Pam's Sermons

Doing the Stuff
August 29, 2010
Rev. Pamela Shepherd

Someone called our church office last week saying that an herbal medicine company in Hood River, Oregon had given him the name of our church as a place he could get prayed for and healed.

The man has been living with unbearable pain for two years. Doctors had been unable to do anything, the alternative medicine route hadn’t helped, and the only solution this man could come up with was to call our church to be healed. I’m not a Christian, he said. Does that matter? And how much do you charge for that?

For reasons I do not understand, the man had been given both the name of our church, and also a church in Redding, California. He told me that church has whole rooms for healing, and people who will pray over anyone who comes.

The man wanted to know; could he come to our church and be healed? I didn’t know what to say really. I said, I do believe that God heals people. I don’t know how that happens, but we’ll pray for you if you want to try this.

He came in. We talked for an hour about his pain. When had it started? What was it like? Why did he think that he had this pain? Then I took a vial of healing oil and my minister’s stole, and we went up to the altar at the front of the sanctuary, where I anointed this man’s forehead and prayed that he would be healed.

He said they were praying for him too at the church in Redding, and I was relieved to hear that. Because, while I believe that God wills this man’s healing, and I believe that those of us who follow Jesus have been authorized and empowered to heal, I don’t know what that looks like really, or how we’re supposed to do that.

Our readings for today instruct us to do a lot of amazing things. We are to heal people, visit prisoners, feed the hungry, care for the poor, show radical hospitality to strangers, stand with the tortured, live out our marriage vows, and be free of the bondage of loving money too much. As people who follow Jesus, we are called to amazing, impossible stuff.

Fred Grewe told me a story about the founder of the Vineyard Fellowship, a charismatic evangelical church. The guy’s name was John Wimber. When John Wimber found his was to God he was, in the words of Christianity Today Magazine, a “beer-guzzling, drug-abusing pop musician, who was converted at the age of 29 while chain-smoking his way through a Quaker-led bible study.” (Editorial, Feb 9, 1998.)

Wimber was reading all of these stories in the gospels, and he was excited to hear how we’re empowered to do this amazing, impossible stuff: Healing people, and feeding the hungry, visiting prisoners, welcoming strangers, and raising people from the dead. He began to ask, in the Quaker bible study, When do I get to do the stuff? When do I get to the stuff? I gave up drugs for this, he said.

When Fred told me that story, I realized how much I want to be doing the stuff. When do we get to do the stuff here? Like healing folks who are in pain, and lifting up the wounded, welcoming outcasts and raising people from the dead?

Many of you came here after I started, so you may not know that I was married, with a partner of eleven years when I got the call to this church. When I interviewed for the job I was married, but in the month between when I was hired and when I arrived, by partner decided she couldn’t be a minister’s spouse, and I arrived here newly divorced. And that’s why John Wimber’s question feels so real to me. I gave up sex for this, you know. I want to be doing the stuff!

I want people to be healed in this church, though I don’t know what that means. I want people to be welcomed here as if Christ has shown up. I want people’s lives to change. I want us to feed the hungry and visit the prisoner and stand with the tortured, and the lonely, and afraid. I want lives to be made whole here. I want to see people rise from the dead. I want to be doing the stuff!

All week I’ve been working on this sermon, trying to understand what healing really means. Then I got a call from a friend who has a radio show in Taos, New Mexico. She had been interviewing the local rape crisis center when she learned that sexual assault victims in Taos have to be driven by a police officer an hour and a half south to the Santa Fe hospital to undergo a forensic physical exam before they are allowed to bathe themselves or change clothes.

The hospital in Taos couldn’t afford the Sexual Assault Nurses Exam Program. It really was just a matter of money.

So she threw together an impromptu community fundraiser, and it was broadcast live on her show this week. The Taos Iron Man Competition brought together some of the best-known, most macho men in Taos for a team competition in ironing. While the iron men ironed competitively, women all over town began to drop off their laundry.

The police chief, the county sheriff, two county deputies, the president of one local bank, lawyers from the D. A’s office, a hot tub dealer, the health food store owner, the newspaper editor, and dozens of other men wore frilly, brightly-colored aprons and competed in ironing, while people called in pledges from all over town. 25 dollars, 50 dollars, a hundred dollars. The sleaziest bar in town pledged a thousand. Several local foundations pledged 5,000 each. The hospital pledged that if the town could raise $125,000 dollars to launch the program, they would commit to keep it funded and running.

On the air, the men from the Sherriff’s Brown Team said they wanted to make a statement to men who commit sexual assault that the real men of Taos are against their behavior. A spokesmen for the purple team said, I want the people of Taos to know that the purple team knows how to do pleats.

In three hours live on radio a town came together in a silly, playful way to raise some serious money to help rape victims heal. Not only because they will no longer have to be driven to Santa Fe, but because they got to hear, live on the air, that their town supports their healing; their whole town supports them and wants them to heal.

I wish I could have laid hands on that man and have his pain be healed. But that doesn’t seem to be a gift I have really. But one gift I know we do have, is the ability to come together and support each other in hard times, and in that way I am certain we can help each other heal.

Zoe Abel, who was raised in this church, and then served as our Children’s Educator for three years while in nursing school, has been physically ill for the past several weeks and has been twice in the Ashland hospital. I’ve been twice to sit with her and pray with her for healing, but she’s still sick and she still hurts, so there must be another way we can help Zoe heal.

She told me she was afraid about money. Even though she has health insurance through her job that will cover 90 percent of the bills, as a young, single mom with student loans and now medical bills, she’s suffering from stress and now stressed about money.

I said, because I believe I’ve been authorized and empowered as a Christian to say this, “Just get well and don’t worry about the money. People at church will help you with those bills.”

Our church Nightingale Fund was set up for just such occasions. And we have a little money in it that we can use to help pay those medical bills. And if you want to help Zoe you can donate some money to the Nightingale Fund for her bills. It’s a way we can help Zoe heal.

When Jesus leaves his followers instructions like our readings today, he’s telling us these things he did are possible for us. So radical hospitality has got to be possible; release for the prisoners has got to be possible, marital fidelity has got to be possible; freedom from the bondage of the idolatry of money has got to be possible; healing has got to be possible; and not just for the Saints, but for us.

More Sermons

August 22nd, Helping Each Other Stand Up