This passage includes multiple stories of Jesus healing. It comes immediately after the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus focuses on the upside-down values of the Kingdom of God versus the glorification of strength in the world around. He addresses the spiritual source of sin versus only the outer actions – hatred and lust versus murder and adultery. And finally he takes apart the religious leaders and their hypocrisy. The Sermon blows the minds of those who heard it – “because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.”
Having established his authority with his words, this passage tells us how he then did so with his actions.
Scripture tells us “You have not because you ask not.” Many of us put ourselves and our needs aside, not wanting to be a bother, not wanting to be a disappointment, but this is not the attitude we are to have with God. We see that in this story – a man who has been suffering and outcast finds it in himself to bring himself to the feet of Jesus and asks. “If you want to, you can heal me.” And Jesus says, “Yes, I want to.”
This healing is more than a physical healing – it touches the man’s spiritual, emotional even social and economic situation. In the same way, Jesus seeks to heal us in those same ways.
Next up, a centurion comes to Jesus. This man is everything the leperous man was not – powerful, foreign, healthy. But he comes to Jesus across a cultural and ethnic boundary to seek healing for a servant. Jesus responds in kind – again, Jesus is willing.
The next healing is closer to home. Peter’s mother-in-law, who would have been known to Jesus and all his disciples. She is sick, but in this case we don’t even see her ask for healing. But Jesus is willing, even when we do not ask.
And Jesus is willing to take on the repercussions of the healing. The stories of him healing go viral (so to speak) and that evening he is swarmed by people begging for healing. And once again, He is willing.
Matthew connects that willingness to Jesus role as Messiah and as the one who gives humanity its ultimate healing. He quotes Isaiah briefly, but the full passage is:
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. – Isaiah 53:4-6
Jesus is willing, even to the cross. We also have the opportunity to be willing – we can cross the boundaries of culture, of socioeconomics, of comfort. When we do so, Jesus is willing and will bring healing in. Jesus is willing. Are we?
— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, August 25, 2024
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