Praying for sick strangers doesn’t improve their prospects of recovering, according to a large, carefully designed study that casts doubt on the widely-held belief that praying for someone can help them heal.

 

The study of more than 700 heart patients, one of the most ambitious attempts to test the magical power of prayer, showed that patients who had people praying for them without their knowledge were no less likely to suffer a major complication, or end up back in the hospital, or die.

 

While skeptics of prayer welcomed the results, other researchers questioned the findings, and proponents of prayer maintained God’s influence can’t be scientifically validated.  (Stein, Rob, “Study Casts Doubts on Prayer’s Power”, Washington Post / Grand Rapids Press, 15 July 2005, Page A 3.)

                                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                

I have several reactions to this article. The first is that it is pretty silly for any of us to be trying to scientifically validate anything about God, or even sillier to argue about the results of our studies.  That could be reason enough to suggest that I should just stop talking about this article. 

 

My second reaction is that, at a minimum, let me be very careful in what I say -- and you, very careful in what you hear.  Let us not read into this more than we see here.   

 

With all of that, this is what is fascinating to me.  This article (and perhaps the study) seems to assume that God is kind of a magical power, just waiting for our commands, as if we were magicians; a power that we can tap into when we want to do something heroic. 

 

The study finds that prayer did not seem to make a difference for those who didn’t know they were being prayed for.  That seems to me to proceed from a premise that if there is a difference, it will be associated with what we do and what we want to happen.  Our culture (and we are all a part of this) has defined God’s relationship with us in simplistic, self-centered, and individualistic terms.  Our culture encourages us to think that God will miraculously intervene when we decide that we want it to be so.  Miracles are real and important, but they’re God’s doing.  And “God’s doing” deteriorates into magic when we think that if we pray enough, or loud enough, or get enough people to pray with us (and if we have enough volume), then we’ll be able to force God into doing what we want. 

 

I don’t think this study proves too much -- certainly it doesn’t even address what prayer is -- that’s a whole other subject.  I think the only thing this study may prove is that prayer is not about magic.  We were not able -- at least in these 748 instances -- through prayer, without their knowing it, to make God heal people just because we decided it should be so.

 

The theological issue here is Providence, and that’s about God’s activity in the world and God’s presence in our lives, whether we know it or not, as we move from one experience to another.  Providence is about God’s spirit in the world, and in us, to have the strength to get through the pain.  It’s not about magical healing or anything like it; it’s about God’s faithfulness to us, even when we can’t believe it or don’t know about it.  And here’s the story of Joseph, and its focus in Verse 8, "So it was not you who sent me before you, but God.”

 

The Hebrew scripture reading today from Genesis is toward the end of the Joseph story.  This is the book of stories, of origins, of ancestors, and of the beginning of our faith history.  It is told through the stories of the families of the patriarchs -- at least partly because they are so much like us, like every family.  We understand them; we get the point about jealousy, or generosity, (and everything in between), and God’s presence in the middle of it all. 

 

The only really good way to review the story of Joseph is to actually sit down for an hour or so and read all 13 chapters -- there’s still a quarter of the story after this chapter.

 

*Joseph, the spoiled favorite son of his father Jacob (last week’s reading was eight chapters ago), was hated by his brothers so much that they sold him as a slave to traders who took him to Egypt and convinced their father that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.

 

*Joseph was the bright and quick-witted one (handsome and good-looking) who used his charm and his skills to become a useful slave to Potiphar, the Egyptian captain of the guard, and became the “overseer” of the whole household; he was definitely on his way up until the whole seduction episode with Potiphar’s wife and Joseph ended up in prison.

 

*Joseph was the dreamer and interpreter of dreams.  He was a channel of divine communication in that society.  He told his family that they would all bow down to him.  His insight helped Pharaoh’s wine steward get his job back, got Joseph out of prison, into the throne room, and a position right next to Pharaoh when Joseph interpreted his dreams about seven years of plenty that would be followed by seven years of drought, crop failure, and famine.

 

*Joseph was the Prime Minister of Egypt with the power to control everything, including the whole series of interchanges with his brothers who came to Egypt to buy food, and then we get to this scene of unbelievable reunion, especially between Joseph and Benjamin. 

 

For perhaps 15 years or more, the family has been in mourning for Joseph, pretty much forced on them by their father.  They believed that Joseph couldn’t possibly be alive, but they knew the truth and that they had done it -- now Joseph is reborn right in front of their eyes.

 

In the middle of this rebirth scene is the strong principle (the point of the whole story I think -- after all it is repeated three times) in Verses 5, 7, and 8:  “So it was not you who sent me here, but God.”

 

The story teaches us, with so many of the details like those right out of our own stories, that God’s presence in our lives is about helping us get through it -- whether slavery and prison for Joseph, or heart disease for those in the study -- not to prevent it, nor simply to fix it just because we would like to make things easy for ourselves or others around us.  The whole universe belongs to God; it’s the Genesis story; and things, good and bad, happen in that universe; that’s also the Genesis story, and God is present in every corner of the universe and in the lives of the people in it.  That too, is the Genesis story.

 

Now let me bring you back to the New Testament perspective, to the New Testament lenses we started with this morning.  God is not magical, but God doesn’t do this alone, in isolation, either. 

 

This is the really good news.  At the core of the gospel, at the very center of our faith -- this is where we understand some of why Christ is so important.  II Corinthians 5:  17 -- 20 says, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; like Joseph, there is a rebirth.”  All this is from God who reconciled us to God’s self through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to God’s self, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”

 

I think that reconciliation is one of the most powerful images of our faith.  God created.  Evil entered the creation.  And God is in the process of reconciling the whole universe.  It’s also described in the New Testament as moving toward “all-in-all” -- a tremendous unifying of everything in God.  It’s way too big an idea to get our minds around it.  But our individual stories help us to begin to understand it.

 

Reconciliation is much more than simply fixing two broken things.  It’s more like bonding things together.  Many of you have had broken bones.  When they are set and they heal, the bond, the healing itself, is stronger than the bone was before the break.

 

Reconciliation is about synergy.  The ingredients amplify each other like musical instruments or a chorus.  The individual voices are multiplied into a tapestry of sound that is much more than the sum of its parts.

 

                                                                                                                                 God reconciling us means that we are brought together, becoming part of the new creation -- the “rebirth” if you will -- we are brought to a place we’ve never been before.  We are a new relationship -- one that couldn’t have happened without us being brought together.

                                                                                                                                

And we are the ones who are called by God to bring that reconciliation to each other and those around us -- not through some magical ritual that we use to try to manipulate God, but through our living out the reconciliation that God has given us. 

 

Here’s another one of those public policy principles that are all throughout the gospel.  Apply this to any social justice issue -- crime, poverty, homelessness, national security -- what is the reconciling approach? 

 

We cannot simply fix the results of slavery and racism in this country, but we can bring each other together into relationships along with our pain and desires and experiences so as to move us with strength and creativity into the future. 

 

What is our role in this country and our society in the rivalries and conflicts and wars around the world?  We who are individual voices in this country are ambassadors of the unifying power of God.  The Christian calling is a radical demonstration of God’s love, involved in and influencing our society, (where, for example, and regardless of politics); it calls us all beyond war, and terror, and empire, and even beyond making the world safe for democracy.”  This is God’s world and we are ambassadors of God’s reconciliation in it.  That should mean something for how we live our lives and how we structure our society.

 

But for me, the power of this principle is most immediately lived out in the ministry of people of faith -- that’s been true for me, with the Grand Rapids Area Center for Ecumenism, for many years, all over this community, including with this congregation.  That has become so much clearer and important to me in these past few months as I’ve been able to work with and among you.  I see us, Westminster, using a reconciling approach with each other -- it’s wonderful -- being inclusive, paying attention to, caring for, and challenging each other in a hundred ways.  And the process produces the strength and the bond that helps us all get through the difficulties as they come.

 

At its very simplest, reconciliation is all of us, around a round table, no sides, one body, all of us, member and non-member, visitor, neighbor --hundreds of neighbors every month, along with the volunteers (just in the pantry alone), deacons, and other members quietly going about making sure others are okay and get what they need; dozens of young people in all kinds of settings; scores of people family camping -- all of us, bringing our own distinctive gifts into the conversation, adding them all up so that the result is a congregational relationship and ministry that is far more than we could have imagined -- far more than if we had left all the pieces on some kind of list or if each of us worked at separate tables in little rooms isolated from each other.  Individuality is not ignored; but it is used for the sake of the whole -- God entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

 

God is not some kind of magical power and doesn’t wait around for us to determine what action God should take or demand what God should do.  Nor is God doing things somewhere out there with no relationship to anything or anyone.  God sent Joseph, the story says, and then the story goes on to great lengths to show how faithful and active Joseph was in being true to that call.

 

It is God’s world, God’s presence, in Christ, and God’s work of reconciliation; it is God leading, pulling, pushing, and tugging in our lives; but we always realize God’s activity through our relationships with other people and in how we act toward each other and are treated by each other.  And that, too, is a Genesis story; it is the New Creation story.  It is God’s story; it is God’s intention and invitation for you to see yourself in the middle of it.

 

In the name of God:  Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.