Isaiah 58: 9b-14;
Luke 13:10-17
Saint Andrews Scotts
Memorial Church
Jerusalem
August 21, 2016
All who reverence and honor the Beloved,
are nourished and held by Love.
For you, O Healer, invite us to
wholeness, to be
co-creators along Love’s Way
Psalm 102 translated
by Nan Merrill
I have a confession.
I am the Bent Woman. Literally. In 1999 I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and
spent the year bent over in pain. When I wasn’t confined to my bed
contemplating what had happened or measuring my energy in teaspoons, I was
railing against God for the betrayal of my own body.
In desperation
one day I went to a psychic who told me two things. The first was that she saw
me as some kind of minister or healer. I laughed. I was in exquisite pain. How
could this be? Also I was not a religious person. I had issues with organized
religion and liked to sit in the back so I could escape if I needed to. A
minister? Really?
Now the second
thing seemed more helpful, practical. She suggested I have energy work done.
She suggested I go and see a friend of hers who was a Reiki Master.
I left thinking I
wasted my money but that I would follow up on the suggestion to see the energy
healer. This seemed useful. I went and immediately found relief from the pain
and a warm sense of calm and tranquility. I could move again and I could think
of other things other than being a sick person.
I went back a few
times and then discovered I could take a class and learn how to heal myself and
others. So for about a year I attended the weekly healing circle. I came in the
door bent over hardly able to look people in the eye and left walking tall and
pain free. I eventually became Mary’s apprentice and within a year a Reiki
Master myself. People in the church heard about my “hot hands” and asked if I
would sit with them and lay my hands on them.
Then I started to
be asked to work on people who were dying or in hospice care. The church
recognized I was being called by God to do healing work. I resisted. I was an
intellectual----a word person. How could I do something that used no words,
only touch and wasn’t I still unwell myself?
These questions
persisted right up to my visit to Andover Newton Theological School for a
weekend for perspective students. With
pennies in my pocket I traveled from North Carolina to Massachusetts to check
out first Harvard and then Andover Newton. One of the professors at Harvard
said, “You are smart enough to get in here but I don’t think you would be happy
here. You see we study people like you. We are interested in knowing about the
healing process that you are doing.”
Yes, I was doing
it and I was well most of the time too. So when I went to visit Andover Newton
I wrestled with God about whether this indeed was where I should be; was I
really called to be a minister after all like the psychic said? Then two things happened. First I found they
had a Reiki ministry complete with a massage table in a quiet tranquil room in
the Center for Faith, Health and Spirituality. I saw the table and lay down on
it like I had done many times before and said to the One who had pushed me there,
“Ok. You win. Take me. But you are going to have to do some things to make this
happen beginning with money; I don’t have en0ugh to attend four years of
school. If you want me to be your instrument of healing, you are going to have
to make this happen.
I was pretty
convinced that my wager, my deal, was not going to work even though I well
aware that God was capable of great things like saving the Israelites at the
Red Sea. I still wasn’t convinced God needed me however until I went to the
chapel on the last day and we sang the hymn, Here I am Lord, broke into tears;
a combination of tears of joy and terror actually. Later that evening I found
out my Aunt had died and left my siblings and me a pile of money. God had come
through on his end of the bargain and now I had to come through on my mine, be
Christ’s healing hands.
So this is how I
was healed and saved and how I was called into ministry. It’s an ancient story.
She was healed and went out and told everyone.
The story of The
Bent Woman then is my Call story. I am not a fisherman. I didn’t drop my nets
but rather got healed and rose up and became a wounded healer. I learned a
thing or two however like she did looking at the ground all those years. I
learned how awful it is to be dependent on others for the most basic things. I
learned how to ask for help and most importantly I learned how to receive help
and healing touch. I learned how to live “on a slant” so I could appreciate
what it means to stand tall. I learned how to be compassionate first with my
own human frail self. I learned that we are all wounded and that when you give
energy to another that same energy will heal you---to give is to receive. I learned
how to be a wounded healer.
At first I
understood the call to be about physical healing so I set out to be a hospital
chaplain, in particular a hospice chaplain.
So I went to
Andover to follow my call to become a chaplain however I started school on
September 11th. God tricked me. My call wasn’t just to heal broken
bodies but a broken world. I was called like you are to Tikum Olam, the repair
and mending of the world.
At the end of my
Masters in Divinity study at a meeting with my advisor and other professors I
was asked about my ministry plans. I explained I felt pulled in two
directions---the pastoral and the prophetic. The my wise advisor quoted this
passage from Isaiah 58 to me and said, “You are being called to walk in the gap
between the two, to bring them back together. You are being called to be a
repairer of the breach.”
So as you can see
I do not consider it a coincidence that these two lectionary passages have come
up today for me to preach on. They speak
directly to my life story and I suspect maybe yours. The repair and mending of
the world, beginning with ourselves, is everyone’s calling. How it plays out in
your life is unique.
Towards helping
you think deeper about how this might be, let me offer you some questions for reflection
beginning with our Gospel story. I invite you to reflect on your own bent life.
What are the
things that are bending you over? Is it grief or loss? Worry or anxiety? Doubt
or fear? Loneliness or over stretched?
The Bent woman
does not ask for healing but she does step forward. I invite you to step
forward today and present to God all those things that are making you live your
life on a slant; all those things that are keeping you from meeting people eye
to eye or rising to your full dignity.
When were you so
bent over that God had to reach out to you, lay hands on you for healing? Where
were you? Who were you with? How did you celebrate the event? What promises or
commitments did you make?
Sometimes we stay
in our ruts, our routines, with our known pains and struggles because to move
forward might bring risks or even conflicts. Jesus had to go against the
Sabbath laws to heal. What laws or constrictions are holding you down or back?
“God’s creation
healed” is what theologian Hans Kung calls God’s kin-dom. And if this is be a reality here on earth as
it is in heaven then God needs us to be co-creators. And one of the tasks of
co-creation is to be repairers of the breach. We are all called to rebuild,
mend, restore, and repair not just our cities but our moral infrastructures or
values too. With this understanding, I invite you then to reflect on these
questions:
What are the
breaches in your life that need repair? In the Message the translation reads, “You’ll
use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from
out of your past.” What is in your rubble pile that you can use to repair the
breaches in your personal life or community? Like the wounded healer what past
hurts or pains can become tools of restoration?
What
infrastructures or morals are you working on? Where is your spiritual support
coming from?
When we are no
longer bent over by the pain of our lives, we will rise. But do not forget the
lessons learned from looking at that small piece of ground---the kindness of others
who bent down to meet you and greet you eye to eye. Do not forget the wisdom in
your wounds. Remember that He rose with wounds and all.
When we have
returned from exile, forced or self imposed, we are commanded to repair and
mend the world, God’s world, to participate in the reconstruction process. Do
not forget that you have the materials in the rubble of your own past. Remember
that you are not the Master builder but one of the workers. Do not expect to
finish or complete the work but find joy in the process and companionship along
the way.
And finally
remember that God saves and heals us daily, sometimes hourly because God loves
us. God wants us whole, to stand tall and live lives in harmony with all of
creation.
This is the call,
dear ones, let us go forth with humility and strength knowing this is our
collective task to repair and mend the world. Amen.
