5 Ways Jesus Heals

A week ago, I received an email from my church letting me know what to expect when we would gather on the weekend. "This Sunday we are having a Healing Service!" Instantly my guard went up and my nerves became on edge. Oh no! What is my church going to expect of me? Do they not know of the history to this kind of language? Amy Kenny's words crept into my thinking...

"Healing is time-consuming, difficult work. Whereas curing is hasty. No wonder prayerful perpetrators would rather demand a quick fix than investigate the way society needs healing when it comes to disability inclusion.”

― Amy Kenny, My Body Is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church

Let's just be honest, I don't like "healing services". Even though I know my church leaders have done their best to teach that cure based expectations are not an expectation or proper understanding of Christian faith and practice; I know the translation becomes lost in the multitude and ableist false attitudes and beliefs (dare I say heretical?) still creep out into the community. Can we not do away with "healing services"? But, I digress. Healing does happen and I am willing to say that the miraculous is possible and part of it.

This post is about 5 Ways Jesus Heals. I first heard these 5 Ways a few weeks ago, also at my church. My pastor, James Paton, shared them in his Sunday message while speaking openly of his own journey in healing. Diagnosed with Parkinson's, he seemed to speak with greater integrity and credibility to me. It inspired me to write this post.

Let's begin...

Directly & Supernaturally

Growing up, I remember many in the Church asking questions, "Why does it seem like miracles just don't seem to happen these days?" More suspiciously, they always seemed to happen only on those televangelist TV shows without any context or personal connection; which ultimately would only lead to the aggrandizement of the "healing" evangelist and of course, his bank account. Evidence of God's real work? In truth, I didn't care. That wasn't until I myself was in a car wreck and living life in a wheelchair. That was when miracles mattered.

Funny thing, after my need to witness a real miracle, I have seen a few over the years. Perhaps the one closest to me was the one my wife experienced in 2014 following the surgery on her neck. Being a C1C2 incomplete quadriplegic, she has had the spine in her neck fused from the skull down through to her C5 vertebrae since 1992. After years of the C6 vertebrae doing all the work, her spine in that area was breaking down. They needed to fuse further down through to her C7 vertebrae.

It was after the surgery that she developed a complication — she could no longer swallow properly. We were devastated and terrified on how we would process a future where she would have to rely on a feeding tube for the rest of her life. I began asking everyone I knew to begin praying immediately and she was being lifted up in word all across Canada and the US.

It would be three months of struggling to balance what hospitality would look like, how the celebration of the eucharist in church would change, and how I might prepare to sustain my own eating needs while not tormenting my wife by finding the enjoyment of food overtly in front of her. We would then beg her doctors, "Please, test her again! We truly believe she can swallow again!" Reluctantly, they booked her in.

Starting small, they had her take small sips of syrupy liquid before graduating to more solid foods like pudding, strawberries, and crackers while they watched on an x-ray machine behind the safety glass. Sitting there myself, I had a little chuckle as I remember the doctor leaning in to the technician and quietly saying, "Are you sure this is the same patient from a few months ago?" She was cured! Not just partially. Completely! The doctor said to her as we prepared to leave, "I don't have any explanation or understanding. But you can eat and drink whatever you would like!" We were elated and thrilled! Rolling out the door of the test room the doctor asked, "Where are you headed?" We laughed and said in tandem, "To get a large coffee!"

This and other experiences have taught me that Jesus heals miraculously not for the show, and not just for spiritual or religious well being; but for the full restoration of both the person and the social community around the person who experiences the healing. We both now have a renewed and expanded maturity and understanding of what hospitality truly means and why miracles show God's love in the here and now of today.

Doctors & Medicine

Without a doubt, I have spent a great deal of time around medical centres and practicing health physicians throughout my life. The best ones are the ones who genuinely show they care about their patients and listen tentatively to who they are inside and out. There have been times where I have had concerns for today's health care system. But I still truly believe that most of our doctors and health care workers are incredible people who do amazing things to care for patients.

I remember one time being in the chapel of the Foothills Hospital and a pair of doctors came in with their scrubs still on. Together they stretched their prayer rugs out and quietly began openly praying to God. I was reminded, doctors are spiritual people too who look to God for guidance, wisdom, and direction. I of course knew this already in the back of my mind. But this experience revealed to me just how deeply medical practitioners are open and reliant on being instruments of Jesus's healing through their work.

We don't always see our doctors, nurses, and health care workers openly pursuing Jesus' guidance in healing. But that does not mean that God is not at work behind the curtain. Jesus's hands most certainly are leading the minds and hands of our medical community today.

The Human Body's Ability To Heal

When I first injured my spinal cord at the C4/C5 and T4 vertebras in 1994, along with several other internal injuries, I remember being told I would never be able to fully use my arms and hands completely again — along with my legs. I would most likely become dependent on a breathing aid/machine. And that I would be lucky to live for longer then 20+ years before infections and declining health would begin to take a heavy toll. Back then, this was what all the research pointed to with spinal cord injured patients. And yet... my body has not only endured, but has thrived!

The human body is still a mystery in many ways. And God's creative design in our embodied being, I truly believe, reveals a humanity that is still coming into the realization of creations healing potential and ability. We must be willing to not jump to conclusions, but allow time to define how our healing can evolve and manifest.

There is a story following Jesus' crucifixion where he appears before his followers; particularly a man named Thomas. In disbelief of what he was seeing, Jesus instructed Thomas to place his hands in the holes of his hands and feet. "Thomas," Jesus said, "place your hands upon the wound in my side." To me, this story is remarkable as even in resurrected form, Jesus embodied the healing process... in incomplete form! Resurrection healing takes time!

As we look for the body we have been created in to heal from it’s wounds, and for Jesus to work in its restoration, the greatest tool we must allow him to work through is time itself. Patience is the greatest gift patients can have in allowing Jesus to heal in and through our bodies.

Grace In Suffering

Perhaps the hardest moments in my life are the times when it seems "healing" is beyond possible. More often then not, these are the times when my body spasms without ceasing, perspires to the point where my shirt is drenched, and dysreflexia drives my heart rate up and fills me with anxiety. It usually points towards issues with my bladder. But the leading cause can leave me suffering for an uncontrollable time period to which these spells will come and go, no doubt, for the rest of my life.

Like so many others who live with chronic suffering, I find myself asking in the midst of these moments, "Where are you God?" Truth be told, there are even moments where my emotions get the best of me and I out right loose my temper with him while shouting and waving my fists in the air.

And yet... the moments pass. God is still there and the only thing he seems to want me to know is that he still loves me. He understands the anguish to which I have. Like Jesus (his other son ;) ), God's grace endures my crying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”)

Several years ago I read Barbra Brown Taylor's book 'An Altar In The World'. She shared openly about the complexities of pain and its relentless presence in life:

Plato once said that pain restores order to the soul. Rumi said that it lops off the branches of indifference. “The throbbing vein / will take you further / than any thinking.” Whatever else it does, pain offers an experience of being human that is as elemental as birth, orgasm, love, and death. Because it is so real, pain is an available antidote to unreality—not the medicine you would have chosen, perhaps, but an effective one all the same. The next time you are in real pain, see how you feel about television shows, new appliances, a clean house, or your resumé. Chances are that none of these will do anything for you. All that will do anything for you is some cool water, held out by someone who has stopped everything else in order to look after you. An extra blanket might also help, a dry pillow, the simple knowledge that there is someone in the house who might hear you if you cried...

There will always be people who run from every kind of pain and suffering, just as there will always be religions that promise to put them to sleep. For those willing to stay awake, pain remains a reliable altar in the world, a place to discover that a life can be as full of meaning as it is of hurt. The two have never canceled each other out and I doubt they ever will, at least not until each of us—or all of us together—find the way through.

― Taylor, Barbara Brown. An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (p. 172). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

I don't think we can ever really truly answer all our questions about why there is pain and suffering in our world today. Or perhaps, why God seems unable to stop it. But, it seems God's grace always reveals an altar to which we share with Jesus suffering on the cross and anguishing with us over the pain in our life together.

Victorious Dying

This is probably one of the most perplexing struggles we find in life; how can we make meaning of death? Victory seems strangely alien to be paired with the finality of death. But death is not really an ending so much as it is a veiling of what lies beyond it. To use the words of another pastor in my church community, Kyle Trigg spoke to truth saying, “While sickness on earth can lead to death; it does not have to end in death.” Life goes beyond finite existence and Jesus' resurrection reveals hope for a victory he can raise us up in.

This revelation of healing through the veil of death is of course rooted in a willingness to let faith guide our principles and values in life. I can't simply tell you that my death will be victorious in any sense of knowing how my resurrection will appear. But, I can allow my faith in Jesus to shape the way I live here and now ― my values, actions, principles, endeavours to bring change to my community, bring healing to the relationships I cherish, and the witness this life practice shares with the world. It is in these things that I hope to see myself succeed in dying... victoriously.

A Final Thought

I am sure that this has been a lot to work through as we journeyed together through these 5 Ways Jesus heals. Perhaps, you might also be asking the same question I have been reflecting on while reading these over once again; is healing restricted to just these 5 at any given one moment?

In truth, no. Our experience of healing in life comes not just at any one given experience, or even in one particular way. The healing of Jesus comes through the piecing together of all these experiences over the course of our lives. We also share in the healing communally as we take part in the body and blood of a living Eucharist. As my friend Alan Hirsch articulates it:

“Just as the individual pieces of a puzzle only makes sense by being set within the completed puzzle, so “everything” finds its proper place in him, and all the fragmented and dislocated pieces of our world are put back together in him. The more we let the life and events of Christ’s life inform and imprint us, the more we will be able to connect our own daily stories with the greater story of God’s presence in our lives.”

— Alan Hirsch With Rob Kelly in ‘Metanoia: How God Radically Transforms People, Churches, and Organizations From The Inside Out'

As a person who lives with disabilities in a disabled world, I look for healing not within the confines of my own understanding, timing, expectations, or misguided projections of a cure. But rather I remain waiting for the revelation of healing brought to the whole of creation by the extraordinary return of a man that lives eternally by God's side. Amen!