One theme that immediately jumps out at us today from the lessons – particularly the Old Testament Lesson from 2 Kings and the Gospel lesson from Mark – is the theme of healing. The Old Testament lesson, of course, might be called the ultimate miracle of healing, when Elisha raises the Shunnemite woman’s son from the dead. Jesus performed several resurrections as well, but the gospel lesson doesn’t concern a resurrection. Rather it mentions the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law from a fever, and after that, his healing of a great number of people who seem to have overwhelmed the place in Capernaum where Jesus and his disciples were staying.
We will come across several of these miracles of healing in the ministry of Jesus in the coming weeks. Next week’s Gospel lesson concerns Jesus’ cleansing of a leper. The week after that the gospel lesson is the healing of a paralitic. In view of this, today I want to clear up some common misconceptions about miracles generally and miracles of healing in particular. Miracles of healing occur many times in Jesus’ ministry, and also in the ministry of Jesus’ Apostles as they begin their work after the Ascension. If we are to avoid the errors of faith and practice which have vexed and perplexed Christians for centuries, when they think about miracles of healing, we need to rightly understand these miracles, particularly their purpose and significance.
The first thing we must keep clearly in mind is that the healings in today’s lessons, and all those like them, are signs. They attract attention, and they are SUPPOSED to attract attention. They attract attention because they are unusual, or unexpected. People are supposed to NOTICE the miracle, including miracles of healing, and to MARVEL at them. This is why they are called wonders – they make onlookers gaze in wonder and astonishment.
But, the point of a miracle is not merely to entertain by astonishing us. The miracle worker does NOT offer the miracle to generate a chorus of GEE WHIZ! from those who are standing by. Miracles have meaning, including miracles of healing. People are supposed to see the sign and to understand something they did not understand before. That is why they are NOT ONLY called wonders, but also signs.
As we will see when Jesus performs many of his miracles of healing, THAT THING he wishes to signify by the miracle may vary from healing to healing. But all miracles of healing, including the ones in today’s Old Testament and Gospel lessons, have a common purpose as signs. And that purpose is this: they validate, or confirm the office or mission of the one who performs the miracle.
We can see this clearly in the second Book of Kings, in which we find the record of the resurrection of the Sunnemite woman’s son. This miracle is one of 16 miracles credited to the prophet Elisha in this section of 2 Kings. Scripture records that the prophet Elijah performed eight miracles. His disciple and successor Elisha prayed he would receive a double portion of his master’s spirit when he assumed his mantle as a prophet in Israel. His request was granted, and one evidence of this is that Scripture records not eight, but sixteen miracles.
Among the miracles recorded for the prophet Elisha is the resurrection of the Shunnamite woman’s son. What we need to keep in mind, however, is that from 2 Kings chapter 2 through the next eleven chapters, we find sixteen miracles recorded, most of them one after the other. First we learn of how Elisha miraculously parted the Jordan in order to cross it. Next he miraculously cleanses polluted water. The next miracle is a miracle of judgment, when he calls out two she-bears who killed 42 teenaged thugs who had come of the city to harrass Elisha. Next came miracles that helped Israel defeat the Moabites in battle. Then a miracle that resuced a poor widow who was bankrupt.
That is the point where we find next the miracle of resurrecting the Shunnemite woman’s son. And in the text of 2 Kings, we next find a miracle of cleansing poisoned food for his own disciples, and next a miracle of feeding a hundred men on 20 loaves of bread, and then another miracle of healing, when Naaman the Syrian is cleansed of his leprosy. And so forth and so on, until the last miracle is the resurrection of a man whose dead body touched the bones of Elisha after he had been dead long enough for his body to be reduced to bones.
Now what is the point of all this? It is the same point as we see in the first Prophet of Israel. When God sent Moses to Pharaoh, Moses said “But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice; suppose they say, ‘The LORD has not appeared to you.’” Well, God provided a solution to that by conferring on Moses the ability to perform various signs and wonders. And, so it was when Moses taught the people about prophets who would come after him. Their credentials included the ability to work signs and wonders.
And, so it was with Jesus. In fact, that is why the crowds and the religious leadership were continually demanding that Jesus perform signs and wonders. It was part of the credentials of the Messiah that he should be able to do so.
Now, when we understand this about the healings we see Jesus performing in the gospels, this should immediately dispel a common misconception about the ministry of Jesus, and in particular about the healings he performed. Many people mistakenly think that his ministry was to heal everyone. But, that is exactly what Jesus repudiates in the very gospel lesson in front of us.
Earlier in the day, Jesus has exorcised a man with an unclean spirit in the synagogue. Afterwards, he and his disciples go to Peter’s mother-in-law’s home to eat, and they find her prostrate with a fever. Jesus heals her. By night fall, the house is surrounded! It was a Sabbath, you see, and people couldn’t travel around as freely as they could after the Sabbath, and the Sabbath ended at sundown.
But the word had spread, and Mark says that “the whole city was gathered together at the door.” And so, he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons. Sometime in the middle of the night, however, Jesus slips away and finds a solitary place to pray. His disciples are scurrying around in the dark, looking for him, and when they find him, they say “Everyone is looking for You.”
Why were they looking for Jesus? Well, obviously, because he was healing all these sick people. But, why did Jesus slip away? Why did he refuse to return to Capernaum to keep on healing the crowds of people who were there looking for him? Jesus tells them, “Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also, because for this purpose I have come forth.”
The healings, the exorcisms, and the other miracles Jesus performed were all means to an end, and that end was simply this – to validate his authority to speak for God, to give the signs of a prophet, and the point of THAT is get the people to listen to what he had to say. The overarching purpose was to preach the kingdom of God, NOT to heal everyone who came to him asking for a miracle of healing.
Indeed, Jesus many times refused to do healings. Here in Mark, he refused to do any more healings in Capernaum. He kept on healing, and exorcising, but it was in other places. Why did he refuse to do any more healings in Capernaum? We learn why in Matthew chapter 11. Matthew records that Jesus “20 … began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent.” And, one of the cities he rebukes is Capernaum. “23 And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades; for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24 But I say to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.”
When Jesus was teaching in the synagogue in Nazareth, he refused to do any miraculous works there, and he explained his actions this way: “25 But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land; 26 but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath,in the region of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” This made the people in the synagogue so mad that they ran Jesus out of town and tried to throw him off a cliff.
Do you see the point that Jesus is making here? Even in the days of Elijah and Elisha, who were also doing many signs and wonders, these signs and wonders were not indiscriminately passed out like favors at a party. They were used to validate the mission, the office, the message of the Prophet who was doing the miracles, including miracles of healing. But, if those who beheld the signs did not receive the prophet, he ceased to do the miracles, he ceased to provide the signs.
As with the Old Testament prophets, so also with Jesus, and so also with his Apostles when he sends them out. He sends them out as God sent Moses to Pharoah, with signs and wonders to perform. They healed people of diseases. They cast demons out of people. Indeed, in Acts 19 we read this: 11 Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.” Certainly, if anyone needed miraculous credentials it was Paul, for he had built up quite a reputation as a persecutor of the Church.
Now some who read the Bible think that these miracles, these signs and wonders, the miracles of healing that we see in the ministry of Jesus and the Apostles, is something “standard” or “ordinary” about the Christian life and Christian ministry. But that is not what we find in the Bible. The very Paul who was performing great miracles of healing at the beginning of his ministry – because such were so very necessary to validate that he was finally on the side of the Angels – those miracles ceased, and they did so during the life of Paul himself.
In 2 Timothy, one of the last letters which Paul wrote while he was in prison in Rome, awaiting his own execution, he wrote these words: “Trophimus I have left in Miletus sick.” If Paul, as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, could perform such mighty works of healing, why did this not avail for Trophimus? Or consider Paul’s words to his disciple Timothy in 1 Tim. 5: “23 No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach’s sake and your frequent infirmities.” Your FREQUENT infirmities? If Timothy is infirm, if he’s prone to digestive illnesses, why is Paul prescribing wine instead of simply healing him?
The inference is easy – Paul can no longer command the miracles he once did, and the reason for that is no sin or failure on Paul’s part. Rather, it is simply that the purposes of the signs he once did is fulfilled. Paul’s office, Paul’s message, Paul’s mission has already been roundly and soundly confirmed, first by the miracles he performed, but later by the fruits of his ministry.
So, to be healed from your disease is not a right or entitlement. Nor is it a power vested in Christians generally, or even in specific individuals apart from the signatory purpose which such healings had in both Old and New Testaments.
Now some would say at this point that I do not believe in divine healing. That is the purest poppycock, and any one who would say this needs some help in thinking from one idea to the next. It is one thing to say that certain individuals – Jesus, or his disciples, or the early evangelists – had a divinely conferred power to heal people of diseases, and to perform other miracles. No one disputes this. Nor does anyone dispute that the frequency of such healings can been seen to decline even in the pages of the New Testament.
But, from these facts it does NOT follow that miraculous healings cannot and do not occur. They do all the time. It is not, however, because of the act of a miracle worker, but as an answer to prayer. The general epistle of James is probably the first book of the New Testament to be written, written before any of the Gospels. It mentions healing from diseases. And this is what it says [James 5]:
“13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.”
This is what is normal in the life of the Church. And every century of the history of the Church is riddled with accounts of miraculous healings of Christians who are sick, because of the prayers of other Christians. Indeed, we in this parish have seen two examples of this in the past year. Do you remember praying last year for Al Mc____, who was not expected to live at one point? He is back at work. Last summer, we learned of Mary L___’s diagnosis of terminal leukemia, that she was given only a few weeks to live. It was a huge concern for her daughter Priscilla, who knew that her mother was not a Christian. And, so we have been praying for her salvation. She has lived not a few weeks, but about seven months, and Priscilla continues to see signs of authentic spiritual life in her mother.
And, you might be tempted to wonder – how do we know that it was our prayers that were answered? And, I say to you, how do you know that it was NOT our prayers which were answered? We have access to God the Father through his Son Jesus Christ. And, if we pray his mercy on the sick and the sick recover, what kind of unbelief lurks in our hearts to think, “Well, it might have been something else?” If that is how we think, how is that different from those who saw Jesus’ miracles of healing and still doubted?
God grant us to receive the miracles of Christ recorded in the Scriptures for what they are – the badges of office, the credentials of a Prophet from God. And, let us go beyond the signs to embrace the one to whom the signs are pointing – the eternal Son of God, who came into our world, not only to heal our diseases, but to redeem us from sin and death, and to raise us up with him at the last day, to eternal life.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
