Last Sunday evening we held a service of prayers for healing, and in it I said that, in answer to prayer, Christ comes to meet with us at our point of need. It may be our ‘felt’ point of need – a physical pain, a known crisis, or a deep sorrow, for example; but it may also be a point of need of which we are largely unaware – a deep seated anger or bitterness, unresolved conflicts or memories from the past, or perhaps a sense of inadequacy or failure, for example. We all have such points of need somewhere, and we ended the service by acknowledging that we are all in need of Christ’s healing touch.
In this Gospel reading from Mark Chapter 1, we see Jesus engaged in this wonderful healing ministry. When people saw Jesus at work, many realised that they were ‘sick’ in one way or another, and that the touch and healing words of Jesus were powerful and miraculous. And so they pressed round him, begging that He would turn his attention to their particular ‘sickness’. Some were physically ill, others no doubt were facing many different kinds of sickness, whether of the body or the mind. Others were oppressed by evil spirits, or other types of spiritual need. And Jesus healed them. And, as we sang in our final hymn on Sunday night, his touch has still its ancient power today. Jesus is with us this morning, as we meet together in his name, and is willing to draw near to each one of us, in answer to our prayers, and touch our lives in powerful ways.
Now we are Christ’s disciples, and we are commissioned to go out, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and carry this ministry out into the world. And this is what we find Paul doing in his life of Christian mission, and writing about in his letters.
The text of this passage from 1 Corinthians Chapter 9 is actually quite complex – even to the professional theologian! – but the overall sense of what he is saying is actually fairly clear. I can lift this passage and paraphrase it for us today like this: “We are commissioned by Christ to bring the good news of his Gospel to everyone. Indeed we are under God’s judgment if we fail to do so. But to succeed in this, we need to be flexible and adaptable in our approach, or we will not communicate our message clearly – we will not be understood.”
To illustrate, take the example of the missionary who goes out to a country which has a totally different language (which may well not even contain words for many things he wants to say), a very different culture, a very different perspective, a very different way of thinking about fundamental things such as God. Clearly, if he simply preaches the Gospel to them as he would in England, either he will not be understood at all – or possibly even worse, he will be fundamentally misunderstood.
If we translate this into the secular culture of modern Britain, we can perhaps glimpse just how wide the gulf of understanding can be. The Church has a religious culture, a religious language, a religious tradition, but most of it means very little to people who live in a secular world, and use a different language.
How do we tackle this? In the first place, we need to be aware of it, and understand that – for so many people – coming into Church is much more than coming through a big (rather forbidding) wooden door without knowing what’s on the other side. It’s walking from one culture, language and tradition into another, largely foreign world, in which people behave in strange, stilted ways, sing hymns they have never heard, go through unfamiliar rituals, and speak a language phrased in a strange language. They can come away little the wiser. We need to bear this in mind when we speak of ‘renewing’ our Church for the 21st century.
But for this morning, I want to touch on what it means to carry that healing touch of Jesus out into the secular world. How we can translate Paul’s ambition of ‘becoming all things to all men in order that we might save some’ into practice? Well, just as Jesus meets us at our point of need, so we must try to meet other people at their point of need, and – through that – take the first steps in bringing them into touch with Jesus, who can transform their lives.
Now it may sound altogether beyond us, when we taught about taking the healing power of Jesus into a secular world. But actually it is neither rocket science nor deep theology. It is simply practical. If we encounter someone who is lonely, how do we meet them at their point of need? We befriend them. And we do so both as human to human, and also we do it in the name of Jesus. When someone is sick, we both pray for them (and, if appropriate, with them), and we minister to them practically – which might mean anything from house-cleaning to shopping to any number of other chores. The list of people’s needs extends almost endlessly. That poses a problem, as it did for Jesus, who quickly and repeatedly found himself overwhelmed by the number of people in need, and the huge weight of their problems.
He had to find times and places (Mark 1: 35) to be alone, and to pray. To attempt to take on the burdens of everyone we meet is a recipe for quickly running oneself into the ground, and becoming part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Jesus only ministered to people under the direction of his Heavenly Father. We need to pray for guidance as to whom we give our time, and our energy. We also need to pray for discernment as to what their real need is, which is not always the same as appears on the surface.
But the principle is, I hope, fairly clear. Jesus meets us, in answer to prayer, at our point of need. We, in turn, are commissioned to go out and – in his name - minister to others at their point of need. This is mainly practical, although it will also involve talking with them – not necessarily in religious language, but prayerfully, in the name of Jesus.
I find it both an exciting and a challenging thought, that we can minister healing in the name of Jesus, and touch people’s lives as He did in this Gospel passage. But mostly it won’t involve preaching to multitudes with dramatic results. It will be hard work, generally unseen. But if the Church is to reach out to the world today, this is probably where a great deal of it is going to start. And when ordinary people in that strange world of secularity, who think Christianity has nothing to offer them, begin to find that Christians care for them and offer them love and a listening ear, that gulf of understanding begins gently to close; ears begin gradually to open; and mutual understanding grows to the point where Jesus really can reveal himself, through us, to the inhabitants of that other world lying around us in Camberley and beyond.
Jesus’ touch has still its ancient power. And, mostly, that touch will be through our hands, and his voice will speak through our tongues, as we pray in the power of the Holy Spirit. We need to learn in practice what it means to become ‘all things to all men so that, by all possible means, some might be saved.’
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
As you consider the lives of people you know, or hear about, what would you list as the greatest needs of secular people today?
How might you bring the healing power of Jesus to bear on their lives? How would you prevent yourself becoming wrongly over-involved in their lives, or simply overwhelmed by the number of people and the greatness of the need? Would you consider a professional course on – for example - how to listen, and how to avoid pitfalls?
Do you really believe that Christ will work through you to bring people his transforming and healing power? (See Matthew 25: 40).
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