If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.
27 October. Matthew chapters 8-9
In these two chapters we see Jesus doing what he was, in his lifetime, best known for – healing people. In the course of what might have been only a few days, he heals eleven specific people from a range of conditions – leprosy, paralysis, fever, haemorrhage, blindness, dumbness, demon possession and even death (or a death-like trance). It is clear that there were many more such miracles, too many to be recounted individually. The impact he had on the towns and villages around the lake of Galilee/Capharnaum must have been tremendous. These stories of healing also provide the setting for other developments in the story of Jesus told in between them – the calling of disciples (including Matthew himself), stilling the storm on the lake with a spoken word, and at the end of chapter 9, the command to “send labourers into the harvest”, that is to share in his work of bringing good news.
What was the good news, and how did it relate to these physical and spiritual healings? I have just been reading a newsletter from one of the charities we support – CAP, Christians Against Poverty. Their work is primarily helping people trapped in unsustainable debt to get out of the hole that they have dug themselves into. Or, in many cases, which has been dug for them – domestic abuse, unemployment, mental health problems or physical handicap is frequently the trigger for a downward spiral that leaves people with not only no money and no means of paying off what they borrow, but also no hope. So CAP see their ministry as also one of bringing hope. By acting as agents to negotiating settlements with creditors on their behalf, by challenging unfair benefit decisions by government agencies, by helping people to budget what money they do have, and overall by befriending them and introducing them to the fellowship of the local church. In all these ways, they show people who have lost hope that it is possible to regain it.
Jesus also seems to have been a bringer of hope. That is why he rarely simply healed a physical illness and moved on, but engaged with people’s deeper need. The leper and the bleeding woman, outcast from Jewish society, were cleansed and reintroduced to their religious community; the centurion (Roman soldier) was told that he was ahead of the Jews in the queue to meet God; a paralysed man was assured of forgiveness for sin, before being made able to walk again.
When Jesus is criticised for eating and drinking while John the Baptist and the Pharisees were telling their followers to fast, his reply is in the form of a short parable about clothing and wineskins. He explains, “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they?” (9:15). His ministry was one characterised by activity, joy and hope, and it rubbed off on most of those whom he met. To those in the darkness of depression, debt or anything else that robs people of hope, Jesus comes to restore it. The call to labour in his harvest field is also a call to share in this life-changing gift of hope.