In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

A faith that can move mountains is a faith that can heal. This morning I want to open the scriptures and examine what they say about faith and healing. Accounts of healing appear in the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. It is hard to escape noticing that healing was one of the major focuses of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus said, I am the way the truth and the life. Jesus promised to bring us life. Healing was part of the life he brought. I have a very clear purpose this morning. I want to tell you or remind you or encourage you that we as a Christian community are called to bring healing to people in and outside our community. I further want to suggest that one of the ways that the church has always grown and is growing most dramatically today is through miracles of healing. Jesus came to bring us healing on every level of our being—physical, emotional and spiritual. In Acts 10:38 Peter says, “ God had anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power and because God was with him Jesus went about doing good and curing all who had fallen into the power of the devil.” From the time of the death of the last of the disciples up to the 20th century healing prayer gradually diminished in the mainline historic Church. Francis McNutt in his recent book The Nearly Perfect Crime; How the Church Almost Killed the Ministry of Healing writes, “The Church’s original healing ministry was so strong and vital, so clearly a part of the gospel that the crime could not take place all at once. It took time, nearly 2000 years.” He goes on to quote a noted spiritual author as writing, “miracles are merely a holdover from the age of pre-scientific explanation, an anachronism which persists only in those moldering ivory towers which continue to exist.” After presenting how healing ministry was suppressed McNutt goes back to scripture to document how Jesus’ healing ministry was carried out, and how he passed this ministry on… first to the disciples, and then to the 70 and then to those who followed after Jesus and the disciples. He makes the point that healing is a demonstration of the power of God and he suggests that without power we are preaching not the Good News, but merely good advice. Paul talks about this in First Corinthians where he says that real followers of Christ can be distinguished from charlatans not by words but by power. “I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.” Returning to the Nearly Perfect Crim, McNutt goes on to highlight the examples of healing miracles in the Old and New Testaments and then presents a history of healing with documented examples up to the present time. He recounts the turn of the 20th century Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles led by William Seymour, Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism and most recently the rebirth and growth of healing ministry in Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism and the mainline protestant churches such as Methodists, Lutherans and Presbyterians. The most dramatic explosion in healing ministry in this century is in Africa. Healing ministry and healing miracles are a major part of the growth of the Anglican church in African countries such as Nigeria, Uganda, and the Sudan. In these countries in the face of strong Muslim opposition Christianity is exploding. There are now 20 million Anglicans in Nigeria…10 times the number in the U.S. Healing is a regular part of their ministry. The Roman church in Nigeria had to reintroduce a healing ministry because they found Catholics were going to mass and then going to other churches for healing for the sick.
Why is it hard for us to accept healing through the power of prayer? The very words faith healers conjure up for many of us some kind of magic or snake oil salesmen. Television evangelists who focus on healing also diminish its credibility. One consequence of the scientific revolution is that we have come to accept as a new national religious doctrine the scientific method. As McNutt’s earlier quote revealed, miracles are viewed as the lack of knowledge on the part of  primitive peoples. But think where this takes us. What miracles are the hardest to accept? Surely someone being cured of blindness is not as difficult to believe as someone rising from the dead. Being cured of paralysis is not as hard to believe as God speaking the universe into existence. Before we are too quick to discount healing the sick we should think about where this kind of thinking may inevitably take us.
C.S. Lewis gave an address to Anglican priests and youth leaders in 1945 where his purpose was to impress on them the importance of standing for the faith. He said, “We are to defend Christianity itself—the faith preached by the apostles, attested by the martyrs, embodied in the creeds, expounded by the Fathers. This must be clearly distinguished from the whole of what any one of us may think about God and Man.” This may sound familiar because I quoted another part of it in a previous sermon. But later in this same presentation, Lewis gets to the point I am making today. Later he tells them, “Do not attempt to water Christianity down. There must be no pretence that you can have it with the Supernatural left out. So far as I can see Christianity is precisely the one religion from which the miraculous cannot be separated. You must frankly argue for supernaturalism from the very outset.”
Why would he say this? Genesis 1:1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The virgin birth of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus walking on water, calming the storm, and raising Lazarus from the dead. Finally, Jesus healing lepers, paralytics, and today’s gospel-- blind Bartimaeus. Our faith is a faith in an all-powerful God who performs miracles. By the power of God the blind can be made to see. By that same power we can be transformed and made heirs to the kingdom of God. We can have eternal life starting now.
  In our gospel today, Jesus and his disciples have come to Jericho and they have drawn a great crowd, a great multitude. Out of this crowd someone shouts, Jesus Son of David have mercy on me. We’re told, “And many rebuked him telling him to be silent.” This seems to be their typical response. You may remember that earlier in this same chapter of Mark, people were bringing children to Jesus and Mark tells us the disciples rebuked them. In that case Jesus got angry and said let the children come to me and do not forbid them. He then teaches unless we receive the Kingdom of God as a little child does, we can by no means enter it. In the case of Bartimaeus Jesus stood still and commanded the blind man to be called. By doing so he was implicitly rebuking those who were trying to silence the blind man. There are several lessons for us here too.

First let’s look at the blind man. Bartimaeus. Bar meaning son of plus  Timaeus. This is the Son of Timaeus. Some translate Timaeus as cursed and so it has been suggested that this may have been the blind son of a blind father. All the more miraculous if someone who is genetically blind is healed. We’re told that Bartimaeus was sitting by the road begging. So this man who could not see is aware of a crowd passing by and hears that Jesus is with them. It also seems likely that Jesus couldn’t see the man for the crowd. The man yells out, “Jesus Son of David have mercy on me.” Son of David was a phrase for Messiah used this way only in the synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke. So here is a loud statement of faith that Jesus is the Messiah being made by this blind man.

When many, presumably including some of Jesus’ disciples, rebuke him and tell the man to be silent, Bartimaeus cries out even more desperately, this time just using the designation for Messiah, “Son of David have mercy on me.” I want us to pay close attention to what’s happening here. When someone in need recognizes or declares Jesus to be the Messiah and then asks for help, Jesus stops what he’s doing and pays attention. Jesus then listens to what the person is asking for and he heals the person. If you review many of the other accounts of healing in the New Testament you will find this same pattern.
 In verse 50 we learn that the man threw off his cloak and came to Jesus. This is symbolic of ridding himself of whatever might hinder his progress to Jesus. We too if we call on Jesus must be ready to give up the things that stand in the way of our progress to Jesus. Now Jesus asks What do you want me to do for you? This is an important step in healing prayer. The person in need of healing must articulate what is troubling them… what condition they would have healed. Notice Bartimaeus’ answer. He uses the word Master to address Jesus. In some translations it is rabonni. In either case it is a title of ultimate respect. Bartimaeus is specific about what he wants. He says Rabboni that I may receive my sight. Now in this case Jesus doesn’t do anything but simply says Go your way. Your faith has made you well. You may recall that when Jesus healed the blind man near the pool of Siloam he made a paste of mud and put it on the man’s eyes. Clearly the son of God has the capacity to heal just by his will. The Bartimaeus healing makes it clear it’s not what Jesus does but what he wills that matters. There’s a lesson for us here too regarding healing prayer. Every situation is different. Because we may be involved in a successful healing in one situation doesn’t mean that we should use the same method for all future healings. It is never the method but rather the action of Jesus working through the Holy Spirit that brings about the healing.
Our translations reads your faith has made you well. The Greek word translated as well is sode-zoh which literally means saved or delivered. This has a deeper connotation than just well. The man was healed spiritually and delivered from his sin and given salvation as well as receiving his sight. For Jesus this is the bigger issue. Notice something else. Reading that last line, “Your faith has saved you,” I want you to see how this is consistent with the idea that the kingdom of God is now for followers of Christ. Those who acknowledge that Jesus is the Messiah and accept him as their master…their Lord.  Jesus says HAS saved you not WILL save you. This man gets salvation now. It starts for him as it does for us now. Having healed the man Jesus lets him go and says you can go on your way. In other words you can continue with your life. But the man we are told immediately received his sight and followed him on the way.
It doesn’t say followed him on his journey or to the next town. It says followed him on the way. The way is what they called the Christian movement. This likely came from Jesus statement I am the way. So this man who has been healed and who is given the freedom to go where he pleases chooses to follow Jesus… chooses to become a follower of the way. This is important to understand that it is not enough to go to Jesus in prayer when we are sick or when we need something. When Jesus responds to our prayer we must continue to follow him. We do this both to honor him and to get continued instruction from him. Blind Bartimaeus received spiritual sight along with his physical sight. Seeing for the first time with spiritual lenses Bartimaeus was attracted to the beauty of the new life that Jesus had provided to him. He wanted nothing at this point more than to follow him. We must want the same thing.
 Healing is ultimately about God’s power. To the extent that we find it hard to believe in healing through prayer I think it says something about our concept of God and how big or how small he is. A. W. Tozer was a popular evangelical author who died in 1963. He has been called one of the most influential American evangelists of the 20th century. He begins his book Knowledge of the Holy by saying, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.” As Christians our idea of God is big. We believe God created the universe. We believe God came to earth and took on human flesh, lived as one of us and died on the cross. But that was not the end but rather the beginning because this man this Jesus who died on the cross was bodily raised from the dead showing us the way to our own future bodily resurrection. God just doesn’t get any bigger than that.
 Returning to our gospel and the subject of faith and healing, I want to suggest to you that ultimately skepticism about the practicality of praying for healing has to do with a small concept of God…who He is and what He can do. Healing through prayer is supernatural. Supernatural healing requires that we believe in a God powerful enough to make it happen. It also requires that we accept the idea that there are things we cannot explain. In our devotion to science we falsely conclude that if it can’t be explained scientifically it can’t happen. We can’t believe in something we can’t see and yet there are things we can’t see that we do believe in. Gravity for instance. But you say we can demonstrate that gravity must exist because things fall. Newton and his apple. I suggest to you the same argument can be made for healing prayer. Modern medicine is documenting more and more that people who are prayed for have different outcomes, better outcomes than people who are not prayed for. Francis McNutt in another book entitled simply Healing reports on several exciting research results related to the power of faith to change our health. He notes that several hundred studies have now been done that document people who attend church and engage in religious activities live longer and have better health than average. He cites other research that documents that meditation and prayer reduce stress. Dr. James Lynch of Johns Hopkins wrote that prayer and Christian community reduce loneliness and that eliminates a significant cause of early death. Dr. Larry Dossey MD asks in Prayer is Good Medicine, “ Will we reach a point where physicians who ignore prayer will be judged guilty of malpractice?” Imagine!
 In my past two parishes I have personally been involved in healing prayer ministry. I have seen people healed and people who experience healing become, as Bartimaeus did, devoted followers of Jesus. They simply can’t help but tell people about the Jesus who healed them and changed their lives. Get back into your bibles. Read any of the gospels and pay attention to all of the incidences of healing. Note particularly how Jesus gives this gift of healing to the disciples and to the church. These are simple people like you and me. Jesus sends them out and they come back marveling at the healing miracles they have performed. Mark Chapter 6 verse 12 reads So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. In Luke Chapter 10 Jesus appoints 72 others and sends them out telling them, “Heal the sick and say to them the Kingdom of God has come near to you.” Here’s that idea again that where Jesus is the Kingdom of God has come near.
 Brothers and sisters this healing continues to this day. Jesus calls on us to bring the kingdom to bear here… now… in Eagle River. He says whatever you ask in my name will be done if you have faith. Do you have faith? Is the God you have faith in large or small? Our God is a God of power. In his power we can do great things. I pray you will join me in bringing Jesus’ healing power to a community which so desperately needs him. Amen.