My  text this morning is from Revelation, a book of the Bible that pastors rarely preach from.  Revelation, you see, is very difficult Scripture.  There are almost as many different interpretations of this book as there are interpreters!  For Revelation is Apocalyptic literature -- writing composed almost entirely of vivid, symbolic visions.

    Yes, in Revelation you and I see all sorts of strange and marvelous animals and plants and buildings and heavenly beings.  Biblical scholars may and do disagree as to the meaning of this symbolism, but they’re unanimous as to how vivid these images are -- sometimes horrifying, sometimes beautiful!  In fact, one of the most striking examples of stained glass I’ve ever seen was in a modern Dutch Reformed Church, in the Netherlands.  One whole wall of the sanctuary, in Amsterdam-South, depicts, in stained glass, some of these images in Revelation. And you marvel as you sit in your pew, at the light shining through the brilliantly colored panes. You yourself are caught up in the Apocalyptic dream!

    But consider with me again this passage from the final chapter of Revelation.  An angel is leading John, the writer, on a tour of the New Jerusalem, the Holy City that God has prepared for the faithful at the end of time.  Just listen to his description:  “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.  On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

    Now certainly this “river of the water of life” stands for the abundant life Christ promises to all God’s children.  Today, when you drive away from this church, you can go home and, if thirsty, just turn on the tap, at the sink – or, if you want the iced version of the same, perhaps go to your refrigerator -- and immediately drink a class of cool, clear water.  But to the ancient peoples of the Near East, a region that still is largely dry, water was quite literally life itself!

    And “the tree of life” here that continually bears fruit, a different fruit for each month of the year -- certainly this tree shows us that God is concerned with our need for food.  And the tree’s “leaves” that are “for the healing of the nations,” show us our Lord’s concern for the bodily ills of us human beings.

    Yes, friends, we see here FIRST, that HEALING IS GOD’S WORK.  The Lord isn’t just interested in the well-being of our souls but of our bodies, too.  Jesus, in his early ministry in Galilee, achieved fame mainly as a healer of the sick.  In fact, in the gospels, we see him often making people well before he makes them good.  He frequently heals their bodies before he pardons their sins.

    Do you remember when John the Baptist, imprisoned and awaiting death, sent messengers to Jesus, asking if he really were the Messiah?  What did Jesus reply? -- Listen to the order of things:  “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them” (Luke 7:22).

    Yes, healing is God’s work.  In A.D. 325 the same Council of Nicaea that gave us the Nicene Creed, part of our Presbyterian Book of Confessions that you and I sing or recite at each service of Holy Communion, decreed that in every major Mediterranean city Christians should set up a hospital. For THAT matter, our Muslim friends, early on, established medical institutions in cities like Baghdad and Damascus and Constantinople, with highly scientific methods of treatment — including some for the care of mental patients.  During the Middle Ages, Christian monks and nuns cared for the sick and dying in their cloisters. In fact, in France even today often the hospital in many places still is called l’hôtel-Dieu -- ”the hostel of God.”

    Yes, friends, The work of doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, medical technicians, orderlies is holy work.  A physician serves in an entirely different category than, say, an automobile mechanic.  The work of a mechanic, as important as it is--and especially to those folks, like me, who know nothing about a car except how to turn on the ignition!--the work of a mechanic, although it can be godly, is nevertheless, not the same as that of a medic.  Because the medic’s calling carries out a special Divine ministry!  Dr. David Livingstone, the famous Scottish missionary and explorer of Africa, loved to say, “God had  only one Son, and he was a. . .physician!”
                                                
    But, friends, a SECOND FACT YOU AND I CAN LEARN FROM OUR LESSON IS THIS:  Healing is your work and mine, as well.  God doesn’t mean for us just to leave it up to the doctors and dentists and nurses.  Or just up to deacons like those this congregation who, I’ve observed, take quite seriously their callings to visit and care for the ill and hospitalized.  No, healing is the calling of ALL us Christians.

    Notice that, in our lesson, it’s the leaves of the “tree of life” that do the healing.  Some years ago, in one of my pastorates, I noticed in my church study a plant with rubbery leaves.  It was nice, but I thought little of it until, one day, a parishioner dropped by to see me.  He noticed the plant and said, “That will cure a burn, you know.  If you ever burn your finger, just break off a leaf of that aloes plant, and rub it on.  And the burn will heal.”

    Well, I didn’t have a burned finger at the moment, but I did have a tiny cut on my thumb.  So I broke off a part of a leaf from the plant, and touched the cut with the gummy juice.  Immediately the cut felt better and began to heal!  In biblical times the aloe vera plant not only was used as a cure, but you could extract from it a sweet perfume, as well.  Isn’t that beautiful? -- Leaves that heal -- a sweet perfume that points us to God, our Cosmic Physician.

    Friends, you and I are God’s leaves on the Tree of Life.  We’re Christ’s healing agents for a sick humanity!  In John’s Gospel, Jesus tells his followers:  “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).  Healing is the calling of us leaves.  It’s your work, my work.  And that means healing of the body as well as the soul.  Why, the very word “salvation” comes from the same root as the word “salve.”  It implies cure.  “Salvation” means “health,” “wholeness,” “well-being of body, soul, and spirit.”

    Some years ago I attended a marvelous conference in the North Carolina mountains -- a dialogue between Christians and Jews.  Ministers, priests, rabbis were there, as well as lay folk --Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish.  The Jews disagreed with one another about life after death.  Some believed in a kind of heaven, and some did not.   But all the Jews in my discussion group were unanimous in their opinion that the major emphasis in their religion was on LIFE RIGHT NOW -- health and wholeness and happiness in the present.

    I immediately thought of that marvelous chorus from “Fiddler on the Roof,” in which the Tevye, the Milkman, and other Jews of the Russian village sing repeatedly, “L'chaim!” “L'chaim!” --“To life!”  “To life!”   And I told the Jews and the others in my group, “We Christians do believe in life after death.  Yet we can sing “L'chaim!” just as loudly as anyone else.  Because our major reason for being Christian ISN’T just to end up in heaven when we die; that’s icing on the cake!  But our major reason is, in the words of the catechism,  “to glorify and to enjoy…” [God and God’s creation right now!]

    The Jews were amazed.  “We always thought,” they said, “that you Christians weren’t interested so much in present existence, but in going to heaven and not to hell.”

    Friends, DON’T EVER LIMIT the fullness of God’s salvation in Christ.  The Great Physician touches our bodies and makes them whole, as well as our souls.  And God calls us Christians to get behind every endeavor to promote better health and care for the sick. That’s why it’s so wonderful for us to support the work of medical missionaries.  To pray for them.  To give money to support them and the places where they work.

    And that brings me to one more thing you and I can learn from our lesson.  It’s this:  GOD, THROUGH YOU AND ME, CAN HEAL NOT ONLY INDIVIDUALS BUT WHOLE RACES AND PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.  The leaves of the “tree of life,” here, are “for the healing of the NATIONS.”  Just think of the effect of the ministry of Christian medical missions throughout the world!  Part of the money that you give regularly to this congregation, Sunday by Sunday, goes to SUPPORT such institutions of healing    Think of the goodwill and joy that such mission hospitals and clinics, in Christ’s name, produce!  Patients who don’t know Jesus certainly turn to Christ because of the dedicated work of the Christian medical workers who treat them.

    Just a few examples of what I mean.  In 1955 women of the Presbyterian Church, U.S. (the old “Southern Church”) gave $200,000 of their annual Birthday Offering to build a 76-bed Christian clinic in an impoverished neighborhood of Osaka, Japan — a land where less than one percent of the population follows Christ. This Yogodawa Christian Hospital, ministering to body, mind, and spirit, continues today its daily Christian chapel services.  But now it is a 607-bed, state-of-the art facility.  This hospital, among many other wonderful achievements, accomplished Japan’s first blood transfusion for RH incompatibility for pregnant women, hired Japan’s first medical social worker, and organized that nation’s first hospice program for the terminally ill.  It has been ranked Osaka’s BEST hospital — and the eighth finest in all of Japan.

    In Korea, some decades ago, in a Presbyterian mission hospital lab, the cure for the liver fluke parasite was perfected.  And in China! --  Yes, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, American and European Christian physicians and nurses founded hospitals and medical schools.  Presbyterians alone gave China its first medical college for women, first mental hospital, first schools for the deaf and the blind, and, in Beijing, the first hospital that offered scientific western medicine to all, including eunuchs from the “Forbidden City,” the imperial palace.

    Of course, with the Communist take-over in 1948-49 these institutions had to be abandoned by the church.  And yet, today, those same hospitals and schools continue to be, even under government control, the finest of their kind in that vast land.  The Chinese seem to appreciate this!

    Yes, my friends, “the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”   The calling to be a healer is God’s great work.  It’s your work and mine.  And. best of all, it’s work that, in God’s good time, will bring about true peace and reconciliation between the peoples of this great but suffering and strife-torn world!

Litany for Healing:
	O Lord, you have brought health and salvation to your people:
	We bless you for your wonderful deeds.
	You have raised up among us physicians, dentists, nurses, technicians, skilled and ready,  and you have given them the powerful gift of healing for mind and body:
	We thank you for these your workers.
	The pharmacist mixes the medications; from the matter of the earth the chemist creates the formulas that relieve and restore health:
	You have created medicines and have established your servants to know them. We sing songs of healing and life to you.
	But we are people of spiritual sickness as well. We so easily suffer the pains of cancerous relationship with our better selves, with our brothers and sisters, and with you, our God:
	Is there no healing for the spiritual wounds we bear, no relief for the pain of our hearts?  Tell us, for we are sick and do not know how to heal ourselves.
	Rejoice, you people of God!  And be made whole, you mourners and sufferers, for God has brought health and life to all.  The Lord has raised up a Great Physician for us who, by the cross, has made us well and, by the resurrection made us one--with God, with each other, and with ourselves.
	We praise you for the Physician, Jesus Christ our Lord, who has healed us from the sickness of sin, and united us in healing grace!
	Brothers and sisters, because we have been healed, let us be healers. The Lord has called us to this task and has empowered us by his Spirit to accomplish it.
	All: We accept the task and rejoice in the power. For we know that in this healing is love, and joy, and peace.

    Hear also our prayers for your great Church throughout the world, and this congregation of your people; that we all may ever remain faithful to your will and purpose.
    Stand by those of our brothers and sisters in this congregation or those who may be represented here today, who hurt in any way.  Uphold those who mourn the loss, through earthly separation or death, loved ones and friends.
    Hear our petitions for the leaders of this nation, particularly in this year of national election, and for the chief officials of every race and people in this world; that peace may reign on earth as it is in heaven;
Grant that your will may be done in and through us, as individuals, as families, as a church, and as a community.
    Finally, O God, accept our praise for all who have gone before us, and who now are totally restored and whole, in your perfect presence, in heaven.  Keep us in fellowship with them until we see you and them, face to face, in your good time; for we make these and each of our prayers in his strong name.  AMEN.