Sermon: "A Healing Path"

5th in the "False Pictures" series.
Delivered April 1, 2007 by Rev. George Antonakos.
Other sermons in this series / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

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Today we come to the end of our series on False Pictures from James. In a nutshell, we have learned that we are dealing with a single-minded God in a double-minded world. God is single-minded. God is always for us. God is never for us one day and against us the next. He is always the same. He is always willing to impart wisdom; always willing to draw near when we draw nearer to God; always willing to respond to the humble heart. But we live in a double-minded world and as Christians we can sometimes betray being single-minded toward God. We sometimes betray where our loyalties really lie and so we don't always follow God as often as we should in the way that we should and we have been talking about that over these past few weeks.

Last week I emphasized the falseness of a "me" philosophy in a world that's fading away. In the previous three weeks, Pastor John talked about different false pictures; about how sometimes we are part of the problem; about how we don't always listen to God's word; about how we don't always sharing lovingly in communication. So we are trying to point out the true picture of the way the church ought to be from James.

Well, today right up front, I want to let you know what the False Picture is in my opinion and that's this. We live in a world where we are kind of encouraged to many times go it on our own, to not let our guard down, don't trust people. Some of us are on different places along that spectrum from time to time when we are not being true to the Lord. Some of us can be paranoid that people are out to get us, but others of us can be fine when we are in relationships until somebody crosses us and then we are not so ready to stay in with the relationship. And then there is the life of Jesus in us can create a true picture that we can; again not that we would let people get away with murder with us, but that we can create a true picture of challenging people when our boundaries have been violated, but sticking with them as well. That's the way God does with us.

And the true picture today that I think the Church is called to live out is that at its best we are a supportive fellowship, a healing place for those who need Gods' touch. When we seek God together, we create a healing path for people through this life. To get this polarity in mind think about John Donne, the famous poet, attending a Simon and Garfunkel concert. John Donne is the one who said that no man is an island, no man stands alone. He said, "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." We are part of something much larger than ourselves. But Art and Paul sang; do you remember that famous song, Art and Paul sang, "I am a Rock. I am an island." So there is this polarity. What's the true picture? What's the false picture? I think we are something more or part of something greater than ourselves in community as a church.

In a way this message is really an extension of last week's focus on humility, which is good because again today is Palm Sunday. The world was looking for a political savior, looking for someone to come along and overthrow the Roman oppressors and they had no idea when they were shouting "Hosanna save us" how Jesus would really save. In the humble way he came in seated on a colt humbly reflecting a passage from Zechariah where here comes your king humble sitting on the foal of an ass and that's what Jesus did when he came in to Jerusalem. People didn't understand at the beginning of what we now call Holy week. And again, as he is our humble king and created a healing path as he went to the cross, we are called to follow him in humility to provide that path for others through him.

So let's look at one small section of James, Chapter 5:13-16. In the verses leading up to that James has taken one more crack at the wealthy oppressors, people who oppress those in more vulnerable positions and then he talks about to those who are in more vulnerable positions to be patient, to wait on the Lord as Job did and he comes to this point in Verse 13 where he reminds the church that prayer works among other things. So let's pray and ask God to enlighten our minds as we read it.

Lord, we know that when it comes to spiritual things, even when we read your scripture, unless your Spirit works along side we are blind and we will not understand what you are trying to say. Lord, help us to understand it and illumine us so that we might be part of a healing solution in this world and we ask it in Christ's name. Amen.

"Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray." See he ends the letter like he began. In the beginning of James he said, "If anybody lacks wisdom, let them pray." So he emphasis prayer. "Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise", which is a form of prayer. "Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord", intercessory prayer. "And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Not because he has sinned, if he had sinned, he will be forgiven." Sin and sickness don't always go together as people thought back in those days. "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."

This text seems to emphasize three ingredients that when mixed together provide wholeness to the human heart. I am not sure what order we should put them in, but here is the three and this is the order that I will put them in. I don't know that we should think of them as ranked. We should probably think of them as rotating, as a wheel, with each one of these things at different points around the wheel. But here is what I think. Prayer is listed first. Nine times I think in these verses he mentions something about prayer. Prayer is the humblest expression that we can demonstrate to show our dependence upon God. God is primary, so prayer.

Then community; he says that the Church has been called into being. There are leaders of a church. We were part of a community and so this community is a place in which God's spirits works. We don't just pray off in a corner individually. We pray together. So prayer and community, God unites us, and then vulnerability. Confess your sins. Like he is saying, "Do you have struggles, ask for help" He doesn't only say when you are sick, he says "Call for the elders and they will anoint with oil and pray." He then says, "Therefore, confess your sins to one another." It's not always about a major prayer situation. It can be, we are in a meeting and we speak poorly and we hurt somebody's feelings. We need to confess our sins right there. We need to keep our hearts open to each other and make sure that we are not harboring any ill will, so we confess our sins.

The Old Testament, it talked about people coming and confessing their sins when there was a religious festival. We see from John the Baptizer, people came confessing their sins and he baptized. In the Book of Acts there is a great revival and people were throwing all their magic sorcery books in to a great fire, $50,000 worth the scripture says and it says they came confessing their sins. So there is a sense in which spiritually we are called to be vulnerable and to be open with one another about how we fail.

You know Southwest Airlines has these commercials you know, "Do you want to get away?" Right? But that is the kind of thing that we are talking about, that there are times in life when we screw up and we need to confess and to deal with it, not just run away. Well a few weeks ago when we were in Thursday morning prayer, one of the elders was praying and we were just about ready, I don't know if we were done or beginning, I can't recall, but one of the elders was reminded of 20 years earlier in that same room where they really had a terrible burden in their heart and in their life and even though they were part of a small group they were reluctant to go and ask for prayer from people in the group, but they decided to go ahead and go and God came through and God brought a touch of healing and it was that mixture of prayer and community and vulnerability that was there in that situation and she remembered that two decades later. The memory returned.

So we need all three. If you think about one missing; think about one missing for just a moment. You can experience prayer and community in a small group, but not vulnerability. I think one reason that we don't get as far as we can get in small groups is that many times we stay at a safe distance from each other. We will have prayer. We will take prayer requests. We will have community. We will be together, but vulnerability doesn't always happen. We are afraid to let down our guard. Then, of course, you can have vulnerability and community without prayer necessarily. Most support groups; people are very vulnerable about their woundedness and they come together in a sense of community, but I don't know that there is a lot of prayer, because everybody's got to respect everybody else's higher power, right? And then there is prayer and vulnerability in a limited context. People can come to my office or John's office and can be very vulnerable and we can pray for them, but maybe there is not necessarily a community connection out there day in and day out, week in and week out.

So two out of three isn't bad, but you need all three I think in order to experience a healing path, an experience that God intends for each other. That is what Jesus and James had in mind; all three and they seem to promote each other. Prayer builds community. Community encourages vulnerability. Vulnerability encourages more prayer and that becomes a way and a means of healing. How different from the message of the world or of diluted Christianity, which says basically, I don't need you. I don't really need you. If things don't work out we are going to leave and go elsewhere. Leave God out of it. Human efforts can help us achieve our goals.

One of our members just sent Pastor John and I an email saying they saw advertised on the Internet an atheist's mom's playgroup. It's true. And then part of the advertisement was, "let's keep all this Christian stuff out of the mix." This was for atheist moms, right? Like that is the message of the world, that we don't need God. We can make it just fine without him, right?

In my travels I have been told by people from time to time when I am in an entrusted environment that sometimes I can come across as somewhat distant or aloof or too independent and that I can kind of play things close to the vest. Well over 20 years ago in seminary training, I went to a clinical pastoral education, I went through ten weeks working at a psychiatric hospital and part of that is working with peers and the reason you go through that is that you are trying to deal with maybe some hidden stuff, whatever will block you in terms of trying to minister to other people. So I am in this clinical pastoral education situation and I am sitting down with my supervisor and my supervisor is trying to tell me, "George you know, you need other people. You really could be more open to what other people are trying to provide for you. We need each other." And I remember vividly looking at her right in the eye and saying, "You know what, I really don't need you." Honestly, that is what I said. I said, "I really don't need you." But I was wrong and I was to find out just a few weeks later how wrong I was. But that is the attitude of a lot of people; I really don't need you. In a sense, what we need is God. But God has provided each other to help us through this life. I mean, where would we be if it weren't for the people that have gotten us thus far, right? We need each other.

Six months ago a few of us attended the Willow Creek small groups conference and one of the speakers that touched us the most was Cheryl Fleisher. It was her contention that small groups reach their potential and purpose most fully when we are open to receiving God's love from each other in undefended vulnerability. I love that phrase;

"receiving God's love through undefended vulnerability."

All of us can grow in becoming more aware she said of how much God's love can come through us to each other. And she made us all squirm when she said I want you to do an exercise and here is what she told us she was going to do. For about one minute she said I want you to turn to the person sitting next to you and look in to each other's eyes and think about communicating God's love to them. That's all you are to do. Well we started to shuffle in our chairs you know and I thought man alive, that's a tough one. And to make matters worse, Greg Riddler was my partner and I had to look into his eyes, no really it was reversed; to make matters worse for him he had to look in my eyes, and so we are gazing into each other's eyes and we are like laughing and stuff and we are like this is really uncomfortable, but the point of the whole exercise was to do this so that you could just communicate to each other that God loves you through each other. It was very awkward.

But I thought let's try it here today, to just --- oh wait, we don't have enough time to do that and I know some of you are going 'whoa that was close.' But just try that. I am not talking about your spouse. I am just talking about eyeballing each other; and any way that is the exercise that she did in that situation, to try to get across to us that we are vessels of God's love to each other and we can be that for each other. And she went on to share that what usually blocks us in that kind of situation is that we have certain fears deep down. We have a sense of shame and we are afraid that if we were really known, that we would be rejected and so we play things tight to the vest and we keep our guard up. But the truth is that incredible things happen when we do let down our guard with each other. I think that's what behind James' teaching; about confessing our sins to one another, that we may be healed. I don't think he was just talking about physical infirmity. I think he was talking about wholeness. The deepest relationships occur; we love most deeply when we get to a place of vulnerability and openness and not hiding in closeness. When we have access to each other's heart at appropriate levels, trust increases and community deepens.

Well, I told you about the next couple of weeks after the encounter with the supervisor at the clinical pastoral experience. We met in small groups two times a week for those ten weeks and one particular week, this particular week about halfway through the thing, trust had been building up and the leader was talking about how you know we do grapple with shame and all of that and he asked us to think about sharing with each other a sense of shame that we have experienced or a time of shame and so I got in touch with the time when I was like in the sixth grade, I don't know if I have shared this with you before, but I was in the sixth grade and I was clueless about a math problem. The teacher was having all the students go up to the board; have you been there? All the students go up to the board and solve the math problem; when I get up there and like this time in my life my parents are divorcing and I am like out of it. I don't know anything. I go up to this blackboard and like okay there is the problem and I freeze. I didn't know what to do. So the teacher starts harassing me a little bit for not knowing it and then everybody starts to chuckle in the class; you know 25 kids in the class and you are up there in the front and you are feeling like you just want to drop through a; you wished there was a trap door and you could just drop through it and that is what shame is. Shame is wanting to escape the disapproving gaze of another. And to make matters worse, the door of the classroom was open and my brother who is in third grade line or fourth grade line, their class stops and he stops and he is looking right at me in front of the class and like I am seeing my brother and he is seeing me in this situation. Now I am feeling even more shame that my little brother would see me in this situation.

Well, I am sharing all of this with the group and I am starting to lose it because it connected for me that through all of the stuff that I went through in family life that I was getting in touch with having been abandoned a little bit; getting in touch with feeling alone or unprotected. So I am telling all of this and here is how you know you are getting healed; when you can tell your stuff and it doesn't bother you anymore, that's how you know that you are getting healed. Okay? But in that moment when I was telling it 20 years ago, I am just losing it, right? And so the leader says, "Well how about if we re-parent you?" I said, "What? Re-parent me, what does that mean?" We just want to come up around you, put our arm on your shoulder, you know just tell you that you are loved and accepted, you know you're okay and I am already in the basket anyway; I am just going under and I said, "Well what the heck, let's go ahead and go for the whole nine yards." And so they all come around and they do this and they tell me how I am okay and I am accepted and they are patting me on the head and all this stuff and I am just a basket case. I am so like melting. I feel dis-integrated and you can only handle that for so long and I just said, "You guys, I am really sorry, but I just got to leave. I have to just collect myself." I felt like in parts.

So, something happened. I reflected on it later; that something significant happened in that moment to heal my shame. It was not just a catharsis. It was not just an opportunity to vent. Because of the combination of vulnerability, prayer and community, something psychologists call transmutation took place. Transmutation means that something has changed in form or substance or nature. Some of you may be thinking when I say that word about the Catholic view of what happens in communion, transubstantiation, that the belief is that the elements actually become the body and blood of our Lord. Presbyterians don't go that far, but we do believe that we celebrate a God who is present. These are not just symbols and that when we partake in faith these elements there is a mysterious union; a transmutation if you will in which God's grace supports and builds us up in ways that are unique. But with transmutation one emotional state is changed to another through interaction and connection.

Now I don't understand it. It's a mystery for quantum physicists and psychologists to grapple with, but the combination of these three things, vulnerability, community and prayer in the name of the Lord; see that's what the text says, that they will pray with him in the name of the Lord. This isn't just about our wonderfulness together. This is about calling on Christ in the midst of all three of these things. When that happens it can affect our reality. It can change us in some way, besides the psychological; something happens that God works through the community in that way. And our character states whether they be intellectual, emotional, spiritual can be changed in some way as we connect with each other in honest and open and real ways. And we will all hit moments when someone needs transmutation help from us or when we need it from somebody else.

Now the key is keeping the right balance of ability and vulnerability together, because what we really need to understand is that God wants us to be there for each other, to trust each other when we have a need, but if no one is vulnerable, if we are so alien that nobody can relate to us, if there is no cracks in the armor then people won't be able to approach us and express that need. They won't want to depend on us. But at the same time, we have to heal from all this stuff and have a certain strength and ability because we can't just sit around with open, gaping wounds before one another. We have to know that someone is strong enough there to be able to hear what we have to say and can receive it. See, we don't get our insurance from the Wimp Insurance Company, do you know what I mean? We don't go to something that seems like its not together. We get it from a place called The Rock. We want a place that is strong and it's from people that give this insurance at tall buildings, right? We are not going to trust ourselves, we are not going to trust ourselves to something that doesn't look like it's too together, right?

So that ability and vulnerability being in the right mix is what starts to create a healing path. It's why we love Jesus so much. He was the strongest ever, but he came down to us in our weakness. He condescended to us and he suffered all things as we and he is able to emphasize with every need, every thought, every situation, every single one and the Bible says that because he is able to be a high priest who can empathize with all of that, that we are to draw near to God's throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. By faith, when we trust him, either for the first time or we trust him again in our lives or we humble ourselves in community, and we receive his power through others, then our life gets transmuted more in to his image. Isn't that a beautiful thought?

At Central we want to be here for you. We know that we do not have it all together. We understand that, but we believe that because of Christ strengthening us, giving us enough ability to be able to be there for each other and to be God's servants and partners and inviting transformation. I want to just give you a heads up on what we are going to do. We are going to move to communion in a minute, but at the end of the communion time I am going to invite those who desire to act, to come forward for prayer. We are going to have prayer ministers up here and they are going to be praying for you. They are not any better than you. They are just people who have been where you are at different places; where they have come and they have needed prayer from somebody else. They needed help. They were vulnerable. And so, they are just going to be the hands of Jesus and the love of Jesus to anybody who needs that extra help at this time in your life. It could be an emotional need. It could be a physical need. It could be a relational need. It could be a spiritual need. You may come forward and say look, "I just need strength to follow God where he is calling me to follow." Whatever the need is it doesn't matter. The point is; we are trying to create space in which the spirit of God can work as you humble yourself and come forward in that time of prayer. Consider the remaining time of our service as a transmutation opportunity, okay? Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for loving us, for this word from James, for your help. Help us to now as we move to your table not only be blessed and encouraged by what was preached, as it suits each need, but now as we come to the table to see the word preached visibly. We ask it now in your name. Amen.

© 2007, Rev. George Antonakos
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org