Sunday, February 24, 2013

Week Two

The Healing Ministry

Capernaum

Matthew 4:12-13

¹²Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee.¹³He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali,

Mark 1:21-25

²¹They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught.²²They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.²³Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit,²⁴and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”²⁵But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”

Mark 1:29-32

²⁹As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.³⁰Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once.³¹He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.³²That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons.

Notes for the week come from The Way-worship package, Matthew Kelley

   Jesus continues to demonstrate how he stands in the shoes of human beings by being present in, and redeeming, the worst situations we create for ourselves. A number of these demonstrations take place in the context of healing. Jesus healed people of diseases and demon possession and even raised people from the dead! Our reaction? These are pretty incredible stories, but how can something that seems so fantastic and supernatural have anything to do with God meeting us on a mundane, human level?

            Well, if we set aside for a moment the more sensational aspects of these stories and look at them as one human being interacting with another, we see that the people Jesus healed all had something in common. Their afflictions isolated them from everyone else.

            Jesus spent most of his ministry in the rural areas of northern Israel, not in cities like Jerusalem. Towns such as Nazareth and Capernaum were isolated from the hustle and bustle of the big city, and many of the folks there probably didn’t know or care about the latest news from across the empire. But one of the ironies of a small, isolated town is that it’s hard to be anonymous. Everybody knows everybody else, and they all know each other’s business. In a big, densely populated city, someone with a skin disease or other affliction could easily hide and get lost in the crowd, but in a small town, everybody knew who the lepers and the demon-possessed people were. These people were isolated because everyone knew who they were and shunned them. It’s into this particular pain of loneliness and isolation that Jesus met the people he healed.

            Early in Mark’s gospel, a demon-possessed man interrupted when Jesus was teaching the crowds. This probably was not the first time the man had interrupted a public gathering, and the people were probably ready to run him off again. But Jesus commanded the unclean spirits to come out, restoring the man to sanity and enabling him to rejoin the community. Jesus did more than cast out demonic spirits; he healed this man’s isolation and loneliness.

            Jesus did the same thing for blind men and a man unable to speak (Matthew 9:27-34). By making them whole again, he enabled them to participate fully in the life of their community. Jesus did the same for ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19) who were shunned because of their skin disease.

            Jesus identified with those who were shunned and isolated because he had been there, too. Jesus found himself rejected by the people in his hometown after he proclaimed that Isaiah’s prophecy of the “year of the Lord’s favor” was being fulfilled (Luke 4:14-30). Then, as now, Jesus stands in our shoes, goes through everything we experience, and shows us it is possible to start a new path and walk in God’s way.

...What areas in our lives long for God's healing, wholeness and salvation? May we know the healing that is God's love as we continue this journey together!  Rich Greenway