Sanación en Comunidad / Healing in Community 30 Sept 2012 (Proper 21B)

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Melissa Campbell-Langdell
All Saints’, Oxnard
Proper 21B, 2012
(Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; Ps 124; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50)

It is Wednesday night.  Es miércoles, por la noche.  Perhaps it is bright out still, with yellow strips of sunlight still licking in at the Virgin’s glass.  Or perhaps it is darkening now.  Posiblemente esta oscureciendo con un poco del aire fresco del otoño.  Some leaves may have pushed their way in with the people.  Es más o menos cinco y media, 5:30, and we gather.  Juntamos para escuchar a las sagradas escrituras.    We gather to listen to scripture, perhaps to sing a song.  Juntamos para cantar la canción de los santos entre nosotros y los que han pasado a estar con Dios.  We sing of the saints living and dead.  Juntamos, empujados por la brisa como hojas de otoño desde las esquinas privadas de nuestras vidas. 
We gather, seemingly pushed from the private corners of our lives back to this place—one from a house, another from a school, me from just next door, one from the base, perhaps… We gather.  Juntamos.
We gather and tell our stories in community, but mostly, we gather to pray.  Juntamos para decir nuestras historias de fe en comunidad, pero más para orar para sanación.  To ask forgiveness and to receive God’s grace.  Juntamos para recordarnos de la gracia de Dios que esta en perdón y sanación.  We live into the reality that Henri Nouwen knew when he said: “Prayer heals.  La oración sana.  No solamente la respuesta a la oración, not just the answer to prayer.  When we give up our competition with God and offer God every part of our heart, holding back nothing at all, we come to know God’s love for us and discover how safe we are in his embrace.  Cuando dejamos de estar competitivos con Dios y cuando le ofrecemos cada parte de nuestro corazón, sin ocultar cualquier cosa, empezamos a conocer el amor que Dios tiene para nosotros y descubrimos lo seguros que estamos en su abrazo.” [1]  We know That our loved ones will be covered.  Que nuestros seres queridos estarán cubiertos.

Sometimes we are four or six, sometimes two brave souls launching up prayers to the Almighty. 
Sometimes we are twenty or more, when we have classes and preparation to do.  A veces somos pocos y a veces somos más.   A veces somos informales de manera, y esto es la mayoría del tiempo.  
Sometimes we are informal, mostly that.  Usually we speak some blend of tongues, so that our hearts will hear what our ears don’t.  Hablamos los dos idiomas muchas veces para que nuestros corazones puedan entender lo que nuestras orejas no pueden.
Does this mean we expect miraculous acts of healing?  No.  No mandamos grandes milagros de sanación desde lo Alto.  Pasan, pero tenemos que estar más humildes que pedir un milagro grande de Dios.  Los milagros son dones, dados gratis.  To expect such would be to be like the misguided fellow trying to use Jesus’ name to cast things out without knowing what He’s about.  Si lo esperamos, somos como el otro tipo que esta actuando en el nombre de Jesús sin saber quien es.  

Sometimes, in Christian community, miraculous healings do occur.  Relationships change, powerful physical healings occur, about which even the doctors say, “This kind only comes out through prayer.”  A veces estas sanaciones si pasan, y hasta los médicos dicen, “Este tipo solo sana con oración.”
I have heard of hearing regained through prayer, both physical and spiritual.  Which was the better miracle?   ¿Es mejor un milagro de sanación de oído espiritual o del oído físico?
I have heard of hearts healed when physical healing was not to be, and bodies healed even as the heart continues to need healing.  A veces corazones sanan cuando los cuerpos no pueden, o cuerpos sanan cuando los corazones están todavía en el proceso de sanación. Which is more important?  
For me, these are unanswerable.  Not for us to know. No podemos saber.
The important thing is that we gather.  Lo más importante es que juntamos como comunidad.  And this is only one way we gather as a community.  Hay muchas mas maneras que juntamos como comunidad que son importantes, también.

We gather clustered in the deep ocean blue, rose red and milk white light of the chapel in the early evening and we pray.  En la capilla, debajo de los colores vibrantes de la Virgen, juntamos y oramos para sanación.  Sanación de nuestro mundo, de nuestra comunidad.  We pray for healing.  For those on our prayer list.  Por los que estan enfermos, en casa.  For all those that are struggling on their commute home to stay awake in bumper to bumper traffic.  Por los que están trabajando en casas o en fields, o en supermercados, proveyendo comida o un lugar mas limpio para sus vecinos.  We pray for those who will toil into the night hours, for those having family time, por los que están disfrutando de sus familias.  We pray for those who live alone.  Por los que viven solos, y por los quienes nos pueden acompañar y los quienes no pueden salir de la casa.  
For those who can come and worship and for those who cannot.  These are the same prayers that we pray as a community on Sundays and other times.  Estas son las mismas oraciones que hacemos cada domingo en comunidad, y otras veces durante la semana.
And you know, don’t you?  That you can ask the church community to come and pray with you?  Pueden preguntar a la comunidad a venir y orar consigo también.  Not too many weeks ago, a group from the church and friends prayed over a parishioner, Leticia Franco, in her hospital bed.  Oramos por Leticia Franco hace mas o menos un mes.  Muchos de Ustedes estaban.  Su madre estaba.  Oramos para sanación.  Y su sanación física no vino, pero ahora ella esta con Dios.  Y podemos esperar que su sanación de corazón ya esta completa.  Sometimes we ask for healing and we don’t get the healing we wish for, like with Leticia Franco, who died last week.  But we do have a promise of healing—healing of hearts and minds and spirits.  Jesús si nos puede sanar en mente y espíritu y corazón, aunque a veces, y no entendemos porque, la sanación física no pasa. 
I do feel that these questions are not ours to know.  No son nuestras estas preguntas para entender. ¿Porque esta sanación y no la otra?  Why this healing and not that?
But the important thing is that we gather.  Juntamos en el salón del hospital de Lety y juntamos aquí cada miércoles, en la capilla de la Virgen.  We gather here every Wednesday in the Guadalupe Chapel.  We gather to pray for healing.  Juntamos en oración para sanación.  And you can join us, or you can simply know that we are here.  Ustedes pueden acompañarnos, o pueden simplemente saber que estamos aquí, orando.  Praying in community. 

Praying and knowing that healing is coming.
Porque tenemos una esperanza.  Because we have hope.  We have hope that healing, in Jesus, is coming, has come, and will come again. 
La sanación que Jesús nos provee si viene, ha venido, y va a venir de nuevo.   And until that time, we keep gathering, we keep praying, because that’s what we as Christians do.  Hasta entonces, juntamos y oramos, porque esto es lo que hacemos como cristianos.  
And we are already seeing some of the fruit of this prayer today.  The installation of Jade Ortiz as Youth Minister is a glorious thing.  También celebramos nuestros maestros dominicales y ministros eucarísticos quienes han tomado el curso de “Safeguarding.”  We also celebrate la primera comunión de Lisbeth Llamas.  So Friends, let us keep praying and dreaming in community, and may the Kingdom come.  So be it!  ¡Amen!

[1] Henri Nouwen, Embraced by God’s Love, (Page-a-Day Calendar) (Bloomington, MN: Garborg’’s, 1997), Sept. 18.

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