2 Samuel 7:1-14a Psalm 89:20-37 Ephesians 2:11-22 Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

On Thursday evening, on westbound 64 in Chesapeake, a car sped past police at a high rate of speed; the police gave chase; the car exited at Greenbrier Parkway.  Continuing at high speed, the car turned onto Crossroads Blvd where, running a red light, it T-boned a Honda carrying David Jones and Jennifer O’Connor.  David died at the scene; Jennifer died in route to the hospital. David was a life-long member of our sister Church of the Epiphany, currently serving on the vestry; Jennifer was the church register.  The young man who hit them has been charged with second-degree murder; family members report that he has suffered from PTSD due to two years in the Navy.

Our dear friends at Epiphany seek healing and peace.

Our world is hungry for healing and peace. 

I’ve shared before a deeply ingrained memory of our trip to Israel last year.  While in Bethlehem one evening, our guests were a Jewish father whose 14-year-old daughter had been the innocent victim of a Palestinian suicide bomber as she walked home from her neighborhood school.  This grieving father was accompanied by a Muslim woman whose young brother, having been a part of a group of teenage boys taunting and throwing rocks at Israeli policemen, was shot and killed by those police. 

This father and sister are crying out for healing and peace. 

Our children do not come into the world hating other children of different skin color, and nationality, and zip code.  They learn that from the adults who are responsible for their upbringing.  More and more of our children are finding it easier to get guns and drugs than to get help with their homework.  Children need strong authority figures and disciplinarians, someone to encourage them to pursue goals; where loving adults fail to provide this discipline, street gangs succeed.  Too few of our children know that they are beloved by God.

Our children are robbing and killing because they are desperate for healing and peace.

We don’t even seem to be able to share Facebook group pages without disintegrating into malicious polarization.

Where is God’s grace made present?  Where is God’s healing and peace?

King David aspired to build a house for God; David lamented to the prophet Nathan that he lived in a house of cedar while God resided still in a tent – temporary housing.  After years of nomadic existence, God had planted the people of Israel in safe lodging in Jerusalem, to be disturbed no more by evildoers and enemies.  In today’s lesson, responding to David’s concern for God’s “temporary housing,” Nathan brings King David the word of the Lord.  “The Lord will make you a house.”  For David’s kingship, this would not be a house of brick and mortar that David foresaw; the house of God would be God’s people with whom God would forever reside.  

Thus, God’s grace would not be confined to a house of stone; God’s grace would be forever and everywhere present in his healing and peace.

With the coming of Jesus Christ, the world began finding healing and peace.  Mark tells us of the return on the apostles from the missions to which Jesus had sent them.  It is significant that Mark refers to them as the apostles.  Returning from their missions as messengers of the healing and peace of Christ, Jesus and the apostles seek rest.  Yet, they find no rest.  Jesus has become known for his healing; wherever he goes, the people seek his healing, their faith so acute that they beg only to touch the mere fringe of his cloak.

The world cries out for healing and peace; we are the apostles sent out by Christ to bring the message of healing and peace.  How else will that message be spread?  One by one, hour by hour, day by day, the message is ours to carry forth.  

The Apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians that we “are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

Members of the household of God, built together spiritually in a dwelling place for God, we are to bring God’s healing and peace; there is no one else.  For the grieving and anguished, for the war-weary masses, for our children who know so little of God’s grace and peace, we are the only hope. 

In the section of the Book of Common Prayer entitled “Ministration to the Sick,” which begins on page 453, there are prayers for healing and the laying on of hands.  These are beautiful power-provoking prayers.  How powerful would it be if each of us took these prayers with us on our journeys this week?  We might not have actual opportunity to lay our hands upon someone needing healing, but as we stand in line at the grocery store, or sit at a traffic light, or observe a weary first responder going about his or her ministry of compassion and healing, what if we were to focus on them, figuratively lay our hands upon them and breathe these words:

I lay my hands upon you in the Name of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ, beseeching him to uphold you and fill
you with his grace, that you may know the healing power of
his love. Amen.

 One by one, hour by hour, the mission of healing and peace is ours.

I lay my hands upon you in the Name of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ, beseeching him to uphold you and fill
you with his grace, that you may know the healing power of
his love. Amen.