The
beginning of Jesus’ public ministry is centred around Galilee: he’s on home
territory. Having called the first disciples to help Him in the proclamation of
the Good News of the Kingdom, Jesus goes to Capernaum with his disciples to
teach on the Sabbath in the synagogue there. He teaches them, he explains the
Jewish Scriptures, the Word made flesh, the Living Word, is among them. Their
reaction is one of astonishment – amazement that he teaches them, not as the
scribes but as one having authority. Rather than explaining human teaching in a
human way, people are drawn closer to God, by one whose power and authority are
derived from God, because that is who he is. Jesus can explain the Scriptures because
he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life – He is the fulfilment of Scripture, and
it finds its meaning in and through Him.
There is a man in the synagogue who
is not well. The Gospel uses the language of possession by an unclean spirit,
whereas nowadays we would probably use the language mental illness. The man in
his brokenness can recognise who and what Jesus is – the Holy One of God. The
point of the Kingdom which Jesus proclaims, which he explains in his teaching,
is that it is a place of healing. Ours is a God who can heal our wounds, who
can take broken humanity and restore it in love. This is why Jesus’ teaching
and the healing have to go together; they are both part of a larger whole, the
coming Kingdom of God. Jesus proclaims our need to love God and each other, and
puts it into practice, making the healing power of God’s love a reality in the
world.
From the very beginning, Jesus looks
to the Cross, not as a place of torture, of humiliation, or defeat, but as a
place of victory, and healing, as the supreme demonstration of God’s love for
humanity – this is how much God loves us, this is why he sends his Son to heal
our wounds, to restore us, and to give us the hope of Heaven. This healing love
is what we have come to experience here this morning, where under the outward
forms of bread and wine we are fed with the Body and Blood of Christ, so that
their Divine nature might transform our human nature, might give us a foretaste
of heaven, healing our wounds, taking away our sins, cancelling the debt which
we cannot pay, so that we might have life in Him, in this world and the next.
The possessed man asks ‘Have you
come to destroy us?’ We know that Jesus has come not to destroy but to heal, so
that we may have life and have it to the full – this is the Good News of the
Kingdom, which is still a reality here and now – we in our brokenness can come
to the source of healing, to the God who loves us and gives himself for us so
that we can be healed and restored by Him. He can take our lives and heal us in
His love. So let us come to Him, let us be healed by Him, that our lives too
may be transformed, and let us proclaim to a world which longs for healing and
wholeness the love of God in Christ.
2 comments:
Isn't Christ contradictory in the gospels? One time hiding his mission another proclaiming it?
The Four Gospels each have their own individual stresses. The idea of the Markan Messianic Secret is not as highly regarded these days. It is intriguing that people possessed by demons, we might refer to them as mentally ill recognise who and what Jesus is, where others cannot or do not wish to. One can argue that people are not ready to recognise who and what Jesus is, and this becomes clearer in his Passion and Death. In this we see what love and healing really look like
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