Healing in the Christian Tradition after Jesus

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Healing in the Christian Tradition after Jesus

• Rels 120
• 10 oct 2006

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CHRISTIAN TRADITIONAFTER JESUS

• 3 important and distinct healing traditions
• charismatic healers
• spiritual energy or power
• touch a person, or proclaim a person healed
• healing rituals
• sacraments, masses, prayer groups, pastoral
  counselling
• sacred healing centres
• sacred centres, shrines, or churches

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CHARISMATIC HEALERSAFTER JESUS

• Disciples carry on Jesus healing ministry
• preach, teach, baptize, heal
• no healing techniques or medical knowledge
• no specific rituals or settings
• heal by touch or command, or by mere presence
• in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk
• Also ascetics, desert fathers
• demon exorcisms
• infusion of healing energy by physical touch

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Charismatic healers (contd)

• Medieval church leaders
• bathe in or sip holy water touch sign of cross
  holy relics prayers blessing
• Saints and pastors reputations as healers
• touch, gesture, prayer, command, clothing, or
  food
• pious, good, holy people
• healing an incidental part of their religious
  lives

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GODFREY MOWATT (1874-1958)CHARISMATIC HEALER

• Blinded in accident when 7 - worked for the blind
• advanced education social and govt agencies
• 43 - shattered glass eye pierced eye socket
• surgery, painful, serious injury
• began to visit the sick - people healed by him
• commanded in a vision to Go forth and serve your
  fellow men
• understand, minister to, and alleviate others
  suffering because of his own injuries

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Mowatt (contd)

• Began healing ministry in 1936 - in 1942,
  commissioned by Archbishop of Canterbury William
  Temple as a minister of healing.
• Held healing services sermon, come to altar
  rail, lay hands on head and pray for healing,
  blessing by Mowatt, Lords prayer
• power of God in and around all people
• put people in touch with this power for healing
• wounded healer initiatory ordeals holy person

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AGNES SANFORD (1897-1976)

• Born in China, missionary parents married
  Anglican priest, left China, returned to USA.
• Youngest child healed by a visiting priest
  Sanford asked for healing from her depression
  healed
• healing services in church healing missions at
  other churches Healing Light 1947
• Red Cross volunteer during 2nd World War prayed
  for soldiers in hospital dismissed because of
  this practice

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Sanford (contd)

• Sanford husband established School of Pastoral
  Care taught pastors about spiritual healing.
• Sanfords theology of healing
• Gods power present always and everywhere
• Gods healing light pervades entire creation
• available to all accessed by faith prayer
• heal by visualizing the sick part of a person as
  healthy and whole person restored
• then pray for healing and lay hands on the
  person sometimes experienced as hot
• also a wounded healer

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HEALING RITUALS SACRAMENTS

• New Testament roots pray and anoint with oil
  confess sins, pray, be healed
• Healing power rooted in institutional church, not
  charismatic healers
• Bishops, priests, sometimes elders
• Healing rituals
• Baptism ? repel evil spirits, prevent sickness
• Confession ? purify, protect from sickness
• Communion ? cleansing power

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Healing Rituals (contd)

• Additional rituals
• exorcism laying on of hands anointing with holy
  oil sign of the cross
• sacrament of unction restore health to the sick
  came to be preparation for death only later
• Theology of healing
• church contains superabundance of grace
• dispensed to church members by consecrated
  leaders
• grace has healing effects sickness, renew soul

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Healing rituals (contd)

• Significant discontinuity in post-Jesus Christian
  understanding of illness and healing
• linking of illness with sin and immorality
• common in traditional cultures
• exceptional, not usual, in Jesus healing
  ministry
• confession of sin as a healing act becomes
  normative only in Christian tradition
• anointing brings forgiveness and healing

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Healing rituals (contd)

• Christian sources illness comes from God
• as punishment, discipline, lesson, or test
• God molds, tempers, fashions, and disciplines
  those he cares for by afflicting them with
  illness
• illness a blessing discipline improve oneself
• healing ? moral improvement, penance, willingness
  to change behaviour (repentance)
• physicians not to heal until patient had
  confessed to a priest

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Healing rituals (contd)

• Anglican Book of Common Prayer
• prayers for the sick sickness Gods
  visitation to try patience, increase faith to
  cause you to repent and change your ways to
  elicit submission to Gods will leading to
  everlasting life
• unction alleviating suffering and restoring
  health OR preparation for death healing disease
  of sin

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NURSE AS WOUNDED HEALER

• past experiences with illness, both major and
  minor - in childhood
• past experiences of loss and grief
• recent experiences with illness, loss, grief
• current experiences of chronic conditions,
  ongoing or progressive losses
• personal resources for connecting with patients,
  friends and others out of these experiences
• experiences of healing - religious or medical