Thursday, 12 March Seeking the Messiah. Matthew 8:1–17
This passage commences with crowds – great crowds followed him (v1) and ends with crowds – they brought to him many who were possessed … and [he] cured all who were sick (v16). In between these two massings of people, there are three individual healing stories. This structure is important for us to recognise.
There are grounds for thinking that the three healings are particularly chosen, when we consider the three quite distinct cases:
1. An anonymous man with a disease that makes him unclean and unwelcome. Leprosy and all skin diseases were particularised in the Law as serious ailments which rendered a person both unclean and unable to enter the temple or the community in general.
2. A Roman Centurion – a Gentile – who was seeking healing not for himself, but for his servant.
3. A woman, and a close family friend, Peter’s mother-in-law – furthermore, this particular healing took place on the Sabbath. We know this from Mark 1:21–32, and the reference to large crowds coming to him that evening, i.e. after the Sabbath was over.
When we read the similar account in Mark 1:21ff, it is clear that these cases did not all happen at the same time. Matthew has selected them from his copious notes to serve his particular purpose. We should reflect on that purpose.
Christians are often divided over this question of whether divine healing is still available today. There is a sizable branch of the church which argues that healing along with other miracles ceased at, or soon after Pentecost. There is another large branch which argues that divine healing is available to anyone today who asks for it and has sufficient faith.
This is not the place to discuss those in detail. My own view is that while I believe that Jesus can and does occasionally perform miracles today, they are not commonplace, nor should we expect them as one of those things that necessarily accompany salvation. The reason that Jesus healed so many in this time of his incarnation – his ‘skinful’ presence with us – is to demonstrate that the kingdom is here and is being inaugurated in power and might. This seems to me to be the logical conclusion of v17: This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah, ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases’.
Matthew’s purpose in telling us these stories of three quite different healings that happened to three quite different people in three quite different settings, was to show that healing of infirmities and diseases was a sign of Jesus’ Messiahship. He who came to do these things, as Isaiah prophesied, was the Lord’s Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53:4) to people of all times and all places.
So how should you and I, then, think about healing in the light of this passage?
In these stories Matthew is demonstrating the fulfilment of scripture that promised the advent of the Messiah; but he is not proposing them as a formula for present living.
So how then do you and I cope with sickness and pain now, in our present time?
This is not just an academic question for me. My wife has struggled for more than seven years with an incurable cancer that eats away her bones. She is on chemotherapy as I write this reflection. As I wrote my first handwritten notes on this passage, my eyes were flooded with tears as I contemplated this reading. My eyes went from a photo on my bookshelves of my wife as a teenager to a wooden crucifix that hangs on the wall of my study, pleading with Jesus about her sickness and asking how I should write about this reading.
Many of you who are reading this reflection will be thinking of your own hard journey. Some of you have already lost your spouse, your parent, your child, your friend, to cancer, to Alzheimer’s, to Motor Neurone or some other terrible illness. We are not interested in dry academic theory, we band of sufferers. We need a Gospel that speaks truth and comfort to us. We are not interested in fakery or unsubstantiated promises or in mere theological argument. Here is how I read this passage and others like it:
Jesus healed so many at this time of his presence on earth because he was inaugurating his kingdom. The Bridegroom was present, right then and there, as a foretaste of the Great Banquet in the future when all illnesses will be healed and all sorrows resolved. So while the Bridegroom was here, there was celebration. But you and I do not live in that time.
We live in the time-in-between-times, the now-but-not-yet, the period when faith, hope and love are our currency. But hope does not mean anything if it already has what it hopes for. Faith does not mean anything if the Reality is here, able to be touched. Only Love endures through both times – this time of suffering and the future time of everlasting life with Him.
In this meantime, we are free to ask for healing, but not as a demand that must be granted. Logically, it ought to be a matter of simple observation, that most Christians are not healed. Every Christian who has ever lived has died – usually of some kind of illness or accident. That ought to be proof enough. We will be healed eventually, that is certain, but we may have to wait for that healing until we step into his presence on the other side of our death.
In this time of suffering, we fill up the cup of Jesus’ suffering by identifying with his suffering as we endure our own (Col. 1:24). Our best way of dealing with suffering is to offer it up to him as our gift to him. Please understand: it is not the problem that we offer up – i.e. the sickness, the tragedy, the persecution or the pain – it is the suffering that we endure as we live our lives in the face of that problem that we offer up.
It is a work mingled with faith that we offer – not in order to be saved – that has already been achieved by grace through faith. It is our dealing with life in all of its failure and sin and sorrow that we offer. It is the going hence, the journey from here to there, that we offer. It is our gift of service to him. Sometimes, all too briefly, our journey may be marked with flowers and laughter – but all too often it is marked with pain and sorrow. Paul encourages us to deal with both states of being with joy, rejoicing in our suffering.
Difficult? Yes, undoubtedly. And often we will fail. But He is good. He always cares. He is always with us. And He always hears our prayers and shares our suffering. He is our faithful friend.
Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, I find it so difficult to offer up my suffering. I can nearly, just about, grasp this idea of offering up my suffering to you – but I really need you to imprint that idea on my soul. Help me to be faithful to you in the middle of suffering and to look forward to its own fruits – perseverance, patience, character, and hope. Amen.
