Friday, Oct. 11
Matthew 8:1 – 9:38 Read it here
Most of this section is healing stories—times when Jesus supernaturally rids people of diseases and disabilities with miracles that are testimony to his power.
For most of Christian history, these stories have attracted people to faith in Jesus. With the enlightenment thinking of the 17th and 18th centuries and modernist thought of the 19th and 20th centuries, they became an embarrassment to many Christian teachers and thinkers. We had an era in which the wisdom of Christian teaching and the work of Christian people was to bring the salvation of the world. Miracles reeked of superstition. For some, even the miracle of resurrection was too much of a stretch.
Christianity, though, is grounded in the life, death and resurrection of one man, who was fully man but also was God himself. He shared our limitations and also shared God’s power. Sometimes we can get a glimpse of understanding all that is meant by that; other times we just have to give thanks for it.
Jesus never presented himself as a magical healer of all the ills of the world.
The miracles served a purpose.
In the early verses of chapter 9, Jesus tells a paralytic that his sins are forgiven. When accused of blasphemy, he responds by saying, “Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.”
The man did take up his mat and go home…and the crowd praised God.
In case anyone was thinking that following Jesus was a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, Jesus made it clear that following him comes with a cost. “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
Miracles had a purpose then, and they have a purpose now. We don’t know how or why God sometimes chooses to intervene in ways we call miracles. We know that sometimes he does. Most of the time he doesn’t.
For most of us, the things we hope for, and even pray for, will come to us once we are freed from the limitations of life on earth. When miracles happen, thank God for them but don’t stop there—look for the purpose behind the miracle. God is accomplishing something through it beyond what we first see.