ARE YOU IN NEED of HEALING?
PSALM 23
JAMES 5: 13-16
August 18, 2019
FAITH AND ACTIONS WEEK 9
HE RESTORETH MY SOUL …
As we examine recent history it is so evident; it’s so clear; that there has never been a time in the place where we live … when the human condition so needed to be restored to some sense of possibility; some sense of hope; some sense of decency that will transform the very times we are living in … transform our world and our nation so that neighborhoods again are places where people talk with and care for each other … to a place where people talk about where they worshipped on the weekend … to a place where a nation’s residents can accept that other points of view carry as much validity as their own point of view and that their political leanings and those of their leaders allow for compromise and progress rather than just hate. I only have to read my own social media to understand that I and most of my friends are in desperate need of healing this morning … my question for each of us amidst the struggles and these tempest-tossed times … are you in need of healing?
IF ANY OF YOU ARE SUFFERING …
This week, I looked into his eyes … Ken’s eyes have always been a set of larger than average eyes; if you saw him even up on stage you couldn’t miss the eyes … paired perfectly with his smile … a voice that gathered attention. Through the years the two of us have looked into each other’s face hundreds of times. We have laughed together; worked together; and taught together. I would like to believe that my eyes sparkled in the same way that Ken’s eyes sparkled on those occasions when we were the speakers at the State Police auditorium in Trenton … in college conference rooms … at the Atlantic City Convention Center … and many other places where it was the KEN and DAVE Show … Ken representing the state and I the federal government. Providing to people what they needed and doing our best to keep folks awake and yes … even entertained.
But, on Wednesday … the day after Ken and Maureen celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary … Ken and I were literally inches apart and staring into each other’s eyes; strangely speechless … two men whose vocational journey through the years depended on words … we looked into each other’s eyes … silently … each knowing that within the next few weeks or is it days … that Ken will be dead.
YEA, THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH … I WILL FEAR NO EVIL.
In that very moment I feared evil, I despised sickness, I realized that another portion of the man I am was going to be gone all too soon or perhaps he was gone already. And, that my friend of decades would be dead and no longer accessible for visits nor calls. My God … I certainly was face t0 face with fear … I again knew abject sadness … I was angry with myself that I had avoided visiting with Ken for all too many months because his MS had made Ken less of the man he had once been … bitter and frustrated and angry and difficult to talk with … so we avoided each other … or I avoided the drive to Levittown. I was wrong and filled with easy excuses at the time but he is dying now. Amazingly, through his faith and his wife Maureen’s faith Ken frozen in his wheelchair has become more of a man than I … IF ANY OF YOU ARE SUFFERING … YOU SHOULD PRAY and the two of them together … even on their 25th wedding anniversary this past Tuesday … they pray together.
SURELY GOODNESS and MERCY SHALL FOLLOW ME ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE … HE RESTORETH MY SOUL.
Church, are you in need of healing? Have the realities of life; the temptations and the storms of the human condition … given you the perfect excuse to withdraw far away from the green pastures … the still waters … that God is attempting to have you go to so that you can find your peace and be healed? Is your cup running over or have you spilled it out all over yourself intentionally or accidentally and become a mess like all of those who have never connected with God .. don’t know Jesus’ saving power and to whom God’s Holy Spirit is more ghostlike than directional?
Our journey through the letter that James wrote, which is often referred to as a book of the Bible. FAITH and ACTIONS … I planned these specific weeks back in May but I have again been amazed how the timing of each lesson fits the world I have been living through. God’s Word is a living document; words written in the past with relevance for our present and our future. The 23rd Psalm is not a Psalm about dying, which is how we use it and think of it, but rather a Psalm about living as the healed people of God. And, James in this fifth chapter is again holding up our faith right before our eyes and challenging us into actions.
I won’t ask for a show of hands as to how many of you think that the Biblical directives we find in this book <<HOLD UP BIBLE>> or that are on the Bible app that should be on every phone of every church attender and on the phones of all of their children and grandchildren … are the guidelines for your lives.
This is just an aside but if you have minor children or grandchildren who have SMART PHONES … before you award them with this gift, which I feel should be unnecessary for children and is in fact a tool in the separation of people from any sense of real community … before you allow them to have a SMARTPHONE … you, we … need to make sure that their phone has a BIBLE APP front and center; the apps are free. Look at their phones … make sure the Bible is on it because they can carry their Bible each day.
Anyhow, I won’t be asking if you think that you should be living out the directions for life that God provides to us through the Bible … that Jesus taught … by the way, HOW MANY OF YOU KNOW who JESUS IS? HE IS RISEN … <<HE IS RISEN INDEED>>
James was writing to people of faith like us … people who know who Jesus is. People who may actually have seen Jesus alive out of the tomb or who had met people who saw Jesus alive. He carefully inserts a challenge or more of a directive, IF ANY OF YOU ARE HAPPY … YOU SHOULD SING.
I bring this up because it seems that unless we are in a Karaoke bar we have reached a point in time where we just don’t want to sing out loud with enthusiasm because of our faith or we can’t even smile with God; we have even taken music out of our mandated school curriculum in most districts … in church of all places we should be happy … in church of all places we should want to sing out loud with energy … Music is healing in itself and I am not surprised by the fact that James placed the concept of singing and being happy right in between the questions of are you suffering and are you sick.
Every morning … Ken and Maureen pray together and then Maureen told me that they listen to Christian music together because praying and listening to music of faith she says gives them peace. HE LEADETH ME BESIDE THE STILL WATERS …
IF YOU HAVE SINNED … YOU WILL BE FORGIVEN … for this REASON CONFESS your SINS TO EACH OTHER SO THAT YOU MAY BE HEALED.
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD and FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US.
Healing is not a get up out of bed and dance truth. Ken Hartman, my friend, is now paralyzed from the neck down … he is not going to ever dance nor golf again … he is not going to walk again … he is not going to hug me again … but when I walked into their bedroom on Wednesday I said I AM SO SORRY and Ken said I AM SORRY TOO and there was healing. He said, ‘we’re ok’ but then we stared at each other in silence.
We shouldn’t be surprised that the New Testament focuses in on the act of forgiving and forgiveness as having healing powers because it is our souls that need to be healed; our bodies merely age until we reach eternal life’s forever glory. If we aren’t ready to forgive; if we aren’t willing to sing the songs of faith when we are happy; if we aren’t ready to pray; if we reject God’s Word … then how in the world can our souls be healed?
CHURCH …. Are you in need of healing this morning?
CHURCH … have you heard the call of God to come home? Do you know Jesus? Are you living a life that is righteous and do you stand up for justice sharing God’s love for all because THE PRAYER of the RIGHTEOUS PERSON is POWERFUL in what it can achieve!
Who guides you? THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD; I SHALL NOT WANT.
It’s an active choice on our part to decide on that one … God and Jesus are ready to be our shepherd … in fact, they are trying to get all the lost sheep of their flock to come home because all of humanity was created in the image of the Holy. We are the ones who have to run back into their arms … then we won’t be in need; then we will be healed; then we will be ready to sing because we are happy.
If you find excuses to avoid God … the excuses are there just like the excuses I found to avoid Ken … if your time away from God is more valuable than giving up a little time for the Holy … if you can’t forgive certain people ever … if you dislike certain types of people and therefore reject justice for all and aren’t about to love those who are different than you … well then you have missed God’s call; Jesus message and it’s clear that you don’t want the Holy Spirit guiding you much less God healing you.
But, if today you are ready to embrace the Creator … the table is set for our lives … the green pastures and still waters await our presence … we have nothing to fear … God is willing to comfort us all of our days. Healing will be real for our souls … SURELY GOODNESS and MERCY SHALL FOLLOW ME ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE and I WILL DWELL in the HOUSE of the LORD FOREVER.
So, I asked Ken how his anniversary was … “IT was good … really good.” And, all too soon Ken will be gone … the 25th their last but a day of faith and trust in God for my two friends.
AMEN