Jesus' remarkable display of fervent repair
"He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases”
Jesus tells common men, and us two millennia later, that whatever the Holy Spirit has in mind is surely exciting and remarkable, but it’s going to require difficulties that will test your mettle. Stay the course.
Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Hosea 8:4-7, 11-13
Matthew 9:32-38
Jesus went around to all the towns and villages,
teaching in their synagogues,
proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness. (Matthew 9:35)
Jesus reminds us that he is not an ordinary man. In both severe and normal human moments, he reveals his place in creation and time. God is always on duty. Jesus’ responsibilities to his followers do not cease. Everything he does, both big and small, reverberates through eons.
The verses we hear today in Matthew end a litany of several amazing healings and the dramatic miracle on the stormy sea. Wedged within the healings, reads an out-of-band story — an over-eager follower and a reticent disciple. Their conversations with Jesus follow an exhausting rush of healings that began late in the day and must have lasted deep into the night, and they precede a severe storm in which Jesus fell asleep in a rocky boat due to his weariness.
Physically spent by hordes of ill people, Jesus remains needed. He must get on a boat where he plans to rest, but must instead rebuke the winds and the sea to protect and calm the frightened men who follow him.
Both the eighth and ninth chapters of Matthew deal with cleansing of lepers, healings, cures, and driving out of spirits. This is a remarkable display of fervent repair. If someone were to travel through the towns and cities along Highway 24 today, doing the same things Jesus did, the crowds would be huge. The internet would go nuts. News services would be recording his every move. Folks would gather around to hear speeches and to get a peek at the person performing miracle after miracle. This is what Jesus and his followers were dealing with in his time.
Matthew describes, in brief but precise detail, the draining of Jesus’ energy from the growing exhaustion of constant healings amid the ardors of travel to perform his miracles wherever he must go. In the evenings, they brought him many who were possessed by demons, and he drove out the spirits by a word and cured all the sick, to fulfill what had been said by Isaiah the prophet: “He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases.”
These healings are more than a man going to a Church meeting on a Wednesday evening after a hard day’s work. Jesus performs serious hands-on restoration. After that is done, rather than stopping, Jesus told the disciples they’ve got to hop into a boat and head off to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. There’s a whole set of new towns to blast through. We can see that Jesus is going to use the boat trip to rest and recharge his spent body. But on that trip, where Jesus tries to nap, his rest is interrupted by a severe storm.
The harangue of weather and fearful men in the face of his exhaustion is still not too much to bear. Rushed awake, Jesus still teaches, reveals, and leaves us all with insight for recorded history.
This is who Jesus is. Steady, ready, determined, and successful.
Nothing in scripture, we know, is filler, extra words to pump up the volume or provide relief. Jesus isn’t the president of the United States dropping into stadiums all over the country to give speeches. He doesn’t dress to impress or work a room full of people to curry favor. He doesn’t fly in a jumbo jet, napping quietly between gigs. He doesn’t have a crew monitoring his every move and parting the crowds as he wanders around.
Jesus doesn’t see his entourage as pawns on a chessboard or replaceable minions. Jesus’ followers eat on the run, hobnob with the diseased, and live lives of expectancy. Each person has a place and a purpose and is fully loved by Jesus.
Jesus tells common men, and us two millennia later, that whatever the Holy Spirit has in mind is surely exciting and remarkable, but it’s going to require difficulties that will test your mettle. Stay the course.
Remember, Jesus hand-picks each person who joins him. He calls us individually in ways that we each will grasp. When we respond positively or negatively to Jesus, he molds us and speaks to our hearts. Once we’re on board with him, the work flows like a deep river.
Jesus asks for constant intimacy rather than convenient attendance. The patterned life of the secular world has no permanence, no real consistency. Necessity quite often is not necessary at all.
Jesus speaks the truth and personally attends to everyone who engages him. He has designs on our lives. In the midst of everything going on, “Pay attention,” he tells us. “I am paying attention to you. I know who you are. You know who I am. Listen to what I am telling each of you. I am always with you. Keep your eyes, ears, and heart focused on me.”