by Strahan Coleman
(Based on Matt 9:35-10:23; Rom 5:1-8)
There is a difficult tension in today’s readings for me, and if I’m honest, I’ve dreaded speaking to it this week.
On one hand we have in Matthew Jesus’s command to his disciples to go out into all the villages of Judea and heal the sick, raise the dead, set the demonic free and proclaim that ‘the kingdom of heaven is near.’ A powerful story of Christ’s authority and power over all that ails us in this life.
When I read this passage it sounds to me that the church is an unstoppable force, fully equipped with spiritual power to rid the world of suffering and that our main priority is getting out there and simply doing it.
Something that’s been very difficult for me these last years due to the effects of constant illness.
On the other hand, we have the author of Romans exhorting us to “rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that it produces endurance, character and hope.”
One says to rid the world of suffering, another seems to embrace it.
How do I reconcile those two things?
When Katie and I first got married, she was unwell. In fact, she had very similar symptoms to what I’m experiencing now. Her body was hyper-sensitive to certain foods, she suffered after meals and spent nights curled up on the couch. Like me, she did elimination diets and the rest but no matter how hard we tried to stamp it out, it would never go away. We were getting desperate.
We were part of a pentecostal community at the time and she was up on every altar call for healing prayer at camps and events. She even went to the famous evangelist and healer Benny Hinn one night to cry out for three hours at Vector Arena with thousands of others to be healed. Nothing.
We were desperate for answers, for healing. Where was God?
One day we decided to visit a friend’s church. They told us that the pastor was a powerful pray-er and we should see him. After the service we were introduced and we told him about Katie’s illness. We didn’t say much before he began to share what he saw; turns out he had a prophetic gift. He described Katie’s upbringing, her family and her deepest longings and internal fears as if he’d known her his whole life. He didn’t lay hands on her. He didn’t pray for her. He just prophesied.
Katie said it was like God’s light broke through into the darkness within her. She felt in that moment she was healed. And she was.
On the drive home from church that day we got her a Wendy’s burger and she ate it without any pain or effects. She’s been 100 per cent healed ever since. Never a problem.
It was a miracle. It was the church continuing Christ’s command to clear the way for healing in Matthew. In that season of our lives, Jesus’s commandment to do the miracle stuff felt accessible and utterly plausible.
But less than ten years later, the same thing happened to me. I did the same, cried out to God, went to all the doctors, sought healing in the church. I’ve done numerous deliverance sessions, multiple repentance sessions, I’ve fasted, I’ve paid huge amounts of money on drugs and doctors, I’ve met with the priests at St Francis for healing prayers and had a small group praying for me every day for the last eight months.
No healing. Just suffering.
For ten years now my body has continued to become more sick amidst my prayers for healing, my desperation for freedom. That illness has taken its toll not only on me but on my children, who have experienced less than the best of their dad, and my wife, who has had to carry the extra weight.
Days and nights of fatigue, nausea, body pains, migraines and mental health wrestling, osteoporosis; and that’s to say nothing of the opportunities I’ve missed out on as a professional man. I’ve lost tours, albums, conference and travel opportunities. This has been a great cause of suffering in my life.
No Christ-sent evangelist has been able to heal me.
Matthew now feels far from my experience.
And yet, I’ve seen God heal the very same thing in my own wife in my own lifetime. What do I do with that?
How do I reconcile these things – my suffering, and Christ’s command to heal?
To look at that question another way, I want to turn to another profound story in the life of Jesus, in Luke 18:35-41. It reads…
As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.”
He called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
“Lord, I want to see,” he replied.
Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
For years, this puzzled me. It seemed offensive. Jesus is talking to a blind beggar who is crying out to him for help. It seems harsh, offensive and unloving to ask this poor desperate man what he wants. It’s obvious to anyone looking!
But I’ve come to see something far deeper and more profound taking place. Jesus is searching for something, testing the waters, giving the blind man an opportunity to see in more ways than one.
I wonder if there were actually three ways the blind man could have responded:
Firstly, he can ask for the obvious, his most immediate needs, his sight. Which he does. This is crucial and God cares deeply about it. We should never spiritualise life to the point where the necessities don’t matter. This is exactly what Jesus sends his disciples out for and Christ longs to heal. This request is external and temporal though. The healing of his body heals one illness, not all. There’s a deeper invitation to be found …
Secondly, the blind man could ask for forgiveness. The disease beneath all our diseases is our broken connection with God. Christ came to heal not only the body but the soul, which is why at other times he says it’s one and the same thing to say you’re healed as you’re forgiven. This request of God is internal, it’s existential and has consequences for his entire life. It’s the healing beneath the healing and Christ longs for the world to seek him for it. But, maybe there’s a deeper invitation still in Christ’s question, ‘what do you want?’
And that’s for us to say, “you, Jesus, more than anything, I want you”. That he longs for us to want him and his presence, union and intimacy with the God who made us, more than physical healing and even beyond just making things right. This is a longing of desire, it’s personal, it’s about reconciliation. It’s love beyond brokenness, friendship with God, union. This is a much harder question because it’s eternal, it’s ongoing, it’s relational and often the way God answers this prayer is very different to the healing of the first response for physical healing.
It’s to this last response that I believe the writer of Romans is speaking when he says, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame…“
Or as James also puts so succinctly in his letter to the church in exile, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything.” (James 1:2-3)
Our suffering matures and completes us, says James. Suffering helps us in the long journey, the journey toward a faithful love and experience of Jesus not just now but through to the end. It’s not an obstacle, it’s a gift.
Note that James doesn’t say God causes it, and only verses later he encourages us to pray for and expect healing, and for God to answer our prayers. That’s the tension here between Matthew and Romans – we go out and pray for miracles while simultaneously embracing the suffering that comes when they don’t happen.
What we do find here is a place for suffering in the unifying of our souls with divine love. And it’s here that I find myself in today’s readings. Because, yes, I want to be healed, so badly. But when I sit with Jesus and he asks me, “what do you want”, my answer is almost never healing, but, “you, Lord, whatever it takes”. And I feel myself being invited to simply pray, “Not my will but yours be done.”
I’m not trying to construct a theology of suffering, just my response to my experience of it. I still don’t know how to reconcile Christ’s promise of healing with my ongoing unanswered prayer for it. What I can say is that my illness has drawn me into God’s presence and love in ways I know my wellness couldn’t have. It has built character, endurance and profound hope. It’s been a source of joy as it’s allowed me to suffer with Christ in a small way and to know his pain and the pain of the world. It’s limitations have humbled me, shown me God. I am deeper with Christ because of my suffering. He has become my total treasure. The world has dimmed in appeal and the longing for eternity has sharpened. If not for my suffering, I couldn’t grasp the depth of God’s compassion for me, and the pain of Christ’s life and death.
But we choose what outcome our suffering has. If we don’t rejoice in it as an experience that equips us with the character, hope and endurance we need … if we can’t see it serving us in profound ways for the long journey of full engulfment into Christ … it will break us. To that also, I can speak from experience..
But if we’re open enough to continue to pray for healing while at the same time relenting to God’s good love in saying, ‘not my will but yours be done’, we will overcome death and experience the profound joy of Christ, now.
I think, in not healing me, as painful as it’s been, God has answered the prayer beneath my prayer for healing. My prayer for union with him. I’ve come to feel I can say (and I think I’m with the writers of Romans, James, Hebrews and many others in this) that: It is a great and holy thing when God answers our prayer for healing. And it can be even greater when he doesn’t.
Friends, whatever your suffering, suffer with Christ. Hold fast, stay the course. You’re receiving eternal life.
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