Jeremiah 8:21-22, John 5:1-9

At the pool of Bethesda by the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem, hundreds were sick and dying. Jesus healed one of them. What about the rest of those people? As far as we can tell from John’s story, they were left in their misery. If we are going to deal honestly with the topic of healing, we have got to deal with this troubling subject: Why are some not healed? My first experience with this issue was with my father, as some of you know. When I was 18, he had surgery for a malignant brain tumor, and died shortly after. But I prayed for him, and I believed he would be healed. When Ed and I were serving a church in California, we had a weekly service for people who wanted prayers for healing. A very sweet sixty-ish woman was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and she came to that prayer meeting regularly. I often went to her home and prayed for her there. Even so, the disease progressed, and she died.

You have your own stories, and we often share our frustration and concern about those who are on our current prayer list who don’t seem to be getting any better. In many and various ways we cry with Jeremiah, "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?" In Jeremiah’s day, the town of Gilead was a symbol of hope. It was a center for medical treatment, and was specially known for its healing ointments. If there is no healing balm in Gilead, then there is no hope to be found anywhere. This is the cry of one who has tried everything, and come up empty.

Can you relate to Jeremiah’s lament?

So what’s going on when the healing doesn’t happen?

We begin with an identity issue. As I said last week, God is the healer, we are not. So, if healing is not happening in the way we think it should, we may need to pull out our driver’s license and remind ourselves of who we are. Let’s face it. Most of us, when we pray for healing, want to decide the outcome. We want to decide who is healed, and when and how. And if the healing doesn’t happen in the way we want it to, or on our time schedule, then we have the tendency to think that there was something wrong with how we prayed, or God doesn’t really care as we thought. Our prayers have failed. This is a control issue that we need to recognize. "Spiritual healing is not magic . . . There is no waving of a magic wand to suspend the operation of the universe so that our own purposes may be served." (Blessed, 68) We are not God. We are mere mortals. God is the healer.

Then there’s the failure issue. We human beings tend to look at life in terms of success and failure. If our prayers aren’t answered in the way we want, then it seems as if our prayers have failed. But there’s no such thing as failure in prayers for healing. God is always at work. Whenever we pray for someone, something happens. It just may not be what we thought it would be. We put a very high priority on physical healing, but it may well be that there is something more important that God has in mind. While we are thinking about and looking for a physical healing, God may be working on the person’s heart, healing an old wound, or transforming bitterness into love. It may be that through your healing prayers, someone will come to know Jesus Christ for the first time. Think about it. Physical healing, even at its very best, is temporary. Even the healthiest people among us eventually die. But spiritual healing lasts on into eternity.

We have a tendency to think of death as the final tragedy. And many times, death comes prematurely and seems quite unfair to those who are left behind. But, even in death, there is healing. It is the journey that finally takes us home. God is always at work, but not always in ways that we can see or understand.

So, when we pray for healing, it’s good to approach God with humility, acknowledging that God is God and we are not.

We do not make healing happen, but we are not entirely helpless in the process either. In our prayers for ourselves and others, there are things we do that either help or hinder the healing process.

One of the things that hinders healing is resistance. People may be resistant to healing. Is that a surprising thought?

There are two kinds of resistance. One is simply disbelief. A lack of openness to the ways of God. Healing requires faith. Not necessarily on the part of the one who is sick, but there must be faith involved somewhere in the process.

I have to be honest with you that this faith business makes me nervous, because how do I know if I have enough faith? Maybe that’s why my father died, because I didn’t have enough faith. Maybe that’s why my friend Virginia died, because I didn’t pray hard enough.

Not true!

Jesus said that faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move mountains. You can take that promise to the bank. A mustard seed. No bigger than the period at the end of a sentence. Faith is like red chili peppers. It’s so strong you only need a little bit. If you have enough faith to come to God in prayer, to ask, to seek, then certainly it is as big as a mustard seed. And if you come to God with that mustard-seed faith, then God is at work, though perhaps in ways we cannot see.

Even a tiny bit of faith can move mountains, but an atmosphere of disbelief is paralyzing. The Gospels tell us that Jesus, powerful as he was, could not do many miracles when he went home to Nazareth because of their lack of faith. To them, Jesus was nothing special. He was just another home boy. What did he have that the other home boys didn’t have? Nothing, they thought, so they scoffed at him, and created an atmosphere of disbelief. They even called him "Joseph’s son" which we might think of as a positive thing, but they did it in a mocking way, to suggest that there was nothing remarkable or miraculous about how he came into the world. Healing was lacking in Nazareth because they were resistant to it.

Besides disbelief there is another kind of resistance that hinders the healing process. This is an uncooperative attitude. Jesus asked the man by the pool of Bethesda, "Do you want to be healed?" He didn’t say, do you believe I can do it, but do you want it?

Can you imagine someone not wanting to be well? Anybody who was ever a kid knows this is possible. Did you ever try to make your mom or dad think you were sick, so you wouldn’t have to go to school or do your chores? Or, maybe you extended your cold or flu a little, just to get the attention and stay in bed. Have you adults ever "called in sick" so you wouldn’t have to work?

When you’re sick, people have to take care of you. When you’re well, you have to take care of yourself. In other words, wellness carries responsibility with it. This man by the pool hadn’t been able to work in 38 years. Hadn’t been able to take out the garbage or clean the garage. Help with the dishes. If he gets healed, he will have to take responsibility for his life.

A man went to the doctor and explained that he wasn’t able to do all the things around the house that he used to do. After the physical exam was over, the man said, "Now, Doc, I can take it. Tell me in plain English what is the matter with me."

"OK, in plain English," the doctor answered, "you’re just plain lazy."

"Thank you for your honesty," said the man. "Now give me the medical term so I can explain this to my wife." (story file, 15.9.3)

If we want to be well, we need to be honest with ourselves, and we need to cooperate with the healing process. God heals in many ways. Sometimes God works in dramatic and supernatural ways. God also works in some very natural and undramatic ways—through rest and exercise, through doctors and psychologists. Through surgery and medicine. It’s our responsibility to cooperate with the healing process. Suppose someone has a cardiac disease brought on by a stressful lifestyle, complicated by a fatty diet and no exercise. And suppose that this same person refuses to make the healthy life changes that the doctor recommends. It’s often true that people say they want to be healed, but they do not want to cooperate with the healing process by changing their lifestyle.

The act of laying our hands on someone will not bring healing, if indeed God is calling that person to a more responsible lifestyle. Resistance hinders the healing process. Cooperation helps.

It also helps if we look for healing in the right place. The pool of Bethesda was thought to have magical powers, so people gathered there daily. Some people went there every day for years, like the man Jesus healed. Yet many knew, like this man did, that they were more likely to win $2,000 a week for life in the lottery than to get healed in that pool. Still, they kept on going. The amazing thing, of course, is that while everyone else was focused on the magic pool, Jesus, the author of life, was walking among them ready to reach out, and touch and heal. As long as their eyes were on the pool, they would not see Jesus.

So many times we look for healing in the wrong place. Instead of looking for God to heal us, we hope for a bit of magic. That’s one reason that alcoholics drink and drug addicts shoot up. It’s why people who are depressed pig out on ice cream. It’s not a hope for real healing, but for a little magic to make the pain disappear. Magic, like the pool of Bethesda, is mostly illusion. And real healing is not the same thing as a quick fix. Genuine healing may well happen over a lifetime.

For the final test in a class on logic, the professor told his students that they could bring as much information to the exam as they could fit on a piece of notebook paper. Most of them cramped their penmanship and crammed as many facts onto that 8 ½ by 11" piece of paper as they could and came into the test bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. But one well-rested student walked into class, put a piece of notebook paper on the floor, and had an advanced logic student stand on the paper. The advanced logic student told him everything he needed to know. He was the only student who got an A on the test. (Fresh, 70)

If we want to experience God’s healing for ourselves and others, we need to re-focus our thoughts and energies. We need to turn away from the illusions and quick fixes, and turn to the source of life. Like the creative student, we need to focus not on information, or techniques, or on our successes or failures, but on a person. Jesus. We need to trust God, who loves us and works for our best, even when we can’t see it.