals, help us to avoid illness by helping us to avoid those things that make us ill.
This is mother’s day, and I told you I would not forget. If we would listen to what our mother’s tell us, we would all live longer, healthier lives. The Bible says, “Honor thy Father and thy Mother, that thy days may be long in the land the Lord has given you.” According to Ephesians 6:2 this is the first commandment with a promise.
I think most mothers have a healing ministry as well as a teaching ministry. I remember mine watching over me as I suffered through dozens of childhood illnesses. I particularly remember the time when I broke out all over with poison ivy. It had it so bad that even my eyes were swollen shut. I lay stretched out between two sheets absolutely miserable. The high point of my day was when my mother dabbed me with calamine lotion. I also remember the time after I cut my foot on a nail that she put a potato on my foot to draw out infection. We were at the High Rock Lake, at my grandmother’s cabin. My father had dropped us off and returned to Winston-Salem. Soon after I stepped on a nail. The infection spread, and my father did not return. This was way back in the 1950’s, and we had no automobile, and no telephone. No one was staying nearby. My mother did what she could. She bound that potato to my foot, and she prayed, and I was unafraid. It was not until after my father returned that they took me to the doctor to get a tetanus shot.
So, on this day, I remember my mother, my healer and my teacher, and I invite you to remember your mothers, too, for certainly our mothers were first doctors and nurses that most of us ever had. There is an old Jewish aphorism that goes, “God could not be everywhere, so he made mothers.” I am not sure of the theology, but I do like the sentiment.
Finis