Healing Sermon (Project 3)

“Praise Jesus” I stated as my followers repeated it back to me

“I will now heal my most devote of followers. I will now allow David to stand from his wheelchair all he has to do is drink this holy water. Now David do you beleieve in the lord?”

“Yes”, he mummers.

“DO YOU LOVE JESUS WITH ALL YOUR HEART?”

“YES!”, he yells back

“Now stand!”

David stands first supported by other followers and takes a couple steps by himself.

“Praise Jesus! Its a miracle! He can stand because his devotion to God is so great!”

“Praise Jesus” the crowd yells.

“Settle down, settle down. We have an another soul we have to heal. Janet come forth.”

A woman walks onto stage as the crowd cheers.

“Janet here has stage 3 breast cancer and was told she has 6 months to live, so she decided to seek help at the best healer God himself. Her devotion to him is so great I can feel it now. I will now use the power of him to heal her now.

“Janet, do you believe in the power of the lord?”

“Oh lord yes”, she exclaims

“I will no use his power to rid you of this horrible disease.”

I raise my arms and scream at the top of my lungs, “Be gone from this woman’s body and let Jesus heal her”, as i raise my hand and touch her forehead.

Janet shakes for a second or two and then stands perfectly still.

“SHE IS HEALED, PRAISE JESUS!”

“Praise Jesus”, the crowd yells as gospel music fills the room and the followers start to dance.

“CELEBRATE, AND KNOW THIS CANT BE DONE WITHOUT YOU! YOU MAKE THIS HAPPEN! YOU HELP US GO EVEYRWHERE WITH YOUR GENEROSITY!” I yell as a collection plate is spread around the crowd.

I smile as I see the money on the plate start to rise.

“Praise Jesus”, I mummer to myself.

The reason I chose this particular approach for the final project was due to our exposure of religion throughout this course. In almost every text we read this semester, it was present influencing some aspect of it. No text however has a deeper Christian level than Spenser’s The Fairee Queene. This text follows the pilgrimage of a knight called Redcross, and what he will do to be closer to God. He goes through countless trials presented to him but he some how over come them until he came upon the greatest of all, his fight with a dragon. Redcross injures the dragon and the dragon sends him flying into a nearby well that was flowing with a spiritual water, that healed him to full health and improved the quality of his sword. In a way this, is almost a baptism of sorts, cleansing him of his sins, so he can continue the fight for God. The next morning he goes back to the dragon, wounds it again, and yet again is not only mortally injured, but is thrown into a healing garden with a tree that can do just that. He is healed again and this time, he defeats the dragon. I don’t know about you this just felt so……cheesy. It was due to Redcrosses devotion to god that he was able to be healed time and time again, to ultimately defeat the dragon. This kind of religious message made me think of a modern day example, and that modern day example is what I did for my project.

What I am about to explain might offend some people and i really mean no harm by it, I just need to explain it with confirmed facts. Throughout time, devolt religious chapters have sometimes participated in what is called healing sermons. These sermons normally has the leader of the group up on a stage leading the group in some form of prayer and due to their closeness to God, these leaders declare they have the ability to heal people. I’ve seen videos of some of these sermons of a person in a wheelchair being told they can now walk and the person gets up and takes a step, of seen a woman et cleared of her cancer, etc, etc. The issue here is quite simply that its all fake. These people that are healed are actors and if someone actually was sick and didn’t get better, they would just be told that their religious belief wasn’t enough to be healed by god. The dialog above is how one of these sermons typically goes, and the followers who are not in on what is really happening believe that their leader has an intense relationship with god and if they want to be good Christians they should continue following him. In the end that’s what sermons like this was used for, to get more followers. It like what texts like this was also used for. Texts like The Fairee Quuene shows what can happen if you are a devolt Christian, so you should let God into your life. Not only that should should spend your own money to make sure they can spread his love everywhere. It might just be me, but that just sounds a lot like propaganda.