I believe in miracles

One day Jesus called together his twelve apostles and gave them power and authority to cast out demons and to heal all diseases. Luke 9:1 (NLT)

Jesus did not take the apostles through 4 years of medical school and three years of internship and then send them out on the road to heal the sick as physicians. There were physicians in those days of the first century as there are physicians today in the twenty-first century, trained to the best of known science of healing. Instead, Jesus gave his apostles power and authority from the Father God to evict the demons and to heal the diseases in those who received the Good News of the coming of Kingdom of God.

It is amusing that people spend so much time and energy arguing over the existence of God since the dawn of human consciousness. We have been wondering a long time about our self-understood loneliness, pondering our uninvited awareness of our unique existence, lamenting our unquenchable sadness of inevitable mortality. We so much wish that we can believe in God, we so much wish that we can believe in heaven, we so much wish that we can believe in eternity. We question God's existence because we are afraid, though we can scarcely prove that we ourselves exist. Most of us like to take it for granted that we exist just because we do, or we think, or we hurt, or we love, or we die. But we have no proof that any of this is real, any more than we can prove that God exists just because he does, or that he must, or that he might as well, or that he matters not. Maybe it is a flaw of our scientific language that we must believe in God as a real being, as we believe in the number one as a real number, in order that we may be able to compute the rest of our scientific universe.

Let me say then, it really does not matter if you believe in God or not, his existence that is. As you see in Jesus' discourse with his disciples, that question never came up seriously. More important are questions of obedience, of faith, of forgiveness, of hope, of righteousness, of love, of sacrifice. Especially in the presence of Jesus the Master, the Son of Man / Son of God, whose existence no one ever doubted, the question was constantly and persistently asked of the disciples: Do you believe in Jesus who you see, not God who you do not see?

So, I believe in miracles. And I mean real, honest to goodness, old-fashioned miracles, the kind that few modern saints actually believe in any more. People talk about common occurrences as miracles because they evoke a sense of wonder in the beholder, such as a new-born baby, a new sprouting plant, a beautiful sunrise/sunset, a man falling in love with a woman, etc., etc. People talk about modern medical inventions and discoveries as miracles in that we can now do what we were not able to do even a generation ago, such as transplant kidneys and hearts, resuscitate the dead, kill infections, modify psychosis, control pain, cure cancer, reorganize genes, etc., etc. People also like to say that faith in any form, faith in religions, or icons, or signs, or idols, or doctors, or medicines, or incantations, or oneself, etc., etc. all help increase the effectiveness of healing processes. But I am not talking about any of these. These are down-graded uses of the mighty miracle word. Miracle is a power word in the gospels.

I believe in miracle healing. Miracle healing is by definition unbelievable, beyond our common belief, over the top of our common sense, not to be expected by ordinary measures. Miracle healing only happens when all else has failed, when all manner of known therapy has been exhausted, when all hope has been abandoned, when all experts agree that no cure is forthcoming. When a doctor says it would take more than a miracle to heal this disease, when all medical experts agree that no known cure exists for this disease, when all of us including the most optimistic of us are finally convinced that all is lost, then it begins to make sense to talk about miracle healing, the healing of Jesus, the healing of the apostles. Miracle healing is not cheap, it cannot be practiced by every self-proclaimed faith-healer in heat, it does not work in the hands of anyone who decides to take up the task. Miracle healing is practiced by the chosen messengers of Jesus the healer, by those who are willing to bear the cross and pay the supreme price of obedience, by those who look not to themselves but to the master for the power and authority to forgive sins and to heal the sick.

I regret so called faith healers who defy God's good gift of modern medicine and pretend to heal those who are in need of immediate medical attention, or denigrate the benfits we have derived from so many powerful scientific inventions. We cannot go back to the dark ages of ignorance, when the earth was flat, childbirth was a curse, and viruses were evil spirits. However, we have not yet arrived at the age of total enlightenment, when all knowledge has been revealed, all secrets discovered, all limitations transcended, and humans have become immortal eternal celestial beings. There is still a large place for miracle healing, perhaps more than ever before in this day and age when we demand utter perfection and daily miracles from the hands of us physicians -- resulting from the deification of medical art in TV shows like ER and HOUSE, and endless litigation from unsatisfied customers.

This is not any different climate than that which buffeted the apostolic miracle-healers. And they were not even holding medical degrees. We must believe in miracles, you and I who have been given the privilege of healing our generation of diseases. Where our medical knowledge ends is where our faith begins, where our medicines run out is where our faith fills in, where our optimism reaches its limit of reason is where our hope engages its leap of serendipity. Miracle is when our learned hand whithers and our healing hand sprouts faith eternal. Yes, miracles still happen, and only happen when no one else believes anymore but humble you and me, who know our own weakness/limitation/infirmity as the best physicians on earth today.

I challenge my co-workers, physicians and psychologists who obey the Lord, who carry the cross, who sacrifice daily for their patients, to reach out our healing hand just a nanometer more and say ever so nano-quietly to the sick ones we touch -- in the name of Jesus, your sins are forgiven and your sicknesses are healed. And I guarantee you true miracles.

The Suffering Servant

Yet it was our sicknesses he carried; it was our diseases that weighed him down.... He was whipped, and we were healed. Isaiah 53:4-5 (NLT) All the spirits fled when he commanded them to leave; and he healed all the sick. Matthew 8:16-17 (NLT)

For the early disciples, healing of the sick was part and parcel of Jesus' teaching and ministry. Not only was the healing miraculous, it was authoritative. There were many miracle workers and healers in those days, but none had the authority that Jesus commanded. The disciples did not just marvel at the power that cast out demons and healed the sick; they were awestruck by the presence of a man who claimed dominion over heaven and earth. Much of what Jesus taught his disciples they did not understand at the time, but the sweeping sceptre of healing was quite obvious, and the attending talk of forgiveness of sin was nearly blasphemous. Fifty years later, when the first disciples recounted their precious walk with Jesus on earth to the children of faith facing severe persecution, they would remember vividly the commanding voice of the Lord's sacrificial lamb -- the suffering servant prophesied by Isaiah -- taking charge over the sin and sickness of the common people.



Today, nearly 2000 years after Jesus walked with his first disciples on earth, we are so acculturated in our commitment to scientific dogma that we understate the fundamental assumption of the scientific enterprise: science imposes the best available theories to explain the current collection of observed phenomena and known facts; but it cannot explain the unknown, or the unobserved, or the seemingly inexplicable phenomena we encounter in our common experience. It is well for the scientist to assume that future geniuses and divine serendipity will give rise to new theories that will in turn explain things that are un-explained for now; it is just as well for the Christian to assume that miracles continue to happen that defy our limited imagination and finite intellect demanding in us some measure of courageous faith and frivolous importunity.



We Christians who are physicians, after four years of rigorous medical training, would do well to pray fervently each and every time we lay our hands on our patients: pray for the power of the Most High to heal their diseases, and for the authority of the Almighty Judge to forgive their sin. This gift of mediation between the Lord and our patients is easily dispensed from our hands, yet unconscienably withheld for the most part by our spiritual timidity. Have we not dedicated ourselves to do our very best for our patients? Have we not promised ourselves not to withhold any good remedy that might prove effective to our patients? Have we not subscribed to the common practice of recommending a therapy when scientific experiments have demonstrated but a small advantage for its use? Why then are we so reluctant to wield our mighty sword of Christian faith over these human diseases?



For those of us Christians who believe in Jesus and are experienced in all things faithful in many different occasions in our own lives, we need no external proof for the power and effectiveness of our faith in healing. Scientific proof of such faith as ours is a contradiction in terms. Those who experiment in the relation of faith and health are laudable in their effort to demonstrate some mind/body connection in the realm of medical sciences. But we are dealing with our spiritual faith. Our faith does not yield to scientific proof or statistical manipulation. Our faith in Jesus is tautological, self-evident, internally valid. Our faith is in itself the proof and evidence, the self-fulfilling prophesy as it were. It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. Hebrews 11:1-2 (NLT)



I believe in concentrating on our faith and not on our diseases, embracing the promise of his forgiveness and not the guilt of our sin, looking to him who heals us and not to ourselves who succumbed to sicknesses. I believe in miracles -- not only those brought about by modern science, not only those brought about by human love, not only those brought about by all manners of folk and adjunctive therapies, but more specifically miracles commanded by our Lord Jesus himself through the hands of his servants -- miracles of healing by virtue of the suffering servant who was whipped in order that we may be healed.



Let us pray: Lord Jesus, I believe in your healing ministry. Take my hands and make them instruments of healing, so that I may lay my hands on the sick and heal them of their sicknesses as well as their sin. Amen