A Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, 2006 ©
The Rev. Dr. Bill Doggett
Christ Church, Washington Parish 

We are finishing a month of exploration of healing: what it means to us, what it means to those who need it, what it means to God. 

So what are the first things that we ever learn about healing? 

“Show me where it hurts,” our parents say. Our early “owies” are treated with Band-aids and kisses. Oh, Bactine or soap may play its part, and of course amoxicillin is an important part of many a baby’s young life, but the two essentials are Band-aids and kisses. 

Band-aids, as every child knows, have healing powers far beyond their ability to stop a wound from bleeding – invisible wounds need Band-aids too. But kisses have a power which is greater even than Band-aids, greater and different. The power of Band-aids is essentially to cure, but the power of kisses is the power to heal. 

Kissing to make it better is very much like what the church does when we have prayers for healing. We don’t use actual kisses, but we use some olive oil that has been blessed as a symbol that God is kissing us to make us better. And we do it knowing that God will make it better. 

We know that sometimes Band-aids don’t help, or don’t help enough; that we sometimes need to use all the bigger Band-aids that God has given us: medicines, splints, casts, sutures, big, expensive machines, and, above all, doctoring and nursing, to help a person be cured. And no matter how many of those big Band-aids we need, the kisses are always important. It always matters for someone who loves us to touch and hold us and say, “all better.” 

And eventually, as you grow up, you figure out that sometimes everything we can do isn’t enough, and a person doesn’t get cured, and they either have to live with their illness, or else die. And that’s when the kisses matter most of all, because even when someone can’t be cured, they can still be healed. Even if our bodies are not perfect (and whose body is?), we are perfect in God’s eyes when we trust in God’s love. 

Before we finish, though, I want to talk a bit about another body that needs healing. I want to talk about Jesus’ body. 

Jesus’ body is here right now in two ways. When we share communion bread, we say that the bread is Jesus’ body. But when we do that, we do it to remind ourselves that we are Jesus’ body as well. Us. The church. 

Look around you and you are looking at the body of Jesus. And that is the body that is in need of healing. Because Jesus’ body is not whole. It has missing parts. The parts it does have are separated from one another. (Don’t try too hard to picture that or it’s too gross!) 

And the big things that divide the churches from each other may be too big or else to silly to be easily fixed. But what we can pay attention to is the missing parts. Who’s not here with us? Who should be here who isn’t?  

Think of the people who you most wish were sitting next to you. What could you do to get them here? Jesus’ body won’t be whole until they are.  

Nad then (and this is the hard part) think of the person you are most glad isn’t sitting next to you. Jesus’ body won’t be whole until that person is here too. What could help bring that person here?  

God’s people need many things to be whole the way God wants us to be. Most of all, God needs us to decide to be the Band-aids and kisses that will heal the body of Jesus, and to begin to make the world “all better.”