Dear church,
This past Sunday I preached on the ascension of Christ, which is an often misunderstood aspect of the gospel. The essential truth I tried to proclaim to us was that Jesus ascends into heaven not to abandon us, but, paradoxically, to become even more present to us. Because we are intimately connected to Christ as his body, Christ in heaven suffers with us on earth, and we on earth reign with Christ in heaven. This is all happening right now. The ascension is the present tense of the gospel.
Part of this “suffering-and-reigning life” is grappling with places where God’s victory over sin and death are not fully manifested, and one of these places that most of us have a lot of familiarity with is illness and disease. As I mentioned in my sermon, just in our little church we have traumatic brain injuries and genetic diseases and mental illness that we wrestle with daily.
What does it look like for us to learn to stand with one another in suffering and to seek healing on behalf of one another? What does it look like for us to pray for healing and trust that our presence with each other is also a participation in God’s healing work in the world? What do we do when the healing we seek doesn’t come? How do we think about God’s involvement in our lives when we ask and don’t seem to receive?
These are some of the topics I’d like to talk about during a 3-week Sunday morning class I’m planning to teach on Healing Prayer starting June 2 at 9am. We’ll create lots of space to wrestle with the difficult questions that often come up around the topic of healing prayer, and move toward articulating a theology of healing that I hope is big enough to allow us to pray confidently with each other for healing and stand in solidarity with each other in the grief of loss and unanswered prayer.
If you plan to join us, please RSVP by emailing me (ben@thetableindy.org), and let me know if you’ll need childcare.
I know this topic is fraught with pain and confusion for many of us, so I’m preparing for this with some amount of trepidation. I’m going to do my best to hold everyone’s experiences and questions with reverence and honor. There will be no easy answers given or “effective techniques” taught. Rather, I hope to offer a few simple “axioms” to help us stay engaged in prayer and advocacy and love for one another as we continue to seek God’s kingdom together. I hope you’ll join us.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Ben
