How God Heals (2) Special Grace

I wonder what it would have been like to be among the crowds pressing in around Jesus in Peter’s house that muggy day in Capernaum. Wanting to see the new rabbi, maybe hoping for a little shock and awe, noticing the religious leaders standing off in a corner, huddled among themselves muttering. I wonder what it would have been like, as I strain to see Jesus, when I feel something falling on my head. I reach up. It’s a piece of mud and thatch. I look up and notice daylight where there shouldn’t be. Then hands. Four pairs of them widening the hole in Peter’s roof. “Why on earth are they doing that? Who’s going to fix Peter’s roof?” I wonder what questions I would have asked.

  

And then a shadow—is that a bed?—something is being lowered through the hole by ropes, each attached to a corner. I imagine being anxious as one corner is lowered a little more quickly than the rest. It looks like the poor fellow is going to slide off!  

But he doesn’t. He reaches the floor and lies there. Oh my! This is interesting. This is Jacob from three doors down. He hasn’t been able to head out on Gallilee for four fishing seasons, since the storm where he broke his legs. He hasn’t even been able to walk.  

I imagine pressing forward to get a better look. Jesus seems to be smiling. My son, he says, your sins are forgiven. Hang on. That’s not what I’m expecting to hear. And it’s clear the bosses in the back didn’t like it either. It takes no prophet to tell from their faces what they think. Jesus has blasphemed. Only God can forgive sins. Jesus’s voice calls my attention back to him. 

“What do you think is easier? To say your sins are forgiven or take up your mat and go home?” It’s clear Jesus knows what they’re thinking, too. “So that you may know that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins,” he points at Jacob, “pick up your bed and go home.” 

And Jacob got up! 

When I place myself in the story, that’s how I think about it. Where do you place yourself? 

This is Jesus’ first miracle in the Gospel of Mark and it is a good window on the Gospel miracles in general—what we’re going to talk about today. 

If you were here last week, you know that we’re thinking especially about how God heals as we prepare for our St. Luke’s Day service, next Sunday. You remember that we talked about God’s common grace—how God has so ordered creation and so equipped human beings that the vast majority of God’s healing work is, well, ordinary. Our bodies heal themselves, or doctors and other healthcare professionals intervene to help in the healing process. The first cause of such healing work is God, and so, we thank God for it.  

Today, we’re going on to reflect on those rare times when God sets aside the ordinary ways of healing to heal in extraordinary ways. Ways we call miraculous. 

Four Kinds of Miracles 

Of course, miracles of healing—even if they’re the miracles we first think of—are not the only miracles in the Gospels and Acts. There are four kinds. 

1. Nature Miracles  

The first is nature miracles—miracles through which Jesus is portrayed as having power over nature. Jesus walks on the sea, for example. We often focus on the faith of Peter when we read this story. But that is not the point. The point of the story is the word spoken by Jesus: “Fear Not! I am!” Jesus takes for himself the name of God, far from commending Peter for having more faith than the rest, he rebukes Peter specifically for failing to trust Jesus’s saving word, and he brings the disciples immediately to their destination. Or maybe we think of the story in which Jesus calms the storm, again with only the power of his word. Do you remember the reaction of the dumbstruck disciples? “Who is this man—that even the wind and the waves obey him?” We’ll say more about those words in a moment. For now, notice simply that the Gospels include Jesus’ power over natural forces among their miracle stories. 

2. Provision Miracles 

Then there are the provision miracles: Jesus twice provides a miraculous catch of fish after the disciples have fished all night, near the beginning of his ministry as recorded by Luke, and after the resurrection as reported toward the end of the Gospel of John. Jesus provides bread—also twice—for 5000 men along with women and children and later on for 4000, again men along with women and children. In John 6, Jesus says the provision of bread is a pointer to himself, the bread of life, and that his followers, if they would live, would have to eat his flesh and drink his blood. This, John records, was a hard teaching that caused many disciples to abandon Jesus. Perhaps most controversially for denominations like ours, Jesus provides wine at a wedding banquet after the wine had fallen short. And yet for John, this is the first “sign”—John uses a different word for miracle than Matthew, Mark, or Luke—that in some way captures the entirety of Jesus ministry. Again, more on that in a minute. For now, the Gospel affirms that Jesus miraculously provides for the needs of his followers—fish, bread and wine. 

3. Exorcisms 

Third are the exorcisms. It is no accident that the first of Jesus miracles in the Gospel of Luke is an exorcism. Jesus is preaching, in Luke 4. A man with an unclean spirit begins to interrupt. And Jesus—again note the centrality of his words to the story—says simply: “Be quiet. Come out of him.” There’s no banter, no arguing, no spells or incantations, no special potions as was common among the exorcists of the day. Just the word. At the word of Jesus, the unclean spirit must go. Why is it no accident that the first miracle in Luke is an exorcism? Hang on to that question. 

4. Healing Miracles 

Then finally, there are the healing miracles. The restoration of sight to the blind. I love the story of Blind Bartimaeus. He is the blind man who “sees” who Jesus is—the Son of David—and so receives his sight. He does so in the presence of the religious experts who “see” what Jesus does and yet remain “blind” to who he is. He raises the lame man—Mark 2. He restores hearing to the deaf. He demonstrates power over fertility by healing a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years and raising a dead girl—12 years old and on the cusp of child-bearing to life. He restores a withered arm, a stooped back, and fluid filled lungs, all on the Sabbath not to permit his followers to disobey, but to show to all what entering into the true Sabbath rest of God looked like. There are so many healing miracles stories—some narrated, some just passed over, that we need to remind ourselves that Jesus did not heal everyone. At the pool of Bethesda, we are told, there were a multitude of sick and paralyzed. But only 1 man was healed. Why? Why didn’t Jesus heal everybody? That’s a good question, too. 

Four Purposes for Miracles 

Let’s pause and take note of the questions that we’ve raised: Why does Jesus provide food? Why exorcisms? Why didn’t Jesus heal everyone? I think we can begin to perceive some answers if we think about what purposes the stories serve in the Gospels 

1. Miracles Restore Creation 

All four kinds of miracle stories have to do with a restoration of creation. They take for granted that what Jesus encounters when he encounters a storm, when he encounters scarcity, when he encounters the powers of darkness, and when he encounters disease and death, he is encountering something that is wrong. Something that is not normal. This is NOT the way things are supposed to be. We talked a little about that last week, too, when we spoke of creation being fallen, being alienated from God. In grace, God persists, God works, God maintains. BUT there is so much not working that is so easily seen almost all the time! This is the world of the New Testament, too. It is our world. It is a fallen world. And with the entry of Jesus, creation is what? Healed. Restored. Its original goodness is uncovered. Chaotic waters that threaten to destroy become placid. Scarcity that keeps people hungry, or robs them of pleasure is replaced by abundance. Dark powers that would enslave are put to flight and human beings are set at the pinnacle of creation. Anything that would prevent human flourishing—even death itself—is banished. Why? The Source of all Life has entered into what is his own and whatever he touches is restored. Is made whole. It’s original goodness, which God saw and spoke in Genesis 1, is recovered and made plain. Miracles are about the restoration of creation. 

2. Miracles Point to the Coming Kingdom 

Second, Miracles point to the coming kingdom. Do you remember the simple preaching of Jesus that the synoptic writers record for us? Here it is: “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.” That’s it. Everything else—the parables, the sermons, the discourses—is commentary. The miracles themselves are commentary. They are the preaching of Jesus in pictures. They are, simply, what it looks like when the Kingdom comes. When the Kingdom Comes, chaos is replaced by beauty and peace. When the Kingdom comes, all eat and are satisfied and no one goes hungry, no one’s left with the bitter dregs. When the kingdom comes, the kingdom of darkness is confounded and defeated. The strong man is tied up by the stronger man and his house is plundered. When the kingdom comes, all that squelches, smothers, suffocates Life is undone and what is left is Life. Abundant life. Whole life. Even death itself is made to work backwards. And where do we find all these promises? In the prophets of the Old Testament. It is therefore no accident at all that these are the very things that happen when Jesus arrives. For he is the coming Kingdom. And so we sing, with Isaiah, “Hear him, ye deaf! His praise, ye dumb your loosened tongues employ. Ye blind, behold your savior come. And leap, ye lame for joy!” Isaiah 35. Written six centuries before Jesus, it is a fitting summary of our Lord’s healing ministry, set to music by Charles Wesley. 

3. Miracles Disclose the Identity of Jesus 

Third, miracles disclose the identity of Jesus. There were other healers, other exorcists to be sure. In Jesus’s day and before and after. But none healed with a word. None could command wind and wave. None dared say, “Fear not. I am.” None dared say, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Jesus did. Where the exorcists shouted and ranted and had to get their spells just right, Jesus merely said, “Be quiet. Come out of him.” Can you imagine? Hearing the words, “Take up your mat and go.” Or “I say to you little girl, get up.” Or Lazarus arise? Those words are words of power. Not power as in “power over against another power,” but power to call into being that which is not. These are words of power to be set alongside, “Let there be light.” The religious leaders were quite right to insist that no one could forgive sins but God. When the disciples asked, Who is this man whom the wind and waves obey, the answer is implied. For the wind and waves obey only the one who made them. He is the covenant God of Israel come among his people and in his train, captives are released, the blind see, the powers are put to flight, and the Lord’s Jubilee is proclaimed. 

4. Miracles Provoke a Decision About Jesus 

And it is precisely because miracles disclose Jesus’ divine identity—he is God come among us as one of us—that they provoke a decision about him. This is most obvious in the aftermath of the raising of Lazarus. Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick; Jesus deliberately delays his going to Bethany until after Lazarus has died; by the time he gets there, Lazarus has been dead four days. He provokes a conversation with Martha, and tells her: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Shortly after, Jesus weeps—an action understood by those present to show his love for poor dead Lazarus, but in the context of John’s narration seems to indicate not grief (after all, Jesus had orchestrated the entire event), but frustration at the peoples’ unbelief. Then the words of power: “Lazarus! Come out!” The result? Many believe, but some go to the Sanhedrin and begin to plot Jesus’s death. And that’s the point I wish to center on. The miracles don’t leave us in neutral any more than they did the original witnesses. They force us, if we read with any degree of seriousness at all, to make a decision about Jesus. Either he is the Lord to whom we owe allegiance and in whom we find freedom, or he is a wicked man whom we must kill.  

What’s the point in all this? Here’s the point: the miracles are never about the miracles. They serve the Gospel—the Kingdom of God has come. They serve the Lord of the Gospel—the one in and through whom the Kingdom as come. They point to the fullness of his reign—the blessed hope of a restored, perfected Creation. A new heaven and new earth where nature is becalmed, abundance abounds, the powers of darkness are no more and Life has the final word.  

Four Postures for Healing Prayer 

And with that in mind, we can now say just a little bit about healing prayer. 

1. Healing Prayer is Natural 

First, healing prayer is natural. If we have been claimed by Christ, if we have been baptized into his fellowship, if we have the Holy Spirit poured out into our hearts, then asking the risen Lord to heal in a miraculous way should not be foreign or fraught, but as natural as my son asking me for a new pair of sneakers. So much of what scares us about healing prayer is, in fact, extraneous to healing prayer. We have been so influenced by two centuries of revivalism and nearly 1 now of televangelism that when we hear the word healing, we think Benny Hinn or Oral Roberts or William Branham. But that is all style. Whether we find it edifying or off-putting is largely irrelevant. It belongs to a time and a place; it is not permanent. It’s not a necessary component of healing prayer. And so next week, our prayers will be, I hope, a natural expression of our discipleship. Not a major theatrical production. 

2. Healing Prayer is Simple 

Second, healing prayer is simple. Jesus, we noted, was not like the other exorcists and healers of his day (and our own) who need magical incantations and spells. He simply spoke the Word of God and the Word accomplished what was spoken. God’s Word is a healing word and an effective word. Next week, in obedience to God’s Word, we are going to pray God’s Word over those who come seeking healing. It will not be elaborate, it will not be looking for the magic words or the right magical gesture as though the Creator of the universe is subject to our whims. It will be a simple prayer, offered to a generous heavenly Father. And it will be prayed in the expectation that God will answer. 

3. Healing Prayer is Accepting 

But if we are asking God, rather than manipulating him, not only is our prayer an expecting one. It is also an accepting one. We must acknowledge that even as we ask boldly, we do not do so perfectly. We must acknowledge that our wills may not be in line with God’s. We can affirm that God will always heal, but perhaps not in the way or in the time that we would like. This is simply part and parcel of God being God and therefore free and we being human and therefore capable of mistakes, presumption, and sinful pride. May I be specific? My father has testified eloquently and often of his healing. We have prayed, and continue to pray, that he will be healed of cancer. God, in his mercy and wisdom has chosen so far not to heal dad of cancer, but instead to set him free from anxiety attacks that began over twenty years  ago. It may be that God will not heal dad of cancer until resurrection day, when he heals all who are his fully, finally and forever. But I will still pray. And I will pray knowing that if cancer is not the cause, dad will one day die. As will I. That is the last enemy to be destroyed. And until it is, on the day of resurrection, the mortality rate will remain constant at 100%. Any glimpses of the kingdom that come before that day, we accept as grace, as gift, as privilege.  

4. Healing Prayer is Hopeful 

And it is because we look to the end, to the resurrection day, that healing prayer is finally hopeful. God will heal. Fully. God will heal finally. God will heal forever. That is good news. The “not the way it’s supposed to be” that defines creation today is not the final word. That is good news. That goal is the goal toward which all healing prayer is aimed, and it is a goal which, though it seems a long time coming, will not be finally frustrated. And so we pray in hope. We pray confidently that God will answer. In God’s way. In God’s time.  

The video is available here.