Text: Mark 9:38-50, James 5:13-30
Preached by Rev. James Murray at Dominion-Chalmers United Church, Sept 27 2009

I heard a story recently about a downtown church which was having troubles with one of its neighbours. A rundown house across the street from the church had been turned into a crack house. The drug dealers and drug users made getting into the church very dangerous. A group from the church tried to talk to the owner of the house to no avail. They tried to talk to the drug dealers, but were chased away. As they walked away from the crack house, they stopped and prayed for God to do something to resolve this problem. That evening, the crack house burned to the ground. The next day the drug dealer threatened to sue the church members for being responsible for the fire. The church members denied doing anything wrong. The drug dealer said “I’m not accusing you of setting the fire. The fire department said it was an act of God. You prayed for this, so that makes you responsible.” The church members said while they do believe in the power of prayer, they do not believe in a vindictive God. They believe in a God of reconciliation, so it couldn’t be their God who burned down the crack house. Apparently the drug dealer has yet to find a lawyer who is willing to take on the case.

Ever since the development of the social sciences, for most of the twentieth century researchers tried to prove that faith and prayer has the power to heal. In every case, they could not provide a verifiable study which covered all of the variables.

The closest the social scientists ever came was in 1998.  It was in 1998 that a team of doctors from Duke University Hospital conducted a major study. The doctors compared elderly people’s church attendance with their use of the Duke Hospital.  Their study showed how elderly people who attend church on a regular basis, have fewer stays in hospital than non-church goers. Once they are admitted to hospital, the non-church attender stays in the hospital an average of 25 days. The Church-goer had an average stay of only 11 days.  The report found this difference could not be explained by the severity of the current illness, the level of physical conditioning, social support, psychological state or demographic characteristics.

In fact, when these other variables were controlled, the strength of the relationship between church affiliation status and length of hospital stay became even stronger.

This scientific study does not prove that prayer has the power to heal. It does show that people who practice their faith enjoy a better quality of life. We have been wanting to prove the truth of our faith for a long time, because we want the approval of the scientific community. We thought this approval would win people over to our point of view. We long assumed that having faith was something completely rational, and all we were lacking was the proper evidence to win the argument.

This study shows that we have had the proof all along. We were just asking the wrong question. There is no one piece of scientific evidence which can ever prove the truth of the Christian faith. It is how we live our lives which proclaims the truth of our beliefs. To have faith is not rational. To have faith is a choice we make, a choice which says there is a better way to live this life.

Trying to prove that prayer can heal on demand is seeking to show that we can control God to provide us with our desired outcomes. Life is much more complicated than that.  We should be a little more humble than to think we can control God like a puppet on a string.

The promise of healing is a central message of Jesus Christ. He comes to heal our broken hearts. He comes to mend our broken bodies. This is one of the great attractions we have towards our faith. We believe God’s goal in all things is for us to be healed.  Sometimes we see this belief fulfilled. Sometimes the illness is cured. Sometimes it is our lives which are made whole, even when our body cannot heal itself. Sometimes our bodies do manage to miraculously recover. Sometimes the body is just too worn out. Just because we don’t get the outcome we want does not mean that we did not have enough faith. Just because our body didn’t recover the way we wanted does not mean that God is unfair.

It is hard to admit something is out of our control. It is scary to admit something is beyond our understanding. Even doctors will tell you they are often at a loss to explain why one patient recovers while another slips quickly away. It makes us feel small to speak of things which we are not the master of.  There have been many times when someone has told me of a profound spiritual moment which has changed their life. Most of those conversations start off with them saying, “You’re not going to believe what just happened…” 

About a hundred years ago, the pioneering psychologist William James wrote a ground-breaking book called “The Varieties of Religious Experience”. William James provided evidence that mystical experiences happen to people, whether they believed in God or not. James believed “the evidence for God lies primarily in our inner personal experiences."

The man who wrote the novel “Zorba the Greek”, Nikos Kazantzakis once said “I believe in a world which does not exist, but by believing in it, I create it.” Kazantzakis goes on to say “We call ‘non-existent’ whatever we have not desired with sufficient strength.”

When Mother Teresa in India welcomed a guest at her hospital, she assumed God had sent that person to her for a purpose. So she did not hesitate to put all guests immediately to work. She believed we are all able to ask for much in prayer, but by sharing in prayer, she believed we are also all here to help answer prayer.

It is a bold act of faith to say you believe prayer does change things. Not every prayer will be answered the way we want. Our past actions may prevent the prayer from being answered.  We have to take ownership of what we have done. We need to recognize how our behaviour has consequences. This is because God works with the world as it is, in order to make it into all it can yet be. For this reason, miracles are still possible. With God we learn to expect the unexpected.

Our prayers ask for God’s kingdom to come here on earth. We pray for the victory of God over disease, selfish greed, the principalities of oppression and the power death. We pray to God so we can increase our understanding of what God wants to accomplish in this world. We pray so our prayers open us to God’s will, to God’s desires, and to all the possibilities God seeks for this world.

As the apostle James puts it, ‘Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing joyful songs of thankful praise. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you. And if you've sinned, you'll be forgiven—you’ll be healed inside and out.’ (James 5:13-15, paraphrased)

This is a different way of living, because we believe in God’s truth that a different world is possible, if we try.

Source: Duke University Hospital study   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9786287