We are coming to that part of Jesus’ story where we see his ministry gathering steam. Everywhere he goes he draws crowds – sometimes so many, he has to be creative about where to stand so he can be seen and heard. He has also come to the point of organizing his growing community of disciples. In the story just before this week’s, he spends the night on a mountain in prayer and chooses twelve men to be his closest companions. Now he comes down and enters the fray once more.
He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases...
People came from far and wide to see Jesus, Jews and Gentiles alike. They came both to hear him, and to be healed by him. Hearing and healing – such similar words, yet distinct activities which we don’t often put together. But often Jesus spoke healing upon people. He didn’t always touch, and he rarely prayed; he just pronounced healing with his voice. Hearing was how the healing was received.
Maybe people also found healing in his teaching. He proclaimed the nearness of God, and God’s power to deliver them from captivity of every kind, captivity to poverty, power, demons, disease. No doubt hearing him awakened their faith and made them more receptive to healing and release. It’s no accident that every time Jesus sends his disciples out in mission he commands them to “proclaim the Gospel and heal the sick.” These two activities go hand in hand, the proclamation enabling the healing, the healing confirming the proclamation. A church that does not keep these ministries at equal strength weakens its ministry and undermines its effectiveness as agents of the Good News.
I have always, even at seminary, sown the seeds of healing ministry, and I am eager to raise it up at my churches now. How is that ministry practiced at your church? Are there healing ministers equipped to pray with people during or after church services, or teams trained to offer prayer for more intense concerns? Is the healing ministry, where active, accompanied by proclamation of the Good News?
That proclamation need be no more than people’s stories of God’s healing power and love. Our stories are how the Gospel spreads. Our stories of God’s activity quickens the faith of others – just read any of a number of excellent books on Christian healing (email me if you want a list), and see how reading those stories emboldens you to invite God to release his healing stream in your life.
People still want to hear from Jesus, the Jesus we meet in the Gospels. And they want to be whole. If we make both his Word and his Power known in our ministries, many will hear and to be healed.
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