20.10.2014
New Prayer Ministers Commissioned in Dublin and Glendalough
Archbishop Michael Jackson commissioned eight new prayer ministers for Dublin and Glendalough at the Church’s Ministry of Healing annual Diocesan Service yesterday (Sunday October 20).
Audrey Hamilton (Howth), Cynthia Lang and June Gleeson (Celbridge Straffan With Newcastle Lyons), Gillian Keogh and Jean Salter (Killiney–Ballybrack), Lindsey Ryan (Rathdrum), Trilly Keatinge (Taney) and David Caird (Malahide) were commissioned at the service which took place in St Patrick’s Church, Powerscourt.
The congregation was welcomed by the Rector, Archdeacon Ricky Rountree and the Revd Bruce Hayes, Rector of Dalkey, who is Chaplain to the Church’s Ministry of Healing in the dioceses. Archbishop Jackson thanked those who were willing to undertake the work and ministry of prayer. He also thanked the Revd Bruce Hayes for taking on the role of Chaplain and Avril Gillatt for her work with the Church’s Ministry of Healing in the dioceses.
In his sermon, the Archbishop spoke of the importance of touch to healing. Referring to Naaman the Leper, the Woman with the Issue of Blood and the Good Samaritan he gave “three random examples of touching as the means of healing; of God working through the human touch of one person by another person; and healing transforms through the presence and the power and the care and the love of God”.
He suggested that these people had taken risks against the religious conventions of their day to be healed and restored to a right relationship with God and that relationship with God was as vital to them as the restoration to health.
“The challenge for us is that our society gradually has watched the gap open up and now almost completely has separated out these two experiences and these two hopes: right relationship with God and health itself. The sense of personal authority that people who are sick have, the sense of personal dignity that they wish to retain and to regain and to restore through healing along with this focus of their spiritual energy is something that we should never underestimate and should always address – sensitively, compassionately, hopefully. It is God’s gift to them. They share with us the gift of God’s generosity in the interchange of healing and refreshment. And they give us more than we give them because they create the understanding of God’s presence where on our own we see only God’s absence. And touch is intrinsic to presence for most of us,” the Archbishop said.
He explained that prayer is a ministry of touching when the minister is not with the person in need. He added that those prayer ministers being commissioned had been called and invited into the rich ministry of Jesus Christ.
(The Archbishop’s sermon is reproduced in full below)
Powerscourt Parish Church; Ministry of Healing Service 2014
Readings: Isaiah 35.3–6; psalm 147.1–7; 2 Timothy 4.5–17; St Luke 10.1–9
A sermon preached by the Archbishop of Dublin and bishop of Glendalough
Only Luke is with me … 2 Timothy 4.10
There is a particular poignancy to this fleeting comment by Paul in his Letter to Timothy. There is also a hint of sadness and loneliness together with an air of ordinary domesticity and frenetic housekeeping. This is something that we have seen time and again in our own lives and engagement with people who are sick. Cloaks, books and parchments are everyday things in the ancient world like coats, magazines and mobile phones today:
When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. There is an honest fussiness in all of this on the part of that most complex and inspirational of apostles – Paul of Tarsus. Often God and complexity keep close company. As well as being useful items, things like this are part of who we are, they are part of our personal ecology, they are comforting and they express something of out identity and we want to have them – we need to have them – particularly when we are sick and frightened.
And, what’s more, we might as well admit it – we all set things down, we all leave things behind, in the most extraordinary of places and then we think our way back into it and we remember where we left them. Just think maybe of your glasses, of the frantic losing of them and then eventually finding them on your head!
Many of us know and indeed probably have sat with an ill person who is out of his or her context, away from his or her ecology, parted from a sense of comfort of body or mind, perhaps in a place that is increasingly unfamiliar and frightening; and the attention to detail, the fascination with small things comes through as the one thing which suddenly matters most to people and the thing about which they talk, maybe even incessantly and perhaps even to our annoyance. These are people who are finding things especially difficult because they are ill. And this particular Biblical insight about concentrating on small things is all the more tender and arresting because, although it is St Paul who is writing, it is St Luke, whom he regards as his faithful companion – St Luke the Patron Saint of medicine and of doctors – who is the one who has to listen to all of this. And St Luke is, as I have said, the Patron Saint of doctors as our tradition has evolved. And yet perhaps the most poignant thing of all is that the divine engagement with and withdrawal from life as we know it is beyond the limitations of human medicine and of human knowledge, as any reflective doctor would be honest enough to tell you if professionalism permitted it.
One of the lasting characteristics and probably one of the oldest means of healing as we understand it is: touching. You might say to me: No, it is not! It is prayer. What I should like to suggest to you is that there is no need and there is no point in playing these two off against one another. If we go back to the Old and New Testaments, we have vivid examples of touching as something that stands firm and strong at the point of need and of healing. Naaman the Leper was untouchable. Naaman was healed by accepting the presence of God in his life and by receiving the power of God to heal him in his own perceived uncleanness. The Woman with the Issue of Blood was driven to touch Jesus against all of the cultural norms of her time and she too was changed and healed – and Jesus noticed that he had been touched. Not only did the Good Samaritan treat and care for the man who had fallen among robbers. He lifted him on to his animal and therefore, in caring for him, touched him. Here are three random examples of touching as the means of healing; of God working through the human touch of one person by another person; and healing transforms through the presence and the power and the care and the love of God.
To us this is important and encouraging because all of these people are complex. God dwells, God pitches God’s tent right in the middle of the complex. Here we see individuals who argue with God and with the religious conventions of their day and who take risks to be healed and restored to a right relationship with God. The relationship with God is as vital and as energizing to them as is the restoration to health. The challenge for us is that our society gradually has watched the gap open up and now almost completely has separated out these two experiences and these two hopes: right relationship with God and health itself. The sense of personal authority that people who are sick have, the sense of personal dignity that they wish to retain and to regain and to restore through healing along with this focus of their spiritual energy is something that we should never underestimate and should always address – sensitively, compassionately, hopefully. It is God’s gift to them. They share with us the gift of God’s generosity in the interchange of healing and refreshment. And they give us more than we give them because they create the understanding of God’s presence where on our own we see only God’s absence. And touch is intrinsic to presence for most of us.
Time and again people who are ill and who yearn for healing speak of the positive effect of someone touching them, holding their hand, giving them, perhaps, a holding cross for dark and sleepless hours or for bright and restless days. Many of us have to judge and decide the moment to dare to touch, particularly in a world where the exploitation and abuse of the vulnerable has rightly made us so reticent about this type of engagement and so wary of doing the wrong thing. And many of us have to be aware that, although need may of itself be the driving force in responding to a cry for healing, personal dignity is the goal – and for many people this will involve a new or restored relationship with God.
The Ministry of Healing, therefore, is about taking risks. It is not about making religious decisions over the head of those who are ill – on the basis of any of us thinking that they will feel the better for it. For some people the touch of healing and the healing of touch may result in their finding God; for others it may not. The important thing is that the Healing Minister should be Christ with them, Christ for them, Christ from them. And so the healing moves in both directions and, as in all things, the ministry is that of Jesus Christ and the glory is that of God the Trinity and the discipleship is shared between the minister and the disciple. The person who is ill at the very same time as receiving and accepting is also giving and sharing a ministry and modelling something of God Incarnate.
But you will say: What about prayer? We have gathered this evening to commission Prayer Ministers. That is a wonderful and a joyful thing. Prayer is a genuine ministry. Nobody undertakes this lightly or with any sense of superiority – moral or religious. Prayer is a ministry of touching when you are not present physically to the person who is in need and is always capable of giving as well as receiving. It is a way of holding that person within the love of God and enabling the love of God to be spoken of and to be given as a gift from one human person to another. This is the rich ministry of Jesus Christ himself into which those who are this evening commissioned are called and invited and this is the commitment on their part that we honour and empower together as disciples of Christ the Healer. Prayer is the way in which we touch the presence of God already to be found in the life of the person for and with whom we pray. It is the way in which we are in communion with them and in communion with Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven. There is no point in standing looking up into the clouds; Christ is Risen and has gone ahead of us into Galilee of the Nations.
… heal the sick in that town, and say: The Kingdom of God has come up on you.
St Luke 10.9