A woman entering her hotel room was shocked to see a naked woman, who appeared to be dead, draped across the bed. Her husband, bending over the corpse, looked up and said, “Dear, before you say anything, I have a question. Are you going to believe what you see, or what I tell you?”
That is exactly the same question God has for each of us. We believe what we see, and that’s the wrong answer.
… Read the rest
The healing of the blind man of Bethsaida, one of the few incidents unique to Mark’s gospel, must be the oddest of Jesus’ miracles. It says that when he got to Bethsaida, the townspeople brought a blind man to him and begged him to heal him. Begged? It’s almost as if he seemed unwilling at first.
Then, Jesus took the man by the hand and led him out of town. And at first, the healing seemed not to work. The man could see, but not clearly. Jesus had to try again.
Did Jesus have an “oops” moment? Or did he have a reason for performing a two-step healing?… Read the rest
Healings occur frequently in the New Testament. They testify both to the power and compassion of God. Acts 3 describes the first healing after Jesus’ resurrection: Peter and John’s healing of the lame man at the temple and the speech Peter gave immediately afterward.
The same people who hated Jesus hated Peter and John for this deliberate act of subversion. It’s easy for us to understand its life-changing impact on the beggar. It’s less easy to notice it’s meaning in the life of the church.
… Read the rest
In John 8, Jesus had a heated discussion about his ministry and credentials with Jewish leaders in the temple. He left, noticed a man born blind, and healed him. It was the Sabbath, so the leaders who were offended at him before became more offended and took out their frustration on the formerly blind man. Jesus’ disciples also saw the blind man, but they took it as a springboard for a theological discussion about sin (John 9:1-7). Has the church to this day understood what Jesus said and did?
A blind man sat near the entrance to the temple.… Read the rest
At the height of his popularity, but when the Pharisees were beginning to view him with suspicion, one Sabbath Jesus entered a synagogue, by definition a Pharisee stronghold. Not that it was unusual for him to attend synagogue services; he probably attended somewhere every Sabbath of his life. But on the occasion Mark describes, a man with a withered hand was there.
All the Pharisees looked Jesus and the man with the withered hand, and what they saw was not so much a man in need as a reputed law breaker in their synagogue.
Would Jesus have the audacity to heal the man on the Sabbath?… Read the rest
Christians look forward to the resurrection of the dead, as promised through Jesus’ own resurrection. What about the resurrection of the living?
Many of us go through life doing the same things, including making the same mistakes, over and over. Someone has observed that a rut is nothing but a coffin with the ends knocked out. Just as there is new life after physical death, so is there new life after stagnation. Lazarus died physically, but we can take his death and rising from death as a metaphor for reawakening to new life after a period of spiritual slumber.
… Read the rest |
||
| Christ Healing the Blind Man of Bethsaida (14th. c.) |
Mark’s gospel records a very odd healing. Some people in Bethsaida brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. Usually in Scripture we see Jesus instantly moved to compassion, but these people had to beg him.
Then, instead of laying his hands on the man, he led him out of town, where the story becomes odder still.
Implicitly Jesus had challenging questions for the blind man, his disciples, and all of us: Do you believe me? Is trusting me still an option for you?
In Luke 10:13, Jesus pronounced woe to Bethsaida for its unbelief at the miracles performed there.… Read the rest
In Mark 8:22-26, Jesus performed his only two-part healing. In an earlier post, I pointed out the significance to Mark’s structure of the fact that Jesus had to lay his hands on a blind man twice before his sight was fully restored.
That is not the only odd thing about this miracle. Notice that Jesus and his disciples entered the village of Bethsaida, where some people asked him to lay hands on a blind man. He did not do so immediately. Instead, he took the man by the hand and led him out of the village. After Jesus healed him, he sent him home with strict orders not to enter the village.… Read the rest
In recent centuries, philosophers have doubted miracle stories. Some of them have asserted that only uneducated people who don’t know much about science could believe them, so the stories must have some time after Jesus’ live passed into the realm of legend.
Others have claimed that the biblical authors deliberately made up stories that couldn’t be true in order to gain a mass following among the unsophisticated and credulous.
One question, then: if someone made up a bunch of tall tales to make Jesus seem like more than just another teacher, why would they make up a story about a miracle that seemed not to work?… Read the rest