There will be a healing

While at lunch with my colleagues the other day I heard a story that made me really think about the work of healing.  This pastor told the group about a visit he'd had with someone who was unwell. He explained that he had begun his prayer by saying:  "I'm going to anoint you with oil and there will be a healing.  I don't know if it will be physical, or emotional or spiritual, but there will be a healing."  He prayed for her and anointed her, invoking the holy spirit to heal her. He said that when the prayer ended, he heard her exhale a deep sigh - as if some unseen burden had dislodged itself and departed.  What intrigues me about this story is not the ending but how it begins.  It begins with the confidently spoken expectation of God's will to heal.  

Very early in my ordained life I was asked to pray the last rites for a woman I'd never met who was dying of cancer; she was in the worst pain I had ever seen.  I remember sitting alone with her in that stark hospital room feeling so completely inadequate.  As I opened the book that contained the prayers for anointing the dying, I wondered to myself, "Holy God, what good are these words? They are only words.  What good can come of my simply speaking words? Who am I that my words should carry such weight?"  Nonetheless, I proceeded.  When I came to the words of the rite: "Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world . . ."  she did.  She died a peaceful death, quiet, still, calm, restful, and free, wholly free.  People of faith expect prayers to be answered.  How bold, how beautiful a thing to say it up front. Today, right now, there will be a healing.

Naturally, we have specific things in mind when we pray, said or unsaid.  But sometimes our desires and expectations don't match the greater need.  What I wanted for this particular person at the end of her life was that she longer be in pain, and that her death, whenever it came, would be peaceful. But the goodness and mercy of God provided both.  

I recently read in an article in Christian Century magazine that many a good Christian spend their days searching for God's will for their lives.  It was pointed out that, in fact, no searching is necessary.  God's will has already been made quite clear:  that we love God with our whole heart, and love our neighbors as ourselves.  To conform our lives to these two ends can easily fill every waking moment of a lifetime.  Truly, we know what is required of us, but it is often easier to keep searching for that one right thing that will make all the rest of our lives make sense.  This perspective can really make a difference in the things we pray for as well.  Imagine if we framed our every prayer as an act of love for God with the sole intention of blessing the life of another in as much as we would wish to be as blessed?  Perhaps we would begin each prayer by saying, "By your hand, O God, there will be a healing."

The Perfection of Love

There are things that still rattle around in my mind years after hearing them. The most random things can take up residence and have an ongoing influence on the way I perceive life. Several years ago I heard a sermon by The Rev. Cn. Gregory Hinton, of St. Paul's Episcopal, Wellsboro on the occasion of a mid-week Lenten worship service. I can no longer remember the exact text, other than it was a psalm. But I do recall hearing one thing that has stuck with me. The core of his homily was that the opposite of faith is not disbelief, it is despair; to be without hope.

Recent national headlines announced the suicides of two college students, two in a single week. They were completely different situations, but equally tragic. What lies at the root of both is despair. Suicide is the raw product of despair; it is the fruit of hopelessness. However, there is another form of despair that is much more subtle and just as destructive.

One of the above situations included a young man who videotaped his unknowing dorm mate while he had a friend visiting. Shortly after a video of an intimate moment between two young men in the "privacy" of the dorm room was then distributed over the internet. The suicide of the victimized room mate followed shortly. The despair of the victim could not be more clear or understandable. The despair of the indiscreet voyeur not so.

What motivates a person to intentionally inflict pain and suffering on another? Fun? A degenerate sense of humor? Notoriety? Popularity? Insecurity? Meanness? Some of these things may apply, but it is despair that lies at the root of them all; a vacuum in which there is the absence of faithfulness in anything beyond one's self. Only despair openly entertains such aggressive acts against another. Despair suggests a world view without hope. A world view that begins at one's feet and ends at the far end of one's own shadow; self-satisfaction, self-centered, self-obsession, self-degradation, self-loathing, self-hating, self-destruction. Despair disallows empathy for another. It openly contradicts rational responses and actions. It leaves behind a trail of disaffected perpetrators and an avalanche of perplexed victims.

There is an antidote, a plunge into the antithesis of despair; its rival and archenemy: Faith. Faith in something bigger and authentically better then anything that we can capture, position or manipulate for our own short-sighted motives. There is no perfect definition for this bigger and better object of reverence and awe, other than, perhaps Love (with a capital L). The love (lower case l) we know in this earthly realm is filled with promise and joy, but is also hapless and unjust, often unqualified, and falls quite short of the bigger and authentically better Love. This Love does not get caught up in the slippery slopes of our lives; it remains constant and sure, presumes nothing, but expects much. Much care and concern for those who share our world, many acts of kindness for nothing more than the ongoing perpetuation of itself. It is not negated by acts of despair, but absorbs them like a dry sponge and expunges them. It is the only perfect thing we'll ever know in this life. Call Love what you wish; the God of believers; an undefined object of reverence for the Spiritually inclined; Hope for the disenchanted and disillusioned. But fall in love with Love and dispense with despair.