Healing

Matthew 8:1-17

Here are three healings. First off, is the leper, then the centurion's servant, then Peter's mother-in-law. I always wonder what we're supposed to take away from these stories of Jesus healing people. Does that mean He will heal us?

I was thinking about it a bit today, and I don't think that's it at all. It's not that Jesus will heal us, it's that He can. That's it.

You see, it looks like these particular healings are pointed out to illustrate that Jesus can heal. The leper comes to Jesus, in an act of faith, for his own healing. As a leper, he really has no hope of being restored to "normal" in any other fashion. He has no hope beyond the chance that maybe Jesus can heal him. And make no doubts, he believes that Jesus can heal him, but whether He will or not, that is the question (or more correctly, whether He is willing).

The centurion comes on behalf of his servant, so it not the servant himself who is showing faith, but someone on his behalf. Jesus makes a big deal of the faith shown by the centurion. It would be easy to make too big a deal of that fact if it were not bookended by the stories around it.

Peter's mother-in-law was lying down sick with a fever. It is Jesus who initiates this healing.

These three stories are very different. In one, there is a display of faith, in the next a greater display of faith, but on behalf of someone else (who may, or may not have shared that faith) and finally someone who shows no faith at all, and really never asked to be healed in the first place.

The leper likely wouldn't have ever gotten better. Maybe the servant would have, but the fact that the centurion went out of his way to get Jesus to help says to me that it must have been pretty serious. Peter's mother-in-law probably would have gotten better at least let's say so.

So, there's no formula. There's nothing to point at and say, "aha!" that's how to be healed. I think this is deliberate. We can't come away thinking that we know how to be healed, all we can see is that Jesus is able to heal. And that's what we need to see.

With our modern medicine, I think we've lost touch of just how scary sicknesses can be. You never knew which one would finally do you in. You could only hope for the best, and pray you didn't get sick in the first place. That fact that Jesus can heal is earth shattering. It's important in another way as well. The section ends by explaining that His display of healing fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah about the Messiah. Now it's no good to say things about the Messiah that could apply to anyone. If Isaiah had said something like, "you will know him because he walks on two legs and eats fish" well, that wouldn't have helped very much, would it? So, because Jesus healed these people, he did something that was uncommon enough to identify Him as the Messiah. He is identified as the Messiah, and not just that, He is someone who can heal. These are two powerful things presented here, world changing things. That, I believe is what we are meant to take away from this section.