Healing: Entering Shalom

Healing: Entering Shalom

October 2, 2022

Matthew 9: 18 - 34

This morning we are talking about healing – Christian healing.  I know that there are a couple of approaches to healing in the Christian tradition.  I am choosing healing through Shalom rather than simple medical healing, but both kinds of healing are interrelated.

            Yes, I know that some people heal when Doctors have determined that the patients are beyond hope.  When that is accompanied by many people praying for the patients, the prayers interpret the healing as God’s intervention in the medical events.  When prayed-for people do not heal, it is believed that God, for some reason, has decided not to intervene; that leaves the question “why” haunting some people.

            I remember reading of one man, attending his child’s funeral, who was told in the sermon or eulogy that the child died because the child’s parents did not believe enough.  Maybe; but that father never went back to church again.  That simply didn’t feel like the position of the God of love.

            A Sunday sermon is not the place or time for a presentation of the theological assumptions and beliefs to undergird this kind of “faith healing.”  So, I will leave that discussion for another time and place.  Instead, I will address healing as entering into shalom, into harmony with God’s Way.  It is overcoming division, hatred, and discord; it is the mending of what is displaced or broken.  It is moving into the wholeness of God.

            Let’s discern what health is and what brings health as presented in the three scripture lessons that Neil read a few minutes ago.

            The writer or complier of Proverbs says, 3:5“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.  6In all your ways acknowledge the LORD, and the LORD will make straight your paths.  7Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and turn away from evil.  8It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body.”

            The book of Proverbs is the central focus of the Wisdom Literature; it carries the conventional wisdom of our ancestors in the faith, the Hebrew people.  Here in chapter 3 and elsewhere in the Old Testament (perhaps not so clearly articulated) we read that 8“Healing for your flesh and (even) a refreshment for your body” is attained by trusting in the LORD rather than on your own insights.  When we acknowledge the LORD as the way of life and truth rather than trusting our own thinking and when we turn away from evil, God makes “our paths straight” – that is, God guides us into harmony with heaven and earth, into God’s shalom; and thereby our bodies are refreshed and healed.

            God heals us in more ways than just fixing our illnesses as we acknowledge and trust God and as we follow God’s way of life in Jesus’ example.  Following our biblical guidelines, our Mt. Salem Church can be a kind of hospital for sinners and a health department for introducing our neighborhood to God’s shalom.

            St. Paul, writing to the churches in Philippi, teaches us always to rejoice in the Lord and to be gentle.  Because the Lord is always near, he urges us not to worry about anything but by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to make our needs known to God who will guard our hearts and minds.

            More specifically, Paul directs us to concentrate on ideas, concepts, situations, and things that are true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise.  If we do that while continuing to do all that he (Paul) had taught the Christians in Philippi we in Mt. Salem Church will experience the God of peace – that is, we will be entering into God’s shalom.  [Remember “shalom” is typically translated by the English word “peace” even though that is an inadequate and simplistic translation.]

            Shalom is characterized by situations that are true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise.  That is pretty much what the Proverbs lesson was saying, too:  acknowledging and trusting God and following God’s way through Jesus’ example is shalom through which our minds and bodies and souls are refreshed and healed.

            The four healings in the Matthew lesson are related to this idea of shalom, too.  If we read the text carefully, Jesus is not recorded doing or causing the healing; it was trusting God through Jesus’ presence and influence that appears to have accomplished the four healings.

            The synagogue leader’s daughter – 12 years old according to Mark – had already died as Matthew presents the story but the synagogue leader’s obvious faith or trust in Jesus (or Jesus’ way) is the apparent source of her resurrection.  Her father says to Jesus, 18b“My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.”  We are told that Jesus followed the synagogue leader to his house where he said to the grieving family and friends, 24b“The girl is not dead but sleeping” to their ridicule and laughter.  Then Matthew reports that Jesus went in to the girl and simply 25b-c”took her by the hand, and the girl got up.”  As this story is presented Jesus does not heal the daughter; it is her father’s trust in Jesus’ representation of God’s shalom, wherein her body was refreshed and healed.  Probably in much less dramatic form that is the kind of healing that Mt. Salem Church can bring to our neighborhood.

            The healing of the woman with the twelve-year vaginal bleeding was not Jesus’ healing either.  As presented in Matthew, Mark, and Luke the woman decided and trusted that her touching the hem of Jesus’ garment would heal her affliction.  So she entered the crowd following Jesus to the synagogue leader’s house and came up behind Jesus and 20a“touched the fringe of his cloak,” and was made well.  When Jesus identified her, he told her 22c”Your faith has made you well;” it was the woman’s joining into the wholeness of God – into God’s shalom -- that gave her the faith or trust in God’s healing of her affliction that produced her healing.

            In the last piece of the Matthew lesson two blind men came to Jesus with an implied request to be healed – to gain or regain their sight.  The text says that Jesus asked them, 28d“Do you believe that I am able to do this?”  They answered, 28e“Yes, Lord.”  Then Jesus touched their eyes and said 29b“According to your faith let it be done to you.”  And their eyes were “opened.”  As Matthew reports it, it is the men’s believing or trusting that Jesus and then they themselves participated in God’s wholeness or shalom that gave them their sight – that enabled their bodies to be refreshed and healed.

            In this passage, in these three healings, it seems that Jesus was the focus around which the twelve-year-old girl’s father, the woman with the menstrual bleeding, and the two blind men could engage themselves in God’s shalom and have their bodies refreshed and healed.  Healing by entering God’s shalom is also available to each of us and to Mt. Salem Church.

            Entering into shalom or into harmony with God’s Way is the basis or source of healing and health.  That can be accomplished, as St. Paul puts it, by overcoming division, hatred, and discord and by mending what is displaced or broken.  And God heals us in more ways than just fixing our illnesses.  We need to acknowledge and trust God while we follow God’s way of life through Jesus’ examples.  Then, following our biblical guidelines, our Mt. Salem Church can be a kind of hospital for sinners and a health department for introducing our neighborhood to God’s shalom.

Acknowledging the LORD, we will invite the LORD to straighten our paths.  Then as we learn not to be wise in your own eyes but to trust God, following God’s ways, we will be healed in flesh.  God will make “our paths straight” – that is, God will guide us into harmony with heaven and earth, God will guide us into God’s shalom; at which time our bodies will be refreshed and healed.

As we concentrate on ideas, concepts, situations, and things that are true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise, we individually and all of us together in our Mt. Salem Church will experience God’s peace – that is, we will be entering into God’s shalom.

            God heals us in more ways than just fixing our illnesses as we acknowledge and trust God and as we take on God’s way of life following Jesus’ examples.  That, and studying to discern and adopt biblical guidelines of health and hospitality, our Mt. Salem Church can really become a kind of hospital for sinners and a health department for teaching our community God’s shalom, leading our neighborhood into God’s dream for our human community:  life that is filled with love, peace, charity, mercy, forgiveness, opportunity, and justice for each and every neighbor.  That is the mission we have adopted; that is our task in making disciples for the transformation of the world.                                                                          Amen.

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