Notes to guide as I preside at the “Holy Eucharist and Healing Service for St. Luke’s Day” at the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont (a.k.a. Bloy House), which I’m doing by invitation on the morning of Saturday, September 30, 2017.
HEALING / MEANING MAKING THROUGH STORIES (telling and listening)
- What stories are being told – that we’re telling ourselves; that we’re telling about other people and situations; that we’re listening to? They matter and they have the power to promote dis-ease or to heal (make whole).
- Both/and - add years to our life; add life to our years (complementary, but different)
[Arrange chairs in a circle with altar at one end and an opening at the other for people to enter and sit. Offer intro remarks. Have readers stay within the circle to read. Offer some reflection questions before or after each reading. Sit within circle with everyone to facilitate story-telling and listening in preparation for hands-on healing prayers]
Dearly beloved of God… dear theophilus… I once was sitting right here as a Bloy House student on Saturday mornings at 11am. Not to presume what you’re experiencing right now in this moment, but I am having some flashbacks - not all of them pleasant - of having slogged my way out here to Claremont after an exhausting week or work (and homework) in a couple of hours of traffic, sometimes barely in time for the Friday evening class. Forcing myself to stay awake in class sometimes… and yet somehow still staying awake too late with my classmates talking into the wee hours. Then forcing myself to get up early Saturday morning to perhaps finish some part of an assignment before the first class. By ‘chapel’ time on Saturday, I wasn’t always fully present to the ‘now’... already imagining what was past lunch and the afternoon class and into all that I had to get done when I got back home before getting back up early yet again on Sunday for parish stuff. Frankly, I kinda endured chapel time most of the time. I don’t remember a single sermon delivered (sorry to anyone, classmates or otherwise, who might hear me admit that) but I do remember feeling the creep of chronological time right about now on Saturday. I yearned to be well. I coulda used some healing prayers. Resonate with anyone?
When accepting the invitation to be here this morning, I did so with ambivalence -- honored by the invitation and also nervous about, if not resistant to, ‘preaching’ to my colleagues. Nervous because the frame for today’s service ‘Healing Services - St. Luke’s Day’ is so close to the heart of our ministry as I’ve come to know it that I fear there’s simply not enough time to really even skim the subject in this forum. Resistant because the image of me standing at the lectern to offer you yet another lecture, no matter how brilliantly composed or skillfully delivered seems like avoidance. I now feel so deeply that being here together like this on Saturday mornings is a fleeting, unique, holy workshop. Outside the academic classes and chronological anxiety; inside a sacred space in opportune kairos time; we’re among colleagues who are going through similar emotional and spiritual crucibles of formation and discernment. It’s a rare opportunity for us to risk being even more authentically vulnerable as we try something new / as we exploring relationship with God and each other through experimenting with liturgy rather than defaulting to the routine or expected. Let’s try our hand at slightly differently using the elements we’ve inherited in our tradition and been gifted by God so that we get experience with more options in our toolkit for when we are the designated liturgical authority in whatever context. In God’s name, let’s ‘afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.’
HEALING: Given that this time together has been framed as a ‘healing service’, I also want to bring to the surface sometimes unspoken tension in us between belief/faith in God transcendent and God imminent. As a mentor of mine (The Rev. Cn. Hartshorn Murphy) used to say, “The transcendent God is the God beyond the heavens whom we implore to transcend space (to "come down") and to act to make us whole. The imminent God is God within. It is the Spirit received in Baptism which is Emmanuel ("God with us".) It is the prayer to release those things in me which hinders the free flow of the Spirit to heal and make well. (To be "made manifest.")”. This morning, in re-membering a few sacred stories from the past about the transcendent God manifest intimately as imminent, we’re then going to share a small, but significant piece our current story in a single sentence our own as wounded would-be healers. As we move through this experience together, consider where you are most comfortable connecting with the healing power of the God’s grace through the Spirit. Wonder in what ways you are most comfortable engaging with this potent part of who you are, beloved and anointed by God, to use storytelling and/or story listening to affect change and healing, in whatever form is needed in yourself and among ‘the people.’ Which narrative tools are you most comfortable holding and using toward the art of healing in God’s name?
[invite a deep breath] Whatever stresses you’ve carried with you into this space this morning… Whatever might be strained or broken in your life.... Whatever your deepest longing to hear or feel from God…. may we enter this space together to feel anew God with us - in our struggles, in our doubts, in our deepest pains and silent sufferings. God loves you. God yearns for you to know how beloved you are. God yearns for us to be made well together.
[use guiding questions ‘B’efore and ‘A’fter each lectionary reading and provide some silence for absorption]
Ecclesiasticus 38: 1-4, 6-10, 12-14
- B: What has been your relationships to traditional physicians/doctors?
- A: What needs to be healed?
2 Timothy 4: 5-13
- B: When have you been imprisoned, abandoned, or near death?
- A: Who do hope to be with you in your time of mortal need? What do you need them to understand about you?
Some context before hearing from the Holy Gospel according to Luke: Luke is credited with about a quarter of what we have today as the New Testament (combining the Gospel and Acts; more words combined than all the writings attributed to Paul)... yet, we actually don’t know that much about Luke. It is apparent that this physician writer believed in the art and efficacy of storytelling in healing - particularly in the power of uniquely evocative narratives about healthy relationships, as God through Christ would have us engage in them (with God and with each other). E.g,. the Pharisee and Tax Collector, Mary and Martha, the rich man and Lazarus, the Prodigal Son, and Good Samaritan… and of course Acts - tales of our ancestors in the faith trying to become the healthy body God through Christ revealed. Even as he was a doctor whose medical skills the wisdom of Ecclesiasticus would have us honor, Luke understood that as a Proverb (18:14) reminds us, “The human spirit will endure any sickness-infirmity; but a wounded spirit - who can bear?” Or, as I once read, our soul can only be loved and ‘touched’ back to life. And, in today’s Gospel selection, Luke invites us to hear God’s primary intentions for healing through the story he puts toward the beginning of his telling of the ‘good news’ - that of Jesus staking claim as Christ through using a piece of Isaiah’s storytelling about what God intends to be healed in our human family.
Luke 4:14-21
- B: When you first experienced yourself as anointed or called, can you remember where you were - what was going on around you - what were you hearing or feeling through the Spirit?
- A: Do you believe the Spirit is upon you? If not, why not? If so, toward what sort of healing are you being most called?
AN EXPERIENCE IN PLACE OF THE ‘SERMON’
My ministry as a chaplain (with younger adults on college campuses, older adults in a retirement community, and now in a hospital) has been saturated with storytelling and story listening… which I’ve come to believe is a primary healing art that we’re empowered with as beings created in the image of a creative God. Even before words come out of our mouths, we’re telling our stories through: how we carry ourselves; what we do in chronological time; all means of non-verbal signals; and in the tone and rate of our voice as well as when we choose to remain silent. When we ‘listen’ with our hearts to all these forms of communication, we’re invited into each other’s most human narratives and can sense what, with God’s help and our compassionate presence, can be re-connected where relationships have broken apart; how make new sense of circumstances that have challenged or disoriented life as we knew it; and to inspire our next chapter so to speak. At our best, we’re able to co-author an interconnected, interdependent narrative inclusive of every human being around us… all of whom are loved as characters of God’s grand story.
Some of you have experience offering hands-on healing prayer. Some of you might be uncomfortable with it, or perhaps lacking confidence if we asked you to move to the middle of the room and demonstrate some best practice in hands-on healing prayer. No worries. Whatever your prior experience, we all can benefit from a little more experience with touch and word in the sacred art of healing in God’s name. Remember also, that among people who are easily comfortable with touch, there are also people who experience touch, even from a friend, as uncomfortable or potentially threatening, perhaps because it has been used inappropriately against them in the past. Be sensitive to this and seek consent for holding hands and/or anointing with oil.
Using Isaiah’s words as read by Jesus, let’s take a few minutes to go further inward... to call up what we feel comfortable sharing and asking for today from among our deepest places of need… to practice being vulnerable and honorable with each other before we lay hands on each other in healing prayer. You may want to participate in this for the well being of the broken world around us… you’re also welcome at this time to participate in this for the health of the broken world within in you.
[guided, brief meditation; “in your answers to one of these questions, may you find a few words from your own stories that you’ll feel comfortable sharing privately with a prayer partner in a few moments”]
“to bring good news to the poor” - Where do you see or experience poverty? Who is involved and what do is most needed?
“proclaim release to the captives” - What is inappropriately captivating you? What’s holding you hostage?
“recovery of sight to the blind” - What do you fear you might be blind to? What do you yearn to see more clearly?
“let the oppressed go free” - What is pushing you down? What does true liberation look or sound like?
“to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” - What needs to be true in 2018 that would most resemble a Jubilee year / debts being forgiven / a resetting of right relationships?
[take some deep breaths]
Now, quietly and gently, I invite you to pair up with someone near you who you are ready listen to. Hold each other’s hands (with consent). For some people, direct eye contact might be distracting. Accept your partner’s body language as it is. Honor whatever you’re about to hear from your partner as private and sacred - just between you two and God.
Take turns. In one sentence, share what needs to be healed right now in your life.
Take a moment to absorb that sentence and then simply acknowledge what you’ve heard.
Respond with: “I’ve heard you. God hears you. God’s healing Spirit is here with us now.”
When everyone has been heard, we’ll proceed with the hands-on healing prayers.
[Invite people to stand and offer healing prayers for one another using form presented in the order of service for today, using holy oil if desired]
