Healing Services

On the last Sunday of every month, we usually have a healing service. What this means is that the pastor reads a bit of liturgy, and people who want to come forward for a blessing and an anointing with oil. When everyone has come forward, we move on with Holy Communion.

When we first started going to the church, I had spent a bruised summer recovering from some unpleasantness involving the pastor and the council and the preschool at my last church. It was a stormy summer of hurt feelings and no apologies. I didn't expect much from the healing service at the church which would eventually be my new church. I wasn't even sure I deserved to participate. I didn't have a real malady, after all. Some of the people who went forward clearly needed healing more than I did.

The lay minister laid hands on my shoulder, blessed me, and made a cross on my forehead with an oil-dipped finger. I started to cry. I went back to my seat and kept weeping. I still didn't have myself quite pulled together for Communion, but I went forward anyway. Some Sundays, I can feel my soul longing for the sacrament. That was one of those Sundays. I noticed a few other people also continuing to cry. It felt safe.

And after that, my resentment about the way things had ended at my old church had vanished. My sorrow at all the efforts I expended at that church started to wash away. I was able to forgive myself for all those years that I spent hoping that the old church could be transformed and that I would be the one to work that transformation. At least once I left, I had no doubt in my mind that I had done all that I could have done in that setting.

I hesitated to become a healing minister myself. I love being a Communion assistant, but I didn't feel I was spiritual enough to be a healing minister, or special enough, or open enough to the Holy Spirit. In short, I was afraid. But one Sunday last summer, I was needed, so I said a prayer and hoped for the best.

I was so nervous that my hands sweated profusely, so I didn't lay hands on anyone. I worried that my sweaty palms would be too gross. These days, I don't think I'd worry as much. These days, I think that the laying on of hands is an important part.

I've grown to like being a healing minister. Every Sunday that I do it, I pray to be a conduit. And some Sundays, I feel like I am. One Sunday, a woman approached me during coffee hour and quietly asked me, "Did you feel it too?" Oh yes, I did.

I'm not as freaked out by the experience as some people. I've been a writer for many years, and I treasure those times that the writing flows out of me, writing that I later read and think, I did this? Perhaps I'm tapping into something more cosmic.

The other experience I've had of being healed through a service came during a Synod Assembly. We'd had a rough spring at work, and there was talk of lay-offs. My job was safe, but I didn't relish the thought of letting anyone go.

One of the healing ministers asked me what I wanted us to pray for, and I blurted out the truth, the first time I'd said it out loud: "My job bores me and leaves me stressed." And so, we prayed.

The bad times passed at work. We didn't have to let anyone go. I'm getting better at accepting the boring times at work and working through the stress. Is it because of the healing service?

I don't think the healing service had any sort of impact on the workplace itself. But I know that it somehow calmed my mind.

Being a reserved Lutheran, I never thought I'd be part of a church that didn't something so charismatic as having a healing service. I never thought I'd be a healing minister. But I feel fortunate to have found myself here.

Last Thoughts on Yesterday's Gospel

Our pastor, in his sermon yesterday, reminded us that the Kingdom of God will likely not be neat and tidy. He gave us many examples of ways that the modern church tries to make the Kingdom neat and tidy--by managing who reads the lessons for example. You can probably think of many more examples. How would your church respond if a smelly homeless person attended service? What if the smelly, homeless person was hallucinating?

Time and again, our Scriptures remind us that God is on the side of the smelly, the homeless, the hallucinating--the poor and the outcast. We should be too.

Our pastor cautioned us that the Kingdom of God may not be in our best interest, at least not in the way that the secular world understands our better interests. Jesus came to point us towards a whole different set of best interests. And most of us are likely to be just as open to the message as the Pharisees were in their day.

The Theology of "Bottle Shock"

Last night we watched Bottle Shock, an intriguing movie about winemaking and love of the land. Along the way, viewers learn about how Napa Valley wines won world-wide respect.

Much of the way through the movie, I thought, vineyards, prodigal sons, redemption: I'm watching a theological movie!

Now it's not overtly theological the way that some movies are. But the themes are familiar to most of us who make our way to church on any given week-end. And in our time of global devastation of the planet, the message about care of the land seems particularly relevant.

Here's a quote from the movie for your Sunday (down here it's rainy, hot, and steamy): "Wine is sunlight held together with water." The movie gives the credit to Galileo.

Feast Day of St. Augustine

Today is the feast day of St. Augustine--if you wanted, you could make a case for him as one of the most important thinkers in the history of the Church. We can trace our ideas about original sin and grace back to him. His thinking about God and God's existence outside of time has been enormously influential. His views of just war continue to be debated. His confessional style continues in writing to this day.

Now I know that many of us don't agree with our church's view of concepts of original sin or grace or time or abortion or war or confession. That doesn't mean that Augustine should be abandoned. Many of us reject the teachings of the church without giving them serious consideration, much less reading the important works and wrestling with the concepts.

Augustine did some serious pondering and serious wrestling. And because so many of his writings survive, we get to see that process.

Augustine is one of the easiest of the early church writers to read. This week-end would be a great time to revisit his work.

Feast Day of St. Monica

Today we celebrate the life of St. Monica, the woman who taught us to patiently pray for children who would by all outer appearances seem to be lost causes--she's the mom of St. Augustine, one of the important early church shapers, whose feast day we celebrate tomorrow.

St. Monica had a difficult marriage, and by modern standards, I'd guess that most women until very recently had difficult marriages. Monica is the patron saint of abused women, abused children, victims of unfaithfulness, those who have difficult marriages, and those who have disappointing children.

I'm lucky that I've rarely been in circumstances that would prompt me to ask St. Monica to pray for me.

I'm interested in the early church and women. I'm interested in the early church women that are recognized, the ones that have been canonized. In my younger years, I'd have been rather shrill about the sexism of canonizing women whose primary attribute seems to be their patient endurance of abuse. In my older years, I recognize that people can change, the way that Augustine changed. In my older years, I recognize the value of praying, even if it takes decades for change to come.

There's a woman in my office, and we chat occasionally. She's prone to conspiracy theories. She sees the forces of evil (in the form of corporations, Republicans, the upper classes) all around, and they're winning. I'm much more optimistic.

Yesterday I tried to explain why I'm optimistic. If we could time travel back to 1985, I'd have told you that Nelson Mandela would die in jail, that South Africa would devolve into civil war, that the Soviet Union would control Eastern Europe forever. I was convinced we would all die in a nuclear holocaust.

For reasons I can't explain logically, those events didn't happen. I know that plenty of people across the planet pray for freedom and justice. I know that those prayers can be answered. I know that betrayal can lead to reconciliation. I know that God has a powerful vision for this creation, and I believe that redemption is underway.

Of course, we're not there yet. So please, St. Monica, pray for us as we struggle with abuse and abandonment.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The Readings for Sunday, August 29, 2010

First Reading: Proverbs 25:6-7

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Jeremiah 2:4-13

First Reading (Alt.): Sirach 10:12-18

Psalm: Psalm 112

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 81:1, 10-16

Second Reading: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

Gospel: Luke 14:1, 7-14

Here is another Gospel lesson which reminds us how different a world is the one that Jesus ushers in. It also shows us that ancient times weren't much different than ours.

We spend much of our day vying for power and position. Even in workplaces where there's not much to be gained by winning favor, one still sees a ridiculous amount of energy and time spent on power games. Think of the last meeting you had at work. Think of how short that meeting would have been if you could have gotten rid of people who spoke up to say, essentially, "I agree with what the last person said." Think of all the time wasted in currying favor with supervisors.

Even outside of the workplace, one sees this dynamic. In volunteer situations, people often want to prove that they're indispensable. We even see this in our relationships with friends, the one place where you would think we would approach each other as equals. Likewise in marriages--many spouses spend absurd amounts of time trying to prove that one way of doing things is the right way, and all other ways are bad.

Psychologists would tell us that we play these power games because we're trying to satisfy our needy egos. We want to feel important because we spend much of our lives feeling insignificant. But instead of addressing that pain by making others feel better, we try to make others feel worse. We put people down so that we feel better. We connive and work to wound others.

Christ comes to usher in a new age. Again and again, he reminds us (in the words of today's Gospel), "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 14: 11). We don't win favor with God in the way we might win favor with the boss. God is well aware of God's importance. We don't need to make God feel like the big man so that we might win a promotion.

God calls us to a higher purpose. We're to look out for the poor and downtrodden. And we're not to do it because we'll be repaid by the poor and downtrodden. We do it because Christ came to show us how to crack open the world and let the Kingdom light shine into the dark cracks. And the way to do that: look out for the marginalized of the world.

Summer of Broken Objects

Yesterday was one of those days that I suspect everyone has occasionally. My spouse seemed to break everything he touched. We ended the day with a computer that still doesn't work and a broken lamp.

We've had a summer of broken objects. Our lawnmower inexplicably stopped working last month. Our computer hasn't been right since mid-July. My spouse somehow missed the first lesson of boat existence, and put toilet paper in the head of my sister and brother-in-law's sailboat--broken head! I can no longer keep track of how many wineglasses we've broken.

It's frustrating dealing with broken objects, but I prefer dealing with broken objects to dealing with other forms of brokenness. Objects can be replaced. Broken health often cannot. People can break in all sorts of ways, and I'm glad we're not dealing with that. All of our loved ones this summer seem to be in good health with no deaths on the horizon. So far, our house seems to be in good shape. Our jobs don't seem to be in danger of breaking.

Of course, life teaches us that any of these situations can change in a heartbeat. So, any time I feel a flash of irritation with all the broken objects, I remind myself of my blessings. My health is good. The health of my loved ones is good. So far, a quiet hurricane season. My finances are secure enough that I can share with others. I have a job that I like, and I work with great humans.

We live in a state of brokenness, or pending brokenness. But the Good News is that God can reassemble all of creation into something even better.