Hearing, as we have, the story of Jesus healing one man at what was known as “The Pool of Bethsaida”, I have been thinking “Why only him?” At the pool of Bethsaida, which was by the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem, hundreds of people were sick and dying. Yet Jesus healed just one of them. What about the rest of those people? As far as we can tell from John’s story, they were left in their misery. I think if we are ever going to deal honestly with the topic of healing, we have to deal with this troubling subject: why are some not healed?

We have certainly prayed for people here, and they have recovered and been healed. And yet there have been others, for whom we have prayed, and nothing miraculous has happened – some have even died, which is even harder for us to accept.

We all have our own stories of those for whom we pray, who don’t seem to be getting any better.

I think of the prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament who cried out, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?”

In Jeremiah’s day, the town of Gilead was a symbol of hope. It was a centre for medical treatment, and was specially known for its healing ointments. If there’s no healing balm in Gilead, then there’s no hope to be found anywhere, Jeremiah seems to conclude. This is the cry of one who has tried everything and come up with nothing. I guess some of us can relate to Jeremiah’s cry.

So what’s going on when healing doesn’t appear to be happening? Is it, perhaps, an identity issue? That is, God is the healer, not us! So if healing isn’t happening in the way we think it should, we may need to take another look at our passports, and remind ourselves of who we are. Let’s be truthful: when we pray for healing, most of us want to decide the outcome. We want to decide who is healed, and when and how. And if the healing doesn’t happen in the way we want it to, or in our time-scale, then we have the tendency to think that there was something wrong with how we prayed, or that God doesn’t really care as deeply as we thought he did. In other words, we fear our prayers have failed!

So is this is really a control issue, which we need to recognise? Christian healing isn’t magic. We can’t wave a magic wand to cure all the world’s ills. We are not God! We are human beings. God alone is the healer.

Then we have the failure issue. We can be prone to look at life in terms of success and failure (which today’s culture encourages). If our prayers aren’t answered in the way we want, then it seems as if our prayers have failed. But there’s no such thing as failure in prayers for someone, because something always happens. It just may not be what we thought it would be. We tend to put a very high priority on physical healing, but it may well be that there is something even more important that God has in mind. While we are thinking about, and looking for a physical healing, God may be working on a person’s heart, healing an old wound, or transforming bitterness into love.

It may be that, through our prayers for healing, someone will come to know Jesus Christ for the first time in their life. And in reality, we know that physical healing, even at its very best, is still only temporary. Even the healthiest amongst us will eventually die. But when we come to faith in Christ, God by his grace enables us to grasp the truth that being healed spiritually will last beyond this life and into all eternity.

We live in a culture which tends to think of death as the final tragedy. And yes, of course, there are times when death comes prematurely, and it seems so unfair to those who are left behind. But even in death there is healing. It is the journey that finally takes us home. God is always at work, but not always in ways we can see or understand. When we pray for or seek prayer for healing, we need to approach God with humility, acknowledging that he is God, and we’re not.

OK, so we don’t we make healing happen, but we are not entirely helpless in this process, which is why we are here this evening.

In our prayers for others – in our prayers for war-torn countries; for barren lands – in our prayers for peace and reconciliation - and in our prayers for ourselves - there are things we do to help the healing process. One thing we can do is to believe in the power of prayer, to have faith.

Jesus said that faith, even the size of a mustard seed, is enough to move mountains. A mustard seed! Have you ever seen a mustard seed? It’s about as big as a full stop at the end of a sentence! So even if we struggle with faith – if we have enough faith to come to God in prayer, to ask and to seek, then that’s certainly as big as a mustard seed, if not bigger. And if we come to God with that mustard seed faith, then God is at work, in ways we can’t see or understand.

Even a tiny bit of faith can move mountains, but an atmosphere of disbelief is paralysing. The Gospels tell us that even Jesus, powerful as he was, couldn’t do any miracles when he went home to Nazareth, because of the people’s lack of faith. To them, Jesus was nothing special. He was just another local lad. They thought he was no more special than any of the other local lads. So they scoffed at him, and created an atmosphere of disbelief. They even called him ‘Joseph’s son’, which to us sounds OK, but they did it in a mocking way to suggest that there was nothing remarkable or miraculous about how he came into the world. Healing was lacking in Nazareth, because the people were resistant to it.

Besides disbelief, there’s another kind of resistance that hinders the healing process, and that is an un-co-operative attitude. Jesus asked the man by the pool of Bethsaida, “Do you want to be healed?” He didn’t say, “Do you believe I can do it?” but, “Do you want it?”

Perhaps you can’t imagine anyone not wanting to be well, but think back to when you were a child. Do you ever remember trying to make your mum or dad think you were sick, so you wouldn’t have to go to school or take your turn in the washing up? Or did you ever extend your cold or flu just a little, to get the attention and stay in bed. Did you ever ‘phone in sick’ so you wouldn’t have to go to work? When we’re sick, people have to take care of us. When we’re well, we have to take care of ourselves. In other words, wellness carries responsibilities with it. This man by the pool hadn’t been able to work in 38 years. He hadn’t been able to put out the dustbins, or help with the dishes. If he gets healed, he will have to take responsibility for his life.

If we want to be well, we need to be honest with ourselves, to confront our fears and co-operate with the healing process. God heals in many ways. Sometimes he works in dramatic and supernatural ways. Sometimes he works in some very natural and un-dramatic ways – through, for example, rest and exercise, through doctors and counsellors, surgery and medicine. We are then responsible for co-operating with the healing process.

Similarly, when we present ourselves for prayer, for the laying-on-of hands or anointing, we have to be honest with ourselves and open to God, so as not to hinder the healing he wants to give us.

It also helps if we look for healing in the right place. The pool of Bethsaida was thought to have magical powers, so people gathered there daily. Some went there every day for years, like the man that Jesus healed. The amazing thing is, while everyone else was focused on the magic pool, Jesus, the author of life, was walking among them, ready to reach out and touch and heal. As long as their eyes were on the pool, they wouldn’t see Jesus.

It is easy for us to look for healing in the wrong place. Instead of looking for God to heal, we might hope for a bit of magic. And magic, like the pool of Bethsaida, is mostly an illusion. Real healing isn’t the same as a quick fix. Genuine healing may well happen over a lifetime – however long or short that life is. To experience God’s healing we need to turn away from illusions and quick fixes, and turn to the source of life – and that is the person of Jesus Christ. We need to trust God who loves us and works for our best, even when we can’t see it. Amen.