Nov 23 2025 A ‘Flower Power’ Healing Sermon: Answering Our Healing Prayers Before we Call

Isaiah 65:17-25 NIV

By Rev Dr Ed Hird

By Vincent van Gogh – National Gallery (NG3863), London, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151970

https://youtu.be/HXpvFIy_RPk?si=jh7FA8R9F5VeJi2n

As you may know, Bishop Peter and I were converted during the Jesus movement. Peter was a real hippy, an Australian flower child. I was a wanna-be, influenced like many teenagers by that Haight-Asbury culture. You may remember the two-finger symbol of the hippie movement, the peace sign.  In Christian Ashram movement, we have the three-finger symbol, meaning Jesus is Lord! Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords!

How many of you have ever watched the blockbuster movies Jesus Christ Superstar or Godspell? We loved seeing Jesus portrayed asa flower power hippie. You may not know that Stephen Swartz, who wrote the Godspell music and lyrics, was Jewish.  Talking about Jesus for many Jewish people is very edgy. It may feel to some like eating pork or secretly viewing pornography. But during the Jesus Movement, many Jews discovered the Flower Power Jesus, and became filled with the Holy Spirit, the Ruach Ha Kodesh.  There are now over a million Jewish people worldwide who have accepted Jesus, Yeshua, even in Israel, where there are flourishing messianic synagogues.  Messianic testimonies done in Hebrew and English are now being secretly watched on YouTube by millions of Israelis. This has never happened before. As the bible says in Romans 11:26, one day All Israel will be saved. The veil will be removed. The unthinkable will become thinkable. When I meet a Jewish person who loves Jesus, this gives me hope even for Anglicans that God will remove the veil. That is what he did for me as an Anglican in the Jesus movement.

Flowers have become popular for Jewish people through their time in Holland, the flower capital of the world. After the Holocaust which killed 75% of the Dutch Jews (think Corrie Ten Boom’s Hiding Place movie), some Dutch Jews relocated in Israel. The nation of Israel now exports 1.5 billion flower stems particularly to Europe in the winter, bringing two hundred million dollars per year. God is literally making the deserts of Israel bloom since Israel was reborn in 1948. Isaiah 35:1-2 comments: “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.” Israel has even discovered how to pipe desalinated Mediterranean water into the Sea of Galilee so that the flowers will keep blooming. How many today want your deserts to bloom?

Today I am preaching about God’s healing flower power. You may have to forgive me, but my sermon will be more flowery than usual. In my forty-five years of sermons, I have never preached about flowers. 

I will be using flowers today as a metaphor for the healing power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not literally fire, rain, wind, or a dove, but those are accurate metaphors of how the Holy Spirit acts in our lives. How many have ever thought of the Holy Spirit metaphorically as like a flower?  God gives the blessing of the Holy Spirit before we even ask. All we need to do is accept the gift, the bouquet by faith with thanksgiving. The famous painter Monet said: ““I must have flowers, always, and always.”

How many of you, by the way, have any Dutch heritage? Did you know that the Netherland’s #1 export is flowers? As the flower capital of the world with its massive greenhouses, it produces 50% of the world’s flowers. Have any of you, by the way, ever been to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in LaConner, Washington State? It is like a little Holland, attracting almost half a million people who spend up to 83 million dollars each year on tulips. Talk about flower power!

The term ‘flower power’ came from Beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg in 1965, who advocated putting flowers in Berkley California to the rifle barrels of the military police during antiwar Vietnam rallies. They also gave flowers to the Hell’s Angels who really hated the hippies.  In May 1967, Abbie Hoffman, founder of the Yippies and author of Steal This Book, organized a flower brigade in New York City, saying “The cry of flower power echoes through the land. We hall not wilt. Let a thousand flowers bloom. “

Flower power reached its peak during the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco when hippies like Bishop Peter became known as flower children, wearing flowers in their hair, like in the Godspell movie. How many of you remember the hit song by the Mamas & the Papas where they sang: “”If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair?”  Bishop Peter, did you ever wear clothes embroidered with flowers? When the Beatles embrace the flower power message in their albums and their 1968 Yellow Submarine movie, it spread quickly, even to Perth Australia.

As Larry Norman said, the Beatles sang ‘All You Need is Love’, but then they broke up. The world’s ’love and peace’ flower power sounds good but it doesn’t really work.

Today I want to honour all those here from the Semiahmoo South Surrey Coalition who peacefully and lovingly said no to hard drug housing in our local neighbourhood.  You proved that grassroots ‘flower power’ can make a real difference in the face of powerful, impersonal bureaucracies.  Thank you again.

Today is our annual All Saints’ healing service. What does bring healing and recovery is not free government hard drugs but rather the power of the Holy Spirit as mentioned in Ephesians 5:18 “Don’t be drunk with wine (or stoned) which leads to dissipation but instead be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Any one who has received Jesus has the Holy Spirit living within them, but we can easily quench, grieve, resist, and vex the Holy Spirit through our unwillingness to surrender our wills.

 The term ‘power’ in the New Testament is usually short-hand for the power of the Holy Spirit. Think of the resurrected Jesus in Acts 1:8 saying “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you..”  Think of Jesus before his ascension in Luke 24, saying “Wait in Jerusalem until the power from on high comes upon you.” Bill W. in AA’s 12 Steps referred again and again to ‘powerless’ vs power coming through letting go and surrender.  Bill W.’s higher power was the Holy Spirit after he was led to Christ by the Anglican pastor Sam Shoemaker.  If you want to have ‘flower power’ healing today, you need to surrender to and receive the power of the Holy Spirit.

To quote Song of Solomon 2:1, you need Jesus the lily of the valley, the rose of Sharon in your heart. You may not ever have thought of Jesus as a flower, metaphorically speaking. 😉

Have you ever been to a funeral or celebration of life where there are no flowers?  Flowers often symbolize death and endings.  Flowers help us grieve and heal. Flowers are strongly connected with key transitions, births, graduations, weddings and funerals, what is sometimes called hatched, matched and dispatched. At such events, flowers are often sovereignly, even unexpectedly given to us, even before we ask. That is how God’s healing flower power works, before we even ask. Today God may answer your prayer before you even ask.

The Kingdom of God is all about the already/not yet, the future breaking into the present, every time we pray for healing for the sick. Healing is like God giving you a bouquet of flowers. Healing is part of our Kingdom inheritance. God is the healer, Jehovah Rapha.  We are the receivers.  An inheritance is only as good as your willingness to receive it by faith with thanksgiving. John 1:12 talks about those who receive Jesus and his unshakable Kingdom.  If you refuse the flowers God is offering you today, it won’t do you any good.

IN vs 17, God says: See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.

Revelation 21:1 quotes Isaiah 65 vs 17 saying “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.’  This is not the same old, same old. The Hebrew word here for ‘new’ is Hadassah, meaning renewal and restoration. Some of you may remember the world-famous Hadassah Jewish bazaars which raised money for the poor in Israel.

Vs 17 is telling us that our world and minds will be so renewed by God that our often traumatic memories will no longer haunt us. They won’t even come to mind. This is God’s healing flower power. How many of you would like Jesus to heal a painful memory today? You can come up at the end of this sermon and get a breakthrough. 

Let me ask you: Do you think that there be flowers in the new heavens and new earth? Can you imagine life without flowers? Will there be flowers in hell? Only plastic ones 😉

 Why do so many women love flowers so much? The women in our walking group told me that it is about the colour, the beauty, the smell and the touch. 

Let me ask the women a question: do you prefer cut flowers or live flowers in pots or gardens. What is one of your most meaningful, memorable experience of receiving a flower?

You may have been through some real hard patches in your life. Do I hear any Amens?  The desert times in your past does not determine your future blooming. Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

As God’s new creation, we are no longer prisoners of our past; rather as Zechariah 9:12 puts it, we are prisoners of hope. God’s destiny for us that that we blossom into greater and greater Christlikeness. Jesus is the ultimate ‘flower child’ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Many of us struggle with negativity. Some of us as half-empty cup people tend to focus more on the thorns and weeds than the flowers. Some people could be given an entire field of roses and see only the thorns.

A friend in our last church resented someone else for being healed of cancer because they hadn’t had their own healing yet. Are you willing to celebrate the flowers of someone else’s healing while you are still experiencing the thorns, weeds, and sickness in your own life? Can you give God your bitterness today and receive his healing flower power?

We all need God’s Kingdom flower power. Song of Solomon 2:12 states, “Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.” Would you like some flowers, some blessings, to appear in your life in this healing service?

Where does your prayer life need to blossom, to bloom, to flourish? Blossom, bloom, and Flourish, by the way, literally mean to flower. Do you need more healing to spring forth in your life ? CS Lewis said: “Think of yourself just as a seed patiently wintering in the earth, waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking.”

How many of you are gardeners?  John 15:1 says that my Father’s the gardener, I often say that during doorknocking when I meet someone working on their flowers. Let me ask you: Those of you who love gardening, how often do you water your flowers? What hydrates your soul and makes you flourish? What kind of fertilizer do you need to be healthy? What kinds of weeds need to be removed from your spiritual garden?

Luke 5:17 says of Jesus: “the power of the Lord was with him to heal.”

Metaphorically, we might say that Jesus healed people with flower power, the power of the Holy Spirit:

Luke 5:30 says:  “Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’”

Luke 6:19 says of Jesus:

“The whole crowd was trying to touch him, because power was coming out from him and healing them all.” 

Acts 10:37-38  says that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power and how he went about doing good and healing all who were under the tyranny of the devil, because God was with him.” 

The Bible also compares us to flowers. Has anyone ever told you to bloom where you are planted, a good message for restless church-hoppers? Psalm 103:15-16 states, “The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more“.  1 Peter 1:24, quoting Isaiah 40: 6-8, says, “For all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall“

Jesus in Luke 12:27 said “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.”

Each of you are more beautiful than wild flowers. One of the beautiful flowers are sunflowers, would you agree? Sunflowers are symbols of God’s flower power, of his healing light.

How many of you have ever enjoyed eating sunflower seeds? They’re native to the Americas, as far back as 3000 BCE, when they were developed for food, medicine, dye, and oil. The Cherokee utilized an infusion of sunflower leaves to treat kidneys while the Dakota brought it out to sooth “chest pain and pulmonary troubles.” God wants to use his sunflower power to bring healing today to your heart.

It was the Spanish who brought Sunflowers back to Europe. Then they were brought to Russia by the Russian royalty. Sunflower seed oil was somehow not banned during Lent, unlike the other oils the Russian Orthodox Church banned its patrons from consuming. As a result, by the 19th century, Russia was planting two million acres of sunflowers every year.

Did you know that the Sunflower is Ukraine’s national flower? Canadian Mennonites who used to live in Ukraine, grow massive fields of sunflowers. Sunflower seeds are the Mennonite favorite snack, instead of drinking beer.

The sunflower tracks the sun, following it wherever it goes. God wants us to be devoted loyal sunflowers that consistently turns our eyes and hearts towards the Son of God, Jesus our messiah.

My younger sister and my late Mother Lorna, who was one of the founding pioneers at All Saints, loved gardening, especially their Sunflowers. Sunflowers aren’t just beautiful. Their roots absorb heavy metals and toxic radiation from the soil, in a process called phytoremediation. Sunflowers are symbols of healing and cleansing. Millions of sunflowers have been effectively used in cleansing the soil around the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the Japanese Fuchoshima nuclear disaster, absorbing sezium and strontium from the ground. What kind of toxicities and emotional poisons do you want Jesus our sunflower to remove from your soil today?

If anyone understood flower power, it was Vincent Van Gogh.  He loved to paint sunflowers as a symbol of God’s glory. He said, “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” The Japanese love Van Gogh. On March 30, 1987, Japanese insurance magnate Yasuo Goto paid the equivalent of US$39,921,750 for van Gogh’s Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers at auction at Christie’s London, at the time a record-setting amount for a work of art.  Over a billion dollars has been spent purchasing paintings by Van Gogh; yet, he chose to live in poverty to reach the very poor for Christ.

As a pastor’s son, Van Gogh worked as an evangelist in a miserably poor mining district in Belgium. There, he gave away everything to the poor miners, and soon looked dirt poor. His church officials fired him for this indiscretion. He strongly identified with the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. He said, “Christ lived as an artist, greater than other artists. Jesus made living, human beings.” Picasso would call Van Gogh “the father of us all”, seeing him as his main inspiration,

Of his 900 paintings, Van Gogh sold only a few. He sadly took his own life at age 37, seeing himself as a failure as a painter. After he died, friends brought sunflowers with them to his funeral.

Many people don’t realize that as a pastor’s son, he evangelized people through his colourful yellow paintings. He loved the colour yellow so much that he even nibbled on yellow paint. Don’t try this at home. The lead and cadmium poisoning may have been why he cut off his ear.  

A painting for Van Gogh is a sort of a gospel.

Vs 20 tells us that when God’s flower power breaks in, people are generally healthier and live longer, even till 100 years old. Have you noticed how drugs, alcohol, and smoking prematurely age us and shorten our lives? How many of you would like God, as Psalm 103:5 says, to renew your youth today like an eagle?  How many want God to renew your strength, so that you will soar on wings like eagles, that you will run and not grow weary, that you will walk and not be faint? Jesus will cause our lives to flower when we surrender our will to Him.

In Vs. 24, God says: “Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.”

This is a classic Eugene Peterson verse; God heals sovereignly before we even call, while we are still speaking. God is offering his healing flowers to us. We don’t have to twist God’s arm to heal us. God’s will is to heal us.  All of us as believers will one day be promoted to glory, the ultimate healing.

Who today want a healing touch from God’s flower power? Let us pray.