Thinkaloud

Thinkaloud by John Coutts

Praying for healing

FOR family reasons, many friends have been praying for me and my wife. I am truly grateful. Their concern certainly helps to reduce my stress. But does it do anything more? Does prayer for the sick provide anything better than a spiritual morale boost? I think it does, even if I don’t know how.

SEEKING HEALING THROUGH SAINTS

St Albans Abbey, which stands 20 miles north of London, commemorates and celebrates the first Christian martyr of Britain, put to death for his faith in Roman times. The abbey was my school chapel and on Friday mornings I would sit in the huge nave and wonder at the great pillars with their faded medieval paintings.

I would sometimes wander round the abbey and gaze at the battered remains of Alban’s shrine, which attracted pilgrims throughout the Middle Ages. They came in needy faith, often seeking healing, until the shrine was smashed as a monument of superstition at the Reformation in the 16th century.

The abbey authorities rebuilt the shrine some years ago and have now also restored the smaller shrine of St Amphibalus, the priest Alban allegedly helped to escape when Roman soldiers came to seize him. The restoration took place during the Covid-19 pandemic and, to mark the occasion, the restorers added an extra detail: one of the carved figures on the reconstructed monument is wearing a face mask.

HEALING IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

Sadly, it seems that the cult of St Amphibalus was a fundraising fraud. His alleged remains were conveniently ‘rediscovered’ in the 12th century and the name Amphibalus is thought to be a misreading of a Latin word meaning ‘cloak’. So pious pilgrims of that time entrusted their prayers and donations to this fictitious ‘St Cloak’.

Many then would have attributed their diseases to attacks by evil spirits. Some people today still do. When cholera broke out in Zambia in 2017 the churches’ response was divided. The government minister for religious affairs and national guidance called for nationwide prayer and fasting. Some churches backed the call, while others pointed out that cholera was due to unhealthy living conditions and lack of clean water and not a demonic issue. Pointing to sanitary arrangements prescribed for the ancient Israelites in Deuteronomy 23:9–14, the theologian Jonathan Kangwa discusses some of the implications of these events for Christians worldwide. Zambian Christians, he notes, were called on to ‘pray with wisdom, so that we can eliminate this problem quickly’.

PRAYING WITH WISDOM... BUT HOW?

Testing the medical effects of prayer can be tricky. Can it be right to pray for patients in Ward A while ignoring those in Ward B? An article in The Indian Journal of Psychiatry summarises numerous studies of prayer and reports uncertainty about the results.

The medical profession is divided on this but Dr Pamela Wartian Smith, the founder of the Fellowship in Anti-Ageing, Regenerative and Functional Medicine, has said: ‘Prayer is one of the greatest stress reduction techniques. Prayer helps you let go and let God – whatever religion you may be.’

LOVING THOUGHTS

For me, prayer is loving thought, directed to and through God. And so, in praying for sick people and those who care for them, we link up with a circuit of supernatural love. As we pray in love, we ask that skilled medical care may be provided in love as well.

We are not, I believe, asking God to cast out demons, because every advance in the scientific understanding of disease is a new reading in God’s book of nature.

PILGRIMS IN PRAYER

The souls who sought the help of the dodgy St Amphibalus were really asking for direct action by God. Nowadays most of us – in the West at least – seek God’s help in healing illness through the skill and service of medical professionals. But what are we asking for? Restoration to good health? Strength to face our inevitable ends? ‘Wise prayer’ on behalf of John Coutts the schoolboy would be very different from wise prayer for me today. Do we still hope for miracles in the strict sense of the term – acts of God, transcending ordinary events?

Please share your thoughts, because I’m still searching.

Look how the whole woLook how the whole wo

Major Malcolm Martin considers two events that divided opinion about Jesus Major Malcolm Martin considers two events that divided opinion about Jesus

JOHN 12:1–19

ACCOUNTS of Jesus being anointed by a woman and entering Jerusalem on a donkey are found in all four Gospels. The differences and similarities between the depictions of these events often reflect the aspects of faith that the Gospel writers seek to emphasise. John frequently focuses on how people actively respond to Jesus, as a means of illustrating whether they merely see a miraculous teacher or genuinely believe in a Saviour.

EXTRAVAGANCE

Anointing an honoured banquet guest with perfume was not unusual, but the degree of extravagant devotion exhibited by Mary clearly made this a memorable event. The abundant quantity of perfume could have allowed the anointing to extend from the head (see Mark 14:3) to the feet, where Mary wiped the excess off with her hair. Her act of humility foreshadows the way in which Jesus later wipes the feet of his disciples (see John 13:5).

This act has been viewed by some as scandalously intimate, associating unbound hair with loose morals, and the whole scene does suggest allusions to the love poetry of Song of Songs, incorporating feasting, fragrance and mutual devotion. But an unmarried woman, such as Mary, might well have worn her hair loose or lightly bound, so any scandal primarily stems from the extravagance of her actions. Unbound hair was also often associated with grief and this is certainly the connection that Jesus makes when he refers to his burial in verse 7.

QUESTION

‘The house was filled with the fragrance’ (v3). What acts of gratuitous devotion might saturate the world today, bringing fullness of life for all?

EXUBERANCE

Some within the crowd that then forms appear to have been motivated partly by the desire to gawp at Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead, but even this imperfect motivation serves as a means of drawing them towards deeper faith. The next day, their numbers are further bolstered by the great throng of enthusiastic pilgrims visiting Jerusalem for the festival – a period when the population of the city might double or treble in size.

The waving of palm branches and their shouts of praise echo the similarly triumphant entry to the city made by Simon, the brother of Judas Maccabeus, in 141BC. The use of a donkey, however, is a clear demonstration that Jesus is to be praised as an envoy of peace rather than a military victor. The crowd acclaims this vision of peaceful and tolerant kingship, which is in stark contrast to the oppressive use of power that would have

Through the week with Salvationist

– a devotional thought for each day

by Major Sheila Smith

SUNDAY

Lo! he comes with clouds descending,/ Once for favoured sinners slain;/ Thousand thousand saints attending,/ Swell the triumph of his train;/ Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!/ God appears on Earth to reign. (SASB 260)

MONDAY

One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding round him and listening to the word of God… He got into one of the boats … sat down and taught the people from the boat. (Luke 5:1–3)

TUESDAY

Every eye shall now behold him/ Robed in dreadful majesty;/ Those who set at naught and sold him,/ Pierced and nailed him to the tree,/ Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,/ Shall the true Messiah see. (SASB 260)