A Service of Healing This Sunday

Aloha, Keawalaʻi ‘ohana, 

A Service of Healing will take place this Sunday at Keawala’i. Our healing service will feature the “laying on of hands” and the anointing with oil. Two “stations” of healing will be set up in the front of the church, as Auntie Edie will join me in offering a prayer for healing and the anointing with oil. All who desire healing in their lives, in body, mind, and spirit—whether it is healing for yourself, a loved one, or for our nation and the world— are invited to come forward to present yourself for healing in the name of Jesus.

This service of healing may be found in our UCC Book of Worship on pages 306-320. It has been offered before at Keawala’i, but not for a while. In speaking with Kahu Alika, he gave me a copy of a bulletin and a sermon from May 13, 2018, when he preached a sermon titled “You Are in the World,” and spoke at length about a member of Keawala’i named Keith Grant Cambell, who had died the previous week of chronic hypoxia and pulmonary hypertension. Many of you may remember Keith. Although I never had the honor of meeting him, Keith came alive for me in my reading of Kahu Alika’s sermon. On May 13, 2018, Kahu Alika proclaimed, “I will tell you that Keith was healed—not of the disease but of whatever sorrow and despair he may have experienced in his life; of the anxieties and fears that may have troubled him.”

In our Book of Worship, on page 306, we read these words:

“Services of healing have a biblical heritage appropriate for the full life of a local church. Anointing and laying on of hands are acts closely related to the covenant of faithful love between God and Israel and God and the church. In scripture, monarchs are anointed, prophets commissioned, the Holy Spirit conferred, the sick healed, and the dead raised in acts of faith accompanied by anointing of oil, the laying on of hands, or touch in another form. The symbolism of touch has survived almost universally among churches in the laying on of hands at confirmation and ordination. The power of touch in healing is finding renewed acceptance as is the unity of the total person…. In this healing service, four themes are intertwined: God’s word, growth in faith, forgiveness of sin, and human touch.

“In the New Testament, touch plays a central role in the healing ministry. The power of touch is recognized, whether in the anointing with oil, the laying on of hands, or the less formal gesture of holding someone’s hand or touching a wound. Jesus frequently touched others: blessing children, washing feet, healing injuries or disease, and raising people from death. Jesus also allowed himself to be touched, washed, embraced, anointed. To allow oneself to be touched is an act of openness. To touch another is an act of acceptance in which a person transfers something of oneself to another: love, affection, protection, strength, power, acceptance. Touch in the healing ministry embodies the embrace of God for the redeemed creation when in the mystery of last things God will make all things new.”

Beloved, come to church this Sunday if you desire healing. You may come for yourself, or you may come as a channel of God’s healing power for someone else. During the anointing, we invite all present to make silent prayers for each one who is seeking God’s healing.

Me ke aloha pumehana,

Kahu Gary Percesepe