The rites of anointing and prayer for the sick, the traditional order for the laying on of hands and healing, contain this hope for the life of the church. We have only to look at the structure of the prayer, and at the lectionary for the rite, to know that here at least the enigma of our lives can be honestly faced and the promise of our faith affirmed.
We struggle with all possible will to resist illness and the bitterness of heart that sickness brings. Our sorrow, our pain, even when they are not unbearable anguish, yet make us weary and far exceed the significance of even the longest life. Health and well-being have limits; grief and the burdens of age and sickness are unfathomable. They make us wish that we had never been born.
We are trained in stoic acceptance; nevertheless, we cry out against sickness and give voice to our complaint. The saint as much as the sinner relentlessly asks, "why me?" For the sick to be angry with God is not unusual, nor is it only the unspiritual who rebel. Elijah told God that he had had enough; he wanted to die (cf. 1 Kgs 19:1-8). Job reasoned with God even more boldly, saying: "Suppose that I have sinned; what is that to you?" (cf. Job 7:12-21), and Paul told the Colossians that he struggled on "helped only by [God's] power" (cf. 1:22-29).
Can we expect to be quieter in our hearts than Elijah, more patient than Job, or more willing than Paul? Will we, more quickly than they, remember that though God heaps illness and death upon our heads today, tomorrow's gifts will be laughter, friendship, and succor? Guilt and the punishment for sin are part of sickness--so is the constricted imagination that blames the individual instead of God, though larger purposes are at work in sickness than what we can deserve or bring about on our own. This is the temptation of illness, that we might turn our faces to the wall.
The pattern of our lives in faith is different; it leads upward from the pain. Elijah's suffering--and Job's--is only a station on the way to somewhere else. The angel of the Lord touched Elijah, bade him rise up and eat. And in the fourth song of the suffering servant we read: "His soul's anguish over, he will see light and be content (cf. Isa 52:13--53:12). There is a great chasm to be crossed before despondency gives way to praise, but it can happen; and when it does, it is always the spirit's gift (cf. Isa 61:1-3a). Ultimately this is why we suffer, and why we minister to the sick--so that the church in all its members can make the passage from death to life that is our healing and salvation. The gift of the spirit, the laying on of hands, and anointing confirm our weak intentions, heal our wounded bodies, and enable us to offer our lives in atonement. As Paul told the Christians at Philippi, it was for their sake--for Christ's work--that Epaphroditus came so near to dying (cf. Phil 2:25-30).
Sickness is an evil; it is also a spiritual endeavor, but only when the rites of the church and pastoral care of the sick have transformed it. In these rites are the signs of God's presence to the church, just as Jesus manifested who God is and what his own mission was by miracles of healing. In the blessed calm that follows anointing or the prayer of faith, we learn to suffer gladly on each other's behalf, to bear with the world's folly, if so we may share in Christ's glory (cf. Rom $:14-17).
Unobtrusively God comes to us--in the soothing touch of oil, the word kindly spoken, the straining to understand, the willingness to listen. And unobtrusively, God heals. The sickness may remain and the loneliness continue, but the dreams that before were terrible and frightening now promise greater depth and vision. The will to salvation and the trust that makes it certain--the gifts of the spirit in the prayer of the church--have made us whole in hope.
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