Do you ever think that we expect a lot of God?
I’ve been praying for healing for a lot of folks lately.
(Have you?)
Praying for patience and strength, for people who are sick, and for their families and friends. Praying for wisdom and guidance for doctors and nurses and pharmacists and techs. Praying for the healing of hearts and spirits, damaged by long trials of pain and limitation.
And I’ve been very explicit with God about how much I want the cancer and the degenerative diseases and the heartbreak to just go away and leave us alone.
I expect God to listen, and to hear.
I expect people I’m praying for to recover.
I expect healing in ways I can’t even describe. And that’s when I sometimes start to think it’s a lot that I’m expecting from God.
But the evidence of scripture is that God expects us to expect all that and even more.
God gives us visions of healing that go beyond re-knit bones and flesh, beyond stronger muscles, beyond cancer remission, surgical repairs, and getting life “back to normal.”
God gives us visions of healing that sweep souls and hearts into vibrant joy; visions of broken communities restored, of chronic and life-long limits entirely transformed into wholeness.
We heard from the prophet Isaiah that this healing vision God gives includes homecoming, safety, and the end of sorrow; not just for God’s people, but for wild beasts and for the land itself. The lonely, barren desert land bursts into blossom in sheer joy.
That’s not “getting better.” That’s healing above and beyond health.
And Luke’s story of Jesus and a paralyzed man reminds us that healing is found first in the community of friends, whose faith and literal support bring us to the place of healing, then in the reconciliation of our lives and souls to God, and then finally, in the transformation of our physical ills and limits.
Do we sometimes expect less of God than we should?
That’s what this morning is all about. The promise that God’s healing, like God’s love, is broader and deeper than we imagine when we are hurting, or lonely, or despairing.
The promise that God’s healing touches not just our bodies, but our hearts, souls and communities – and even the earth itself, with all creation.
And the promise that God’s healing is about even more than the relief of pain or the return to normal – that God’s healing is about joy and wholeness that cannot be contained.
Sometimes the physical cure we ask for is secondary to God’s true healing – as in the story of the paralyzed man this morning. Sometimes, the physical cure is immediate and unmistakeable. Sometimes it never comes.
But the witness of scripture and the promise of God invite us to ask for more.
To bring our pain, small and great to God.
To bring the aches of our heart and spirit and hips and hands, expecting to share in the healing of the world. To bring our physical and spiritual crisis to God, expecting to be transformed by God’s touch.
To bring our dis-ease and brokenness of every kind, expecting to be swept up in God’s compassion for all creation.
We don’t pray to control what happens.
We pray because whatever happens, we need God’s healing gifts, for heart, body, spirit and the community and creation around us.
We pray because God expects us to long for healing.
And when we do that in community, as we share one another’s pain, we share our hope and our love as well.
And that is why we are here today.
To share, one-by-one and all together, in God’s healing of the world.
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