Lent Part 3: Jesus heals

Welcome back. With tomorrow being Palm Sunday and therefore next week being Easter weekend, this miniseries will be wrapping up shortly. Hopefully you are also getting excited for Easter and if you want to know what lies at the heart of Easter then visit next week and we can have a look.


Today I will be taking a look at some of the people Jesus encountered and how he changed their lives. I will go through three instances of healing recorded in Matthew and examine what I think they mean and symbolize.


First things first from Matthew 8.1-4 Jesus encounters a leper. Leprosy in the Bible is probably not what we understand as leprosy today (see The Oxford Bible Commentary, section on Matthew 8.1-4). Actually leprosy was probably several skin diseases grouped together under the blanket term. In Number 12.10 and 2 Kings 5.1 the term leprosy is used for a contagious skin disease. Leviticus 13-14 contains a large number of ordinances for skin diseases. These cover both practical health issues and ceremonial purity issues. Essentially, those with leprosy were ostracized and rejected by society. They lived an existence cut off from their people. In Matthew 8.2, a leper approaches Jesus. He recognizes who Jesus is and asserts that Jesus is able to heal, and the leper will be healed if Jesus wills it. In verse 3, Jesus shatters this lepers' world. He touches him. Now imagine having not being touched by another person for a long time. When Jesus reached out he made a connection. Jesus not only touched him. He near on bear-hugged him. When Jesus touched him, he took hold of the leper, grasping him by the hand. This gesture would have meant so much to the man. This real love for people is also what led Jesus to the cross. The leper was healed (or rather cleansed as the disease was understood as an impurity), and Jesus told him to uphold the law (cf. Lev. 14.2-32).


The second example of healing I will take from Matthew 9.1-8. In this example, a paralyzed man is brought to Jesus. The first thing Jesus does is forgive him of his sins. It is clearly a priority for Jesus that the internal health is more important than the external. Jesus recognizes the real problem that lies at the heart of humanities' existence. In James 5.16 we can see that sometimes sickness has a spiritual element. "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed." The teachers of the law see this and accuse Jesus of blasphemy. As a response, Jesus claims it is harder to heal a person physically than forgive them of their sins, as a physical healing can be observed. Jesus heals the man and restores his ability to walk.


The final example will be from Matthew 17.14-18. A boy is demon-possessed, which we could interpret today as an epileptic. "He has seizures and suffers terribly." Jesus is concerned with the fact that his disciples have not been able to heal the boy. Jesus deals with the demon and the boy becomes well. Before this instance, the boy has always been the object in the sentence. This is harder to pick up in the English but the whole time the boy has been mentioned, he always is an object. Either he is been thrown into fire and water, or being brought to the disciples and Jesus, or being healed. After Jesus heals him, the boy becomes the subject. It is God's wish that we become subjects and not objects. We are children of God, who have been given stewardship over the earth and when we are subjugated and not seen as creations in the image of God, we have distorted and upset the created order.


Time and time again, Jesus' disciples are told and expected to heal and imitate Christ (Matt. 10.8; 11.5; 17.16; 28.18-20). The call is to restore creation. Jesus didn't come to make people into superhumans but to restore them back to what they should have been. The paralytic wasn't able to run as fast as a cheetah, the boy wasn't suddenly able to walk unharmed in fire, the blind do not have x-ray vision. Jesus unties the bonds of a fallen world. He gives an expectation for what will happen in the end. I will also note that whatever you may think about healing, we can agree it doesn't seem to happen as easily as it happened for those around Jesus. From 2 Corinthians 12.7-10 we can see that St. Paul learned to accept his limitations. Many scholars consider the "thorn" to be a physical ailment when compared with Galatians 4.13-15. Paul seems to have a condition which he has learned to accept. He instead uses it to glorify God. We should be willing to accept that not every illness is healed. We should be hopeful, however, that one day everything will. For now, we can treat people with love, as images of God. People are not to be abused, but loved and treated with dignity because of the fact that they are created by God, made by His hands.


Please do leave a comment if you have any thoughts. I just felt I would share what seems to be a large theme in Matthew and the Gospels in general, which is healing. I have commented in favor of eschatological readings, meaning I consider them to be a sign of things to come at the second coming rather than an everyday expectation. However I am well aware of the potential to be completely wrong. Bless you guys, take care,

Joe


*Unless otherwise stated I have used the NLT Bible translation.