The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Jesus as Healer, Sin as Disease, Part One:  Mt.8:14 – 17

^8:14 When Jesus came into Peter’s home, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick in bed with a fever. ¹⁵ He touched her hand, and the fever left her; and she got up and waited on him. ¹⁶ When evening came, they brought to him many who were demon-possessed; and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill. ¹⁷ This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: ‘He himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.’

The December 27, 1993 issue of Time Magazine covered the topic of angels and supernatural intervention.  The reporter writes:

Ann Cannady recalls the day in July 1977 when a third test result confirmed she had advanced uterine cancer. “Cancer is a terribly scary word,” she says.  Her husband Gary, a retired Air Force master sergeant, had lost his first wife to the same type of cancer and did not know whether he had the strength to go through it again.  “We spent the next eight weeks scared and praying, praying and scared,” says Ann.  “I kept begging God, saying, ‘Please, if I’m going to die, let me die quickly. I don’t want Gary to have to face this again.’”… One morning, three days before she was to enter the hospital for surgery, Gary answered the doorbell. Standing on the step was a large man, a good inch taller than her 6-ft. 5-in. husband. “He was the blackest black I’ve ever seen,” Ann says, “and his eyes were a deep, deep azure blue.” The stranger introduced himself simply as Thomas. And then he told her that her cancer was gone.

“How do you know my name, and how did you know I have cancer?” stammered Ann.  Then she turned to her husband and asked, “What do we do, Gary? Should we ask him in?”  Thomas came inside and again told them she could stop worrying. He quoted scripture to them – Isaiah 53: 5: “…and with his stripes we are healed.”  Ann, still confused, looked at the man and demanded, “Who are you?”

“I am Thomas.  I am sent by God.”

Next, Ann recalls, “he held up his right hand, palm facing me, and leaned toward me, though he didn’t touch me.  I’m telling you, the heat coming from that hand was incredible.  Suddenly I felt my legs go out from under me, and I fell to the floor.  As I lay there, a strong white light, like one of those searchlights, traveled through my body.  It started at my feet and worked its way up.  I knew then, with every part of me -- my body, my mind and my heart -- that something supernatural had happened.”

She passed out.  When she awoke, her husband was leaning over her asking, “Ann, are you alive?” and pleading for her to speak to him.  Thomas was gone.  Ann, still weak from the encounter, “crawled over to the telephone and called my doctor’s office and demanded to speak to him right that minute.  I told him something had happened, and I was cured, and I didn’t need surgery.  He told me stress and fear were causing me to say things I didn’t mean.”

In the end they reached a compromise.  Ann would show up at the hospital as scheduled, but before the operation the surgeons would do another biopsy.  They would keep her on the operating table at the ready.  If the preliminary test came back positive they would proceed as planned.  When Ann woke up, she was in a regular hospital room, the doctor at her bedside.  “I don’t understand what’s happened,” he said, “but your test came back clean.  We’ve sent the sample off to the lab for further testing.  For now, though, you appear to be in the clear.”

There has been no recurrence of the cancer.  At first Ann was hesitant to talk about it for fear that people, including her children, would think she’d “lost it.”  They didn’t.  Even her doctor, she says, acknowledged at one point that he’d “witnessed a medical miracle.”[1]

Stories of miraculous healings abound.  A few years ago, my friend Dan was doing his medical residency in Lawrence, Massachusetts.  One day, a woman came into the hospital with chronic back pain.  Dan felt the prodding of Jesus to pray for her back.  Asking the Lord whether she would be okay with that, he received a ‘yes.’  Dan asked Jesus to heal her, and he did!  Her back pain was gone. 

I believe that Jesus still does miracles like that.  He did that in Mt.8:1 – 17.  Here in this short passage, we get a summary of that:  Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever (8:14), others of demon possession (8:15), and all of illness (8:15).  Perhaps nowadays he does this in ways we can’t predict all the time.  Nevertheless, because of Scripture and certain experiences, I believe he still does.  The real question is how to interpret these incidents.  What does it mean when Jesus heals someone physically?  And what does it mean when the healing we pray for doesn’t happen? 

Ultimately, Jesus will resurrect us into glorious God-soaked physical bodies, too.  He will give us the bodies God always meant for us to have.  No more malfunctions or mortality.  In that sense, Jesus will answer every prayer for physical healing.  ‘Not yet’ is not ‘no.’

          In the meantime, however, Jesus’ physical healings symbolize a deeper healing that he offers.  Miracles ultimately are only temporary fixes:  we get a bit more time with this malfunctioning body and mortal life.  But Jesus’ miracles – both during his earthly ministry and the present – are signposts.  They symbolize how Jesus heals our spiritual, relational, and moral selves.  He gives us the character we were meant to have:  his own.  No more sin and character flaws!  Jesus carries away the deepest of our diseases:  our corrupted, sinful human nature.

Let’s pray for Jesus to heal our bodies, and especially our deepest nature.  Remember that a ‘not yet’ is not a ‘no’.  Pray for the courage to interpret those events when they happen.