A Time to Heal Sunday 23rd January 2011

I was listening on the radio to the book programme last week.

Now so many books are online it has been possible to survey the use of words and phrases over a couple of hundred years.

Inevitably the word internet appears only in the last twenty years. The words ‘I must’ occur an awful lot until the 1960s. The word ‘I want’ rarely occurs before the 1950s.

Do you see where I am leading?

Where there is .... selfish ambition, writes James in our reading from Chapter 3 of his epistle – where ‘I want’ reigns - there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

Healing and wholeness link to inner peace and inner peace is very often countered by our selfish craving.

I want it, and I want it now is more of a destructive impulse than we dare to own, so much are we carried along by the flow of electronic media, including advertising, that indulges our selfishness.

Christian healing has been defined as meeting Jesus Christ at your point of need - and restlessness of spirit is a very common need.

Those who take themselves to shopping malls for retail therapy get less return than we will gain tonight through the church’s ministry of healing.

He will quiet you by his love we read in Zephaniah Chapter 3 verse 17.

We cannot escape our desires, and not all our wants are selfish. Yet the quietening of useless desires can be, if we allow it, the gift of the Lord whose love covers the multitude of our sins, negligences and offences against him, against our neighbour and against ourselves.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov lived in Russia from 1759 to his death in 1833. He’s one of the most renowned Russian monks and mystics in the Orthodox Church and is remembered for extending the monastic teachings of contemplation, self-denial and the acquiring of the Holy Spirit to the layperson.

Perhaps Seraphim's most popular quotation amongst Orthodox believers is: Acquire inner peace, and thousands around you will find salvation.

How closely this advice echoes that of Saint James in tonight’s reading: The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

If we want wholeness we need the peace of Spirit that comes with the wisdom from above.

God loves us and wants us to experience peace and life-abundant and eternal.

As we read in the Magnificat refrain from Isaiah 26.3-4:You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

Saint Paul says we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1

This peace is given as we ask the Lord to come alongside us.

This action means an act of faith in him preceded by an act of repentance.

Repentance means turning, in this case turning from all that distracts and consumes our inner energies.

As was found written in the Breviary of 16th century Spanish mystic Saint Teresa of Avila:

Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Patient endurance
Attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth
In nothing is wanting;
Alone God sufficeth.

This evening is A Time to Heal. As we seek the Lord we have an opportunity to bring to him our needs of body and mind, soul and spirit and our relational needs. The ministry of healing is automatically holistic.

If your body is hurting it affects your mind and spirit. If your spirit is disturbed it has physical implications. If you are living with unforgiveness in your relationships you will pay a price for that all over. If your sense of what you must do is eclipsed by what you merely want to do, again you will lack wholeness and peace.

At this point it is my privilege to introduce Leslie who received the sacrament of anointing some months back for a serious physical condition and has a message for us about how God can come aside us in our needs bringing peace and healing.