On Wednesday each week after the liturgy for Divine Healing (a precursor to our Service for Wholeness in the Book of Common Worship) many of those present came forward, knelt down and received the laying on of hands. The service continues to this day.
To introduce the worship, George MacLeod (minister of the Church of Scotland, founder of the Iona Community, and winner of the Templeton Prize) explained what we were about. We are not, he would declare, like the Christian Scientists, setting this service over against modern medicine. Rather we believe medical practice is a gift from God to those who are ill, and that God works through doctors, nurses and hospitals for the healing of persons. We do not engage in magic, nor do we believe anything magical happens in this service.
We proceed in obedience to the risen Christ, who instructed his apostles to pray for the sick and to lay hands upon them. By following their example, we are gathered up into God’s great and enduring ministry in, with, under, above and beneath the whole creation. All healing comes from God, wherever it occurs — in Soviet Russia (this was during the Cold War and the ‘godless communists’ held the reigns of power) in Scotland, among Hindus in India, among Buddhists in the Far East.
Each week George read Mark 16:14-20. It was startling to hear those verses (which mention the handling of snakes) from the “primitive” church as one of the “core texts” of a community also committed to social justice, to the renewal of worship and of the holy, catholic church.
While I did not understand it in 1965, I see now that George was anticipating the new age of the church when we have all been influenced by the churches in the developing world, and even some churches in the United States. There we were, when de-mythologizing had captured the imagination of Western Christianity, intentionally connecting (with a pre-modern sensibility) to the primitive church. I was receiving a rare gift: the opportunity to listen to God’s word and to struggle to believe it, without being whipsawed between a racist fundamentalism on the one hand, or a “liberal” historical/critical reading of the New Testa-ment on the other. In that service of Divine Healing, so called, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we acknowledged, even while doubting, its power.
I remembered the summer of 1965 and that weekly healing service on Iona as I lay in bed for two days of testing. My admitting doctor is a Hindu; the neurologist who interpreted my tests and who gave me the most rigorous examination I’ve ever had is a Muslim. I had agreed to a chaplain’s visit. When he visited, I discovered that he is Buddhist. Each of them provided intelligent, thorough and compassionate care. They are agents of God’s healing power.
I recalled George MacLeod’s introduction to the Service of Divine Healing intensely. Of course, all healing, wherever it occurs on earth, is from God. Who dares limit the creative, saving power of God? I also thought, with frustration and sadness, of the stultifying and mind-numbing debate in our church about the saving power of God in Jesus Christ. Do we not know? Have we not heard? The risen Christ is everywhere, and goes before us into every Galilee!
While the One whose name is above every name sustains and heals me, it was the Hindu who suggested to me that this “interruption” was Gods’ offering to me of an opportunity. Thanks be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose goodness is manifest in every place and among all peoples — all the time!
O. Benjamin Sparks is interim editor of The Outlook and pastor, Second church, Richmond, Va.
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