Home
What's New?
How to find us
Who we are
The Parish
Patterns of Worship
Monthly/Quarterly Services
Pastoral Letter
Calendar & Prayers
Events & Notices
About Our Art
Liturgy at St. Matthew's
Music at St. Matthew's
     The Choir
     The Director of Music
     The Organ
     The Organ Restoration
     Commissions
     Concerts
     Northampton Bach Choir
Ministry of Welcome
St. Matthew's Northampton Trust
Regular Activities
Youth
Mission and Outreach
Vision and Priorities
Parish Renewal
Parish Cell
Pastoral Care

webdesign: Juli@

Theological background to the
Ministry of Healing and Wholeness

Baptism witnesses to God's gift of salvation, in which he gathers people into the new creation in Jesus Christ. Baptism points to the way in which God in Jesus Christ is overthrowing an order of life corrupted by sin and death and bringing to birth a renewed creation, a creation alive with the healing presence of God's Spirit. Baptism is a sign of individual and corporate forgiveness and renewal within the life of the baptized. That life proclaims not only the risen power won by Christ for us in his resurrection and exaltation, but also our identification as human beings with the constraints and suffering borne by Christ in his incarnation and on the cross.

With the incarnation of Jesus, God begins the renewal of our alienated, weakened and fragmented human condition (Romans 8.3,4). In St Matthew's Gospel Jesus' baptism expresses his solidarity with us in our weakness (Matthew 3.14,15) and his healing ministry is seen as the outworking of the suffering servant who 'took our infirmities and bore our diseases' (Matthew 8.17). The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ promise both the judgement of all that is flawed in human life and the recreation of our humanity.

A powerful biblical image portrays the sufferings of the Messiah, of the creation, and of God's people, as the birth pains that herald the new age in which peace and righteousness reign (Luke 12.50; John 16.21; Romans 8.18-30; Colossians 1.24; Revelation 12). The Christ, the anointed one, is clothed with the Holy Spirit to bring good news to the afflicted and to proclaim the day of the Lord's favour (Luke 4.18-21).

It is apparent in Scripture that the physical, emotional, social and spiritual well-being of human beings are closely interconnected. Christ's work of reconciliation extends beyond the purely personal and relational to the social order and the whole creation (cf Colossians 1.15-27). The Gospels use the term 'healing' both for physical healing and for the broader salvation that Jesus brings.

A common New Testament term for sickness is 'weakness' (asthenia) (Luke 5.15; 13.11,12; John 5.5); it carries broad associations of powerlessness and vulnerability, including human vulnerability in the face of the dominion of sin and death (Romans 5.6; 8.3).

As Christians face weakness, they receive God's grace, expressed sometimes in an experience of healing and sometimes through the strength that comes in the bearing of weakness (2 Corinthians 12.9).

Furthermore, the New Testament also presents us with a picture of Christians in a running battle with forces of evil that are external to us but bear heavily upon our lives. Although the principalities and powers (Ephesians 6.12) are not always forces of evil, they can have an impact on the social and political order; the evil one not only brings temptation but takes people captive (Gospels, passim); the power of idols enslaves consciences (1 Corinthians 8); and pagan sacrifices are offered to demons with whom we must not be participants (1 Corinthians 10). This series of pictures, while not absolving us from personal responsibility for our actions, also strongly implies that without the grace of God we are at risk of being in the grip of an array of forces beyond our powers to resist or break. Yet there is victory in Christ, and we also learn that, in the final analysis, 'an idol is nothing in the world and there is no God but one' (1 Corinthians 8.4); and that victorious discernment categorizes all forces of spiritual evil as provisional and counterfeit. Their 'power' lies in their impact on us, and their 'reality' therefore is shadowy and interim only. But we nonetheless need deliverance from that power, and the language of healing and wholeness is entirely appropriate to that process.

Acts of healing in the Gospels are intimately related to the restoring of individuals to a place of worth within the social order (cf Mark 1.44; 5.15-20; 6.32-34; Luke 13.10-17). 'By his wounds you have been healed' (1 Peter 2.24) makes powerful links between human pain and vulnerability and the saving impact of Jesus' own suffering. The same interconnectedness is present where Scripture speaks of God's image in us to point to the way human life is marred and threatened by the impact of evil and is restored by the new creation in Christ (Romans 3.23; 2 Corinthians 3.18; Ephesians 2.13-16).

Healing, reconciliation and restoration are integral to the good news of Jesus Christ. For this reason prayer for individuals, focused through laying on of hands or anointing with oil, has a proper place within the public prayer of the Church. God's gracious activity of healing is to be seen both as part of the proclaiming of the good news and as an outworking of the presence of the Spirit in the life of the Church.

Such prayer needs to be sensitive to a number of simplifications or misunderstandings. It should not imply a simple link between sickness and sin; Jesus himself warned against the direct association of disability and sin (John 9.3). The receiving of forgiveness and the act of forgiving others may open the way to healing and wholeness. Prayer for healing and strengthening should not involve the rejection of the skills and activity of medicine which are also part of God's faithfulness to creation (cf Ecclesiasticus 38.9-12; Psalm 147.3). Prayer for healing needs to take seriously the way in which individual sickness and vulnerability are often the result of injustice and social oppression. Equally importantly such prayer should not imply that the restoration of physical wholeness is the only way in which Christ meets human need. Healing has always to be seen against the background of the continuing anguish of an alienated world and the hidden work of the Holy Spirit bringing God's new order to birth. It is a way of partaking in God's new life that will not be complete until it includes the whole creation and the destruction of death itself.

- taken from Common Worship: Pastoral Services

back to Monthly and Quarterly Servces