“They brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons… And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons.” Ah, wouldn’t it be nice to have been back then with Jesus.  That’s some kind of health care, right there! You have a bad back? Go see Jesus. Bronchitis, allergies? Run down and see Jesus. Cancer, heart disease? No problem. He’ll heal you.

We hear how healing in Jesus’ ministry was very important and He did it often, so what about us?  Everyone of us in this room probably knows someone who is sick, who is battling cancer, heart disease, the ravages of old age.  What about us?  Did Jesus just close up shop and stop all the healing?  Brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus comes today with healing.

Our Gospel reading for today continues on from last week’s, where on the Sabbath day, after He had taught in the synagogue and healing a man with an unclean spirit, Jesus continued on to the house of Simon and Andrew, where they come across Simon’s mother-in-law, who had a fever.  Jesus goes to her, took her by her hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them. 

This is the same type of thing that Jesus does to us. God descends with heavenly power and brings healing. He takes His people by the hand, lifts them up, to be in service to our neighbor and to Him. He uses Dr., nurses, science, intellect to help bring physical healing to those in the world.  Yet, Jesus brings healing today that is much more complete, much more permanent, and much more restorative. Jesus comes today with healing, for as He says in Mark 2:17, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”  

Sinners we are in need of healing.  It is because of this very fact that healing lies at the very center of the Church’s ministry, for in these ways Jesus reveals Himself as the Son of God. The very purpose of the Church is to bring God’s healing to the world to overcome the rift between God and humanity which is caused by our sin and leads that death, to reveal to the world that this Jesus is the Son of God.  This is achieved for us when Christ comes to us with healing, when we become one with Him and with one another as the body of Christ. Everything that we do as the Church, all our sacramental and liturgical life, all our teaching, is directed at restoring the proper relationship between God and creation, which has been corrupted through our sinfulness. Isaiah 53:5, “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.”

In Baptism, Jesus leads us to abandon our own life in which we were under the sway of sin and death, and enter into a new life, where sin and death have been defeated. In Baptism, we enter into a new relationship with God in which sin, sickness, and death no longer dominate. We become children of God, heirs of the Kingdom, members of Christ’s body, the Church. This new relationship is to endure forever, and neither sickness nor death can destroy it. Baptism, therefore, is the sacrament of healing, a healing aimed at the whole person, body, soul, and spirit, in which your sins are forgiven and the life of Christ bestowed.

The sickness and death which once ruled our lives are defeated by Christ and the eternal Kingdom of God is now opened to you. The brokenness of our human existence is abolished as we are incorporated into the Church, the Body of Christ, through which we are saved. We are no longer left to live out our lives alone, to suffer and die a meaningless death. Rather, in the Church, our suffering and death become a means to victory, following in the footsteps of Christ, His death on the cross and His resurrection. Through Baptism, we are healed, and we are charged to bring this healing ministry to the world around us: to our family, to our neighbor, to all whom we encounter.

While Baptism is the means by which we become members of the Church, the Body of Christ, the Sacrament of the Altar is the means by which this membership is realized and continues to be lived out. We are brought from the font to the Altar. We are the Church precisely when we gather together, Sunday after Sunday, to celebrate the mystery of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection on our behalf. In the Sacrament, we not only remember these events, but we become partakers of Christ’s body and blood, receiving His grace “for the healing of soul and body.” Our sickness and our sin drives us to the medicine of eternal life.  This isn’t “take a pill and call me in the morning” kind of issue.  While we still live in this sinful and fallen world, we need this medicine on a regular basis.

As the result of this healing which we have, how can we not be like Peter’s mother-in-law, who simply got up and began to serve.  To serve the Lord and to serve one another.  Not because she has to, but because that is who she is.  She has been healed, lifted up by Christ, and the opportunity to serve is there.  How do you serve them?  By being a good husband, and a good wife. By being a good neighbor.  By telling Jesus about others who are sick and suffering, so that through they too might receive the same medicine, the same healing as we have.  To take the message of Christ into the world. 

As the body of Christ, we are to do what Christ does, to go where our head turns. We are to take the hands of those sick in this world, sick with fevers, or simply sick with sin.  Bringing them the mercy of Christ and the healing that He gives as the ushers in the reign of God, in the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ. Amen.