Message from Pastor Ann Frerks
March 2010
The Ministry of Healing . . . with Red Socks
The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.
With this announcement, Jesus began his public ministry according to Luke. His ministry included preaching, teaching and healing.
The Synoptic Gospels bear witness to the many ways in which Jesus cared for people. Jesus healed many, yet there were still crowds and crowds of people who were helpless and harassed, wandering in the dark with no one to care for them. Jesus saw them. Jesus especially saw the ones no one else seemed to see.
He then called his disciples together and gave them the authority to heal diseases and sicknesses. He sent them out into the great harvest of need as workers, empowered to bring healing, and to bring in the kingdom of God.
We are also called to the ministry of healing. We are to be channels of God’s healing presence. I have always known this, but God never ceases to surprise me with the most unlikely people he uses to accomplish his healing ministry.
I would never describe my father as a healing presence. He was very critical and quick to anger. But my father’s cancer diagnosis drove him to his knees. In those months of chemotherapy, Dad cultivated his prayer life and healing came to him and to those around him.
At first he went to his appointments absorbed with himself, but then he began to notice the people in the waiting room, to see them with new eyes. He had such compassion for them, and this is how his ministry of healing began.
He said he prayed about it for some time, for the right time, which came one warm day. And out he came from his bedroom in a shirt, a pair of khaki shorts and red socks, bright red socks, socks that made his scrawny legs look scrawnier.
He ignored our looks of disapproval and hobbled to the waiting van. We thought, “Yes, the socks were over-the-top, but at least he wasn’t wearing that old shirt with the holes under the arms.”
Dad walked into the Cancer Center’s waiting room and heads turned and faces lit up! He put one hand on his hip and the other on his head and took a lap around the room like a model on a runway. And laughter erupted.
“Hey, good-lookin’!” the nurses teased as they marched him to the scale to be weighed, then on into the exam room to wait for the SERIOUS doctor. My Dad was worried about the doctor. “He’s a good listener, but not much of a talker! It must be hard doing what he does, seeing so many people die.”
Dad wanted the doctor to know he cared about him, and he did this with humor, bad jokes, and red socks. As the weeks passed, Dad’s healing ministry changed that young doctor, for he just could not help but respond to the love and care Dad showed him. God’s love and care.
I believe that each of us is called to the ministry of healing, to be channels of God’s healing presence. Were any of the people in the Cancer Center’s waiting room cured of their cancer? I don’t know. But I know that healing took place.
After Dad died, we did what all families do; we went through his things, we cried, we told stories. In the midst of this difficult process, we found the red socks and knew instantly what we had to do.
We bought two living, growing plants. We stuffed the toes of each red sock with newspaper and pulled the socks up around the pots. We drove to the Cancer Center and put one in the waiting room; the other we gave to the doctor, and the kingdom of God drew nearer. And there was healing for us in the healing ministry our Dad undertook in his dying.
That was four years ago. Still, there are crowds of people, harassed and helpless. Do you see them? Do you hear Jesus calling you, “Go out in my name and by my power be ministers of healing, compassion and love?”
The kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.
Written in honor and memory of Francis Richard Justice, child of God, minister of healing.
Pastor Ann
Pastor Ann
pastorann@trinitylutheran-cda.org
©Trinity Lutheran CDA
design: wordsmith
