Sermon preached 12th July 2015 at St Michael's Flixton Summer Wholeness and Healing service. Based on Mark 6:14-19 and Ephesians 1:3-5
The
section of Mark’s gospel that we’re reading through over the summer is so rich
in scripture that helps us celebrate the ministry of Wholeness and Healing.
If
we just remember back over the last 2 weeks we've had the story of the
haemorrhaging woman and healing Jairus’ daughter. Last week the 12 disciples
were being sent out in mission, and whilst it appears elsewhere in the gospel
one of the few things Jesus directly commanded them to do was heal the sick.
Spoilers for what’s coming over the next few weeks include feeding the 5000,
Jesus walking on water and more miraculous healings, all of which would provide
fantastic endless material for an uplifting sermon on Wholeness and Healing.
These stories reveal to us God’s healing power, abundant love and give us clues
to the relationship between Christ’s humanity and divinity.
But
placed in the middle of all this miracle and wonder is a flashback to the Death
of John the Baptist. A moment of defeat, and pain. A moment which caused Jesus
to withdraw (when you look at the narrative in Matthew’s gospel). It seems out
of place amongst these other tales of miracles- all these overwhelming displays
of God’s love and power.
In
John’s death we see frailty. We see a bad thing happening to a good person. We
probably don’t remember that it comes in this section of Mark’s book, because
of the narrative that surrounds it.
Why
would it be in this part of the gospel? What purpose does it serve? And what
can it tell us about Wholeness and Healing?
Whilst
the stories either side of today’s reading are full of some of the most famous
and miraculous events from Jesus’ ministry, it may be rare or perhaps even
completely unimaginable that we would experience something even close to those
miracles in our own lives. We may feel that whilst we hope for miracles, what we
experience in our lives is much more mundane, and often the reality of the
lives we lead is we’re faced with difficulties and sometimes sadness. It can be
easier to relate to bible stories of people going through tough times, or the
psalms which cry out in lament, than relate to the miraculous.
In
stark contrast to the miracles pouring out from the gospel narrative, with this
one story of sadness in the middle, If we watch or read the news the opposite
is true- economic crisis in Greece, commemorations for lives lost in the 7/7
bombings, abuse inquiries within our own church. I think it’s safe to say that
neither the miracles of the bible or the sadness in many of the media stories
we read give the true picture of what we experience in our lives.
We
can’t however deny that we do have to deal with difficulties more often that
the miraculous, and at those times we may ask ourselves “where is God in this?”
Over
the 15 years I’ve worked at The Christie I’ve prayed for hundreds, maybe 1000s
of patients in my care. Some have got better and some haven’t. I’ve wondered if
some of those who recovered, despite the odds, were miracles or simply the
result of really good medical care and a lot of luck? And I’ve wondered why were some not
physically healed?
The
church is very reluctant to claim healing miracles but there’s also no
satisfying answer as to why God doesn’t intervene in the way we would want him
to when we or someone we love is suffering or ill.
This
must all sound a little bleak so far, not at all like “Good News” but John the
Baptist’s death reminds us that even with huge amounts of faith bad things
happen to us.
Yet
sometimes the worst things we experience are often those which are the most
important in forming the person we are or will become. During the ministry
selection process one of the things I had to do was list the most significant
events in my life up until that point.
When
you look back at a lifetime of significant events you realise it’s often the
things that have caused you pain, or caused you or those you love to suffer,
that’ve had the most influence over the person you now are. The painful stuff
shapes our faith, moulds our relationship with God and helps move us towards
that wholeness we wish for. Would you be the person you are without some of the
more difficult things you’ve experienced?
My
friend Dave, who was a lay Methodist preacher, told me his cancer had given him
the opportunity to talk to new people about God, making him feel he was drawing
nearer to that relationship of Wholeness, despite his cancer not being
treatable.
Something
else we see in the Gospel reading is Herod’s brokenness. It’s too easy to see
him as the pantomime villain, or a man manipulated into action, here what we
see is a man broken by guilt. The reason the flashback to John’s death is here
is because Herod, hearing about Jesus through the miracles and healing he'd performed, is driven by his uneasy conscience to
think Jesus could be a resurrected John the Baptist. His murder of John wasn’t
a great defeat or triumph, his marriage, to the wife who had wanted John dead,
broke down and his own actions pushed Herod further away from being able to
have a relationship with God. We see a man in desperate need of Healing and
Wholeness but completely unable to ask for it.
There’s
another purpose in recounting John’s death. It acts as a foreshadowing of
Jesus’ death, a reminder at the height of his active ministry that Jesus too
will die, shattering the lives of those around him and causing them to believe
that all is lost.
When
I wrote my ministry application form, reflecting upon those significant but
painful events, one thing I realised was that whilst in the middle of it all it
was almost impossible to see where God was in it, or how it could ever bring me
closer to a whole relationship with him.
Yet
years later, writing it all down, God’s presence in each part of my life became
clearer. I think it’s true that sometimes God is so close we can’t see him. The
theologian Leonard Sweet describes this closeness as being like asking a bird
to see air or a fish to see water.
If
you’d asked the disciples the day after the crucifixion where God was in it all
I doubt they’d have had an answer for you, but ask them later, in the light of
the resurrection and how that shaped their lives and relationship with God,
They would hopefully tell you that what had seemed like the worst day of their
life was actually the greatest, even though each of them subsequently suffered
for it.
The
bible is full of stories of bad things happening to good people, what counts is
how those people respond to what has happened to them and if they are able to
keep trusting in God.
The
good news teaches us that good things can come from bad, we’re reminded of this
in the Ephesians reading-
“In him we have redemption
through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches
of his grace that he lavished on
us.”
Our inheritance from God is through Christ’s blood.
Here we also see God’s plan for our healing, by making our
relationship with him whole-
“He set forth
in Christ, as a plan for the
fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things
on earth”
God wants to gather us to him, maybe so close that at times we
lose sight of him. He wants us along with all the things, good and bad, that’ve
made us who we are. He wants our brokenness, if, unlike Herod, we’re able to
offer it to him.
Our wholeness may not come in the form of a physical healing, a
miracle, or the resolution of things which have hurt us, but from us being
willing (during our good times and our difficult times) to let God gather us in
and draw us nearer to him.