Jesus Christ Heals

Mark 1:21-30

For three years she had been dying by degrees with cancer. She had tried a variety of medications. None worked. Then last three months she had been on Morphine. Said she, "I was lying in my bed reading my Bible, and within myself knowing that the end was almost there. I prayed to God to do with me as he wished. I trusted him. I put my whole life in his hands.

There came to me a small voice saying I was not going to die. That I was going to live. My body seemed to turn warm. I went to sleep. From that day on the process was reversed. In Six months I was off the pain killer. Then little by little I regained my strength. In a year's time I was back on my feet."

Three years later I was ill and needed to see my doctor. I visited him. He looked at me in shock. I thought you were dead he said. He ordered x-rays and found that I was healed. What happened to you he asked? I was healed by God, she answered.

Such experiences do occur. When they do we feel both blessed and filled with awe.

This morning our text deals with a man who made healing a central part of his ministry. No other figure ever did this in any religion.

Healing was a very important part of Jesus' ministry. His healing could be placed in four distinct categories:

1. Organic or structural defects (cripples)

2. functional (malfunctioning of organs) (blindness)

3. psychic or mental (most difficult to heal)

4. Moral illnesses (41 cases detailed in four gospels)

Jesus healed:

leprosy,

lameness,

paralysis,

fever,

and blindness.

Jesus was most successful with mental illness. Almost one half of the patients in the hospital today are having some sort of mental disorder. Jesus used suggestion, touched, spittle clay, and saliva to mediate healing. One lady was healed by touching his garment.

For the first two hundred years of the early church healing was very much a part of the work of the church. After 313 the church became official and thousands flocked to it. With them came many changes.

One great change was the moving of healing to the peripheral of the church. Most of it was done in monasteries by people who devoted their lives to meditation and study. Sick people went to these remote places to find healing ministry.

In the year of 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council the role of the pastor and doctor was separated. At that time medical doctors were refused the privilege of hearing confession. They could only administer medicine and operate on the body.

Over the years there would appear someone who was a spiritual leader and who also participated in healing. John Wesley was such a person. Wesley also played around with medicine, and invented electric shock as a healing method.

Most spiritual healing existed outside the Orthodox churches. It was practiced in Sect Groups and by Faith Healers. In our day Charlatans have moved into the field and it has been held in disrespect.

The field of psychology has brought to the fore front the importance of the Subconscious mind and also the importance of inner freedoms. Both of which are the basis for spiritual healing. Incidentally basically the same thing the early church left. Healthy religion alone carried the antidote for much of the inner pain of individuals ...forgiveness, and release of pent up guilt.

There are many to day who are healed by clearing the subconscious mind of its baggage ... coupled with medicine and good medical procedures.

An example of what I speak.

TRANSCEND" by Morton Kelsey...p.193...

And sadly enough, many ...fears, angers, resentments, and hostilities eventually, after an accumulation of outer experiences, become internalized so that they are deposited in the unconscious where they stay buried, draining us of energy, and causing disease, as they wreak havoc upon the autonomic system which is seeking for a balance between spending and conserving energy.

One can imagine, then what might happen to a person who continuous emotional pressures have caused physical pressures day in and day out. Is it any wonder that businessmen and women suffer from ulcers and die from heart attacks at an alarming rate?"