By Reverend Laurie DeMott

And everyone crowded near him wanting to know the healing that Jesus offered.

Jesus was a healer. In the first century healers were not uncommon: walking about the streets of a ancient city, you would often encounter healers performing miraculous cures or selling marvelous elixirs to treat everything from warts to cancer. In the gospels, about a third of the stories we have of Jesus tell of his healing power, and yet Mark draws a sharp distinction between the healing power of Jesus and that of the local practitioner. Jesus heals not by magic, Mark tells us, but by the authority of God. When the woman with a hemorrhage touches Jesus' robe and it looks like she has been healed through some sort of magical power flowing through the cloth into her body, Jesus immediately stops and corrects the crowd's perception. He says that the woman has not been cured through magic, but because of her faith in his authority. Through Jesus, Mark says, the people could pray for healing and their prayers would touch the very power of God.

The gospels tell us that Jesus was a healer, and yet in the modern day church no issue causes us more angst than the issue of healing and prayer.

"How shall we pray?" we ask. We know so much today about pathogens and genetics and the workings of the cells that we are no longer certain of what God can do versus what modern medicine can do. We're not sure whether God can undo the cellular spasms that cause tumors, or knit together blood vessels that have ruptured and we're afraid that if we pray, "God, fix it," and God doesn't fix it, we'll be left clumsily explaining why God has ignored our prayers. We don't like the theological tangle of trying to figure out why God blessed one person with survival while another person endured an agony of pain before succumbing to the cancer. Nor do we want to burden the sick with the implication that if only they had enough faith, they would get better and so somehow their illness is their own fault. Honestly, we would be okay with praying for healing if the people we prayed for always got better, but when they don't, we don't know what to say or what to think and our uncertainty leaves us tongue-tied in prayer. Most of the time, we avoid the hard questions all together by sticking with things that can't be measured like "God, give them comfort and strength."

Yet while we are praying so carefully, the people for whom we pray pray with less caution. Ask any person who had been diagnosed with a serious disease what prayer they prayed the day of their diagnosis and they will say, "I prayed,`God, fix it! God, cure me. Arrest the disease, repair my body. I need you to fix it." They pray the yearning of their hearts, pleading with God, "O Lord, make me well."

What does the church have to say to those people, especially when "those people" may be us? How then shall we pray?

While the mainline church struggles to understand the proper way to pray for healing, ironically, the medical profession has increasingly begun to acknowledge the role of prayer and spirituality in physical healing. Columbia University, for example, has established the Rosenthal Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine which researches, among other things, the role of religious belief in healing. Studies by other medical professionals have investigated the effectiveness of prayer and the laying on of hands as part of the treatment options available to patients. Researchers have found that patients who engage in prayer and spiritual meditation often recover from surgery faster and easier than those who don't pray.

No one in the medical community is saying that prayer is a magical panacea but more and more doctors are recognizing that prayer has a serious role to play in the physical healing process.

So how then shall we pray?

I think that the answer to that question is -- it doesn't matter. What matters is that you pray, not what you say.

What matters is that you pray, not what you say.

You see, I don't believe that prayer is words, and I think that believing that prayer is words is what gets us all tangled up in knots. Because when we believe that prayer is words, we try to figure out what words are appropriate to pray as if the words of the prayer themselves are what have the power to effect a certain outcome.

Think, for example, of the times when someone you know is at the end of their lives: it is clear that they are not going to have a miraculous recovery and they are in a lot of pain. You know that continuing to pray for a cure feels hopeless and you realize that maybe it's better for the person to experience a peaceful end to their lives. How often have you said to somebody in those kinds of situations, "I'm not sure what to pray for anymore." Think about what that implies --

"I'm not sure what to pray for anymore."

What we are implying when we say that is that the very words we choose to pray will have an effect on the outcome of our prayer. Do we really think that God is sitting up in heaven with a tally sheet counting the number of people praying for a cure versus the number of people praying for a peaceful end and is going to decide the outcome based on the count? Or if you pray, "God, bring my husband safely home from his business trip," will God feel the freedom to strike your husband dead after he walks in the door because, after all, you only prayed that he get home safely and didn't think to mention anything about the hours following his arrival?

When we think about it in that way, it seems ridiculous. Believing that the content of our prayers -- the actual words we choose to say -- has the power to change people's fortunes for good or for ill puts prayer in the category of superstition. We might as well start believing that we need to not only use just the right words in our prayers, but we need to also wear our lucky t-shirt when we pray so that our prayers will have the power to cure people, bring peace to the world, and help the Yankees win the pennant.

But prayer is not a collection of words. We use language to pray because language is all we have but when it comes down to it, language is a clumsy vehicle for expressing the needs of the human soul. Words are mere attempts to express what we are asking for in prayer, and what we are really asking for -- what we really need -- is the presence of God and others. Prayer is presence, not words. In prayer we quiet the external physical world so that we can reach out to that which is beyond our senses. If our prayers are for others, then we move beyond our own concerns to be in spiritual union with the person for whom we pray, gathering that person's spirit close to ours. If our prayer is for ourselves, then our prayer moves us into the presence of God so that we can touch a love, a strength, and power infinitely deeper than our own. And is the presence that is healing -- sometimes physically, always spiritually.

It doesn't matter what you say; what matters is that you pray because in praying you become present with others and with God.

Knowing we are not alone is healing for both soul and body. In one of my favorite research experiments that I've probably mentioned before, researchers took two dogs, made a small incision on each, stitched up the incisions, and noted the number of days each took to heal. During the recuperation period, one dog was touched, petted, visited, and held regularly, while the second dog was left in isolation to heal. The first dog's wound healed significantly faster than the second dog's. Isolation, they concluded, hinders healing; loving presence helps healing. When we pray to God, we open ourselves to the incoming of God's presence and love so that God is able to be with us in our pain, in our fear, in our needs and our hopes, and that presence is healing spiritually and can be healing physically. It's the presence, that is important, not the specific words we use in the prayer. We can say, "God, I'm scared, stay by my side," or we can say, "God, fix it," and it doesn't really matter because the words are only clumsy expressions of our deep need. The words of our prayers should not be theological statements of what we believe about disease and faith, but seen merely as expressions of what is ultimately inexpressible in language. God does not hear your prayer as a marching order or as a doctrinal positions, but as a plea that says in whatever words you choose to use, "Please, God, don't leave me alone!"

Dr. Larry Dossey in his book Healing Words tells of a revered spiritual leader who "once asked a small group of listeners what they would say to a close friend who is about to die. Their answers dealt with assurances, words about beginnings and endings, and various gestures of compassion. The spiritual leader stopped them short. "There is only one thing you can say to give the deepest comfort," he said. "Tell your friend that in their death a part of you dies and goes with them. Wherever they goe, you will go also. Your friend will not be alone." 1

Prayer is not words; it is presence. It doesn't matter what words you say; what matters is that you pray. Pray in honesty. Pray all of your emotions. Pray your hopes, your fears, your deepest desires, and your struggles. Pray for wholeness. Pray for peace. Or pray that God fix it if that's the best way to express your fear. There are no right or wrong words that you can pray because prayer is not words. Prayer is our halting stumbling way of crying out in our loneliness, "God, be with me. God be with the one I love."

And when you pray with open hearts, God will come to you and assure you that you are not now, nor ever will be, alone. God is with you through it all, and in God's loving presence, you shall be made whole.
----------------------------------

1. Dossey, Healing Words, p. 209