In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

We all know what healing is, right?  It’s “getting better,” right?  Those of us with specific physical, psychological, or emotional ailments can probably name the specific conditions that we would like to have healed.  All of us – when we’re suffering from a bout of the flu or a cold or a broken bone – know exactly how we want to get better.  We all know what healing is, don’t we?

Tradition has it that St. Luke was a physician.  Certainly, he knew what healing was, too.  Like all doctors and nurses throughout history, he undoubtedly knew the pleasure of seeing someone’s condition improve because of the treatment he prescribed.  But he also undoubtedly knew the frustration and disappointment of seeing his treatments fail . . . of perhaps not even knowing what treatment to try in the first place.  That’s when things get rough, isn’t it? . . . when a promised remedy doesn’t cure . . . or worse, when the healer doesn’t have any idea about how to make us whole again.  Many of us have a special adoration of the sciences and medicine – which do indeed offer us many wonders – but when science and medicine fail us, we may find the failure especially bewildering and frustrating . . . even enraging.  Because we fear that we may never be healed.

But . . . perhaps there’s more to healing than simply “getting better” as we usually mean that phrase.  As wonderful as it is to experience the kind of cure we normally associate with the word ‘healing’ . . . perhaps there’s even more to the word than we normally credit it as having.

I suspect that Luke came to understand this.  I suspect that this understanding led Luke to follow Jesus . . . and to write the Gospel that tells Luke’s version of Jesus’ story.  It’s a beautiful Gospel, isn’t it?  Without the Gospel of Luke we wouldn’t have so many stories we treasure:  Only through Luke do we know the story of young Mary singing the Magnificat and of old Simeon saying the Nunc Dimittis to the baby in his arms.  Only Luke tells us about John the Baptist’s birth and about the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks the night that Jesus is born.  Only Luke gives us the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.  Why?  Why do you think that Luke went to all this trouble?  Well . . . perhaps he wrote down the Good News he heard Jesus proclaim as a kind of medicinal treatment for those who receive it . . . a kind of medicine far better than any other Luke knew about.  Perhaps he wrote down the Good News so that we could hear it, too, and be healed by it . . . saved by it.

The preacher Barbara Brown Taylor[1] writes that she likes to think that Luke never resigned his job as a healer.  He just changed medicines.  Instead of prescribing herbs and spices, hot compresses and bed rest, he told stories with the power to mend broken lives and to revive faint hearts.  Instead of pills and potions, he carried words in his little black bag, words like “Weep no more,” “Do not be afraid,” “Your sins are forgiven,” “Stand up and walk.”  Taylor calls Luke’s medicine “Gospel medicine.”  This was Jesus’ medicine . . . medicine that works, strangely enough, through words.

It’s easy to miss, I know, but have you ever noticed that Jesus’ ministry is primarily a ministry of WORDS?  Oh yes, we all love the stories of the healings and the miracles, and probably tend to focus on them, but Jesus went to the poor and the prisoners, to the blind and the broken with the Good News of God’s Kingdom.  Jesus was anointed to PREACH, to PROCLAIM the Good News of release, and recovery, and sight, and liberty.  Oh yes, he usually got around to actually doing those things, but from the very beginning, his ministry was not so much a ministry of doing as it was a ministry of SAYING . . . of saying what God has done, what God is doing, what God will do.  Everything that happens in Jesus’ ministry happens after the proclamation and because of it . . . because it’s through the speaking of God’s Word that the world began . . . it’s through God’s Word that the world continues.  The world is created and nourished and healed by the strong medicine of the Gospel.

Luke knew this.  He knew the power of God’s Word . . . but only because he heard the Word proclaimed in the first place.  And he knew that the whole world was waiting to hear about the Word – about Jesus – too.  He knew this because Jesus said so.  Have you ever looked at what Jesus tells his disciples at the end of each of the Gospels?  Just before Jesus leaves them for the last time, he gives them some instructions . . . a commission. 

The Gospel of Matthew says that Jesus told his disciples, “Go therefore to all nations and make them my disciples . . . teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.  I will be with you always.”  Mark tells us that Jesus said something similar to the disciples, “Go to every part of the world, and proclaim the Gospel to the whole creation.”  In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells those fellows he walked with to Emmaus, “So you see, Scripture declares that [the Messiah’s] name is to be proclaimed to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.  You are to be witnesses to it all.”  And in the Book of Acts, just before the Ascension, Jesus says to his disciples, “You will bear witness for me in Jerusalem and throughout all Judea and Samaria, and even the in the farthest corners of the earth.”  John, of course, as in all things, tells the story differently from the other Gospels.  But, nevertheless, in Jesus’ last conversation with his disciples he prays to his heavenly Father, asking, “Consecrate them by the truth; your Word is truth.  As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. . . .  [And] it is not for these alone that I pray, but for those also who through their words put their faith in me.  May they all be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, so also may they be in us.”

It’s not so surprising, I suppose, that in the Gospel of John we hear about the power of the Word . . . after all, this Gospel begins with the Word . . . “In the beginning was the Word.  And the Word was with God, and was God.”  But the power of the Word is clear in all the Gospels.  The disciples are transformed into apostles – into those who are sent out – to preach, to teach, to witness, to proclaim the Good News of God in Jesus Christ.  Writing his Gospel, Luke was doing not simply what he was told to do, but what he knew he HAD to do.  For if he didn’t share the Word, how would others come to know the Good News?

It’s a simple truth, isn’t it?  But perhaps not one that we like to think about too much in relation to ourselves . . . even though we think of ourselves as followers of Christ.  Each time we renew our Baptismal Covenant, we are asked, “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”  And we answer, “I will, with God’s help.”  Just like the first apostles . . . just like Luke . . . we are called to preach and teach and witness and proclaim the Good News.  How else will others hear it?  How else will the world be healed?  But I suspect that this makes many of us a little bit uncomfortable.  After all, it sounds so . . . well . . . EVANGELICAL . . . with all the negative connotations many of us now associate with that word.  But, in the end, being evangelical is simply spreading the Good News.  And if the idea of spreading the Good News makes you uncomfortable, then perhaps you’re defining the job too narrowly.  There may be as many ways to spread the Gospel as there are people in the world.

When did YOU first hear the Good News?  HOW did you first hear it?  How did you get HERE?  What keeps you coming back?  How do you continue to hear the Good News in your lives?  How does healing happen in your lives?  Through an unexpected kindness?  Through a sincere apology?  Does healing happen through the gift of shared tears . . . shared laughter?  Does it happen through truth spoken in love?  Through welcoming a stranger?  There are all KINDS of ways to spread the Good News . . . but if the healing power of the Word is NOT shared, then we – and the world – will remain broken and unfulfilled. 

That preacher I mentioned earlier, Barbara Brown Taylor, points out that on the one hand, the Gospel is just a bunch of words:  “Weep no more,” “Do not be afraid,” “Your sins are forgiven,” “Stand up and walk.”  They are just words, and prescribing them to an ailing world seems as pointless as putting a band aid on a broken bone, or giving an aspirin to someone who’s dying.  But on the other hand, when we proclaim these words as GOSPEL – as the Good News of God in Jesus Christ – we say much, much more.  Then we say that these words belong to someone – to Christ – and that every time we say them Christ is present, speaking them with us, speaking them through us, so that we never speak them alone, and they never come back empty.  They dry tears and quench fears, they forgive sins and heal souls, they make true the Good News of God in Christ every time we speak them . . . every time we live them.

Every time we share the Good News, we take our places in the ancient relay of the faith, passing on the glad tidings we ourselves have heard from those who have gone before.  May we join together, you and me with that great cloud of witnesses, proclaiming the Good News . . .  healing the world and making it whole . . . one tiny word at a time.

Amen.

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