21.10.2019
Ministry of Healing Celebrated at Annual Service
There was a celebration of the Ministry of Healing at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, yesterday (Sunday October 20). The annual diocesan service of the Church’s Ministry of Healing took place in the context of Choral Evensong sung by the Cathedral Choir and led by Dean Dermot Dunne.
The preacher was the Rector of Clontarf, the Revd Lesley Robinson, who spoke about the life–changing power of healing based on Luke 8: 43–48, which talks about Jesus healing the woman with the haemorrhage.
She observed that Luke tells the reader about Jesus’s visit to Galilee, his entourage and the huge crowds that came out to see him. In the midst of this Luke tells the story of the woman with the haemorrhage who touches Jesus’s clothes and is immediately healed.
The preacher said that the story was about much more than healing. The woman had suffered for 12 years and while the exact implications of bleeding for so long were not known, Scripture tells that a woman who was bleeding was seen as unclean, defiled and would not have been allowed to worship in the temple, she reminded the congregation.
“She would have been kept outside the embrace of God. She should not have been in the streets with those crowds in case she defiled someone. She sneaked in under the radar and touched this man’s cloak. She was discovered but she got the healing she so desperately craved. She received his blessing of peace and was called ‘daughter’. So in a sense, Jesus restored life to her in much the same way as Jesus restored life to Jairus’s daughter a little later on,” Ms Robinson explained.
Comparing the stigma of the woman with the stigma felt by people who struggle with their mental health, she said that although things had got better and people were encouraged to talk, people feared revealing their mental health struggles. One in four people struggle with their mental health and one in 10 children experience difficulties, she stated adding that no one is immune to mental health issues.
“The Ministry of Healing seeks to meet people where they are. It seeks to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to all they meet… The Ministry of Healing is such a valuable part of the Church’s ministry and allows people to bring their troubles before the Lord knowing that they are loved and will be heard. He is present with that ministry because he has always been with the broken, the outcast, the unclean and the defiled,” she concluded.