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 Two:  Mt.8:14 – 17

^8:16 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.’

Did Isaiah really envision a Messiah who would heal our physical diseases?  Yes (e.g. Isaiah 35:5 – 6), as a symbol of healing something deeper:  Our entire being, which needed to be healed of sin and death by the Messiah.  In fact, the Messiah would heal the entire world (e.g. Isa.35; 40 – 55).  Walter Wangerin draws up a simple, powerful picture of Jesus as healer in his story The Ragman:

          ‘I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the darkened, dirty alleys of the city.  He was pulling an old cart, filled with clothes, bright and new, and he was calling in a clear, tenor voice, ‘Rags!  New rags for old!’  I wondered about this and so I followed him.  The Ragman came to a woman sobbing on her back porch, with her elbows on her knees, wiping her face with a handkerchief.  Her shoulders shook with each sob. 

          ‘Give me your rag,’ said the Ragman, ‘and I will give you mine.’

          She looked up and he took her old handkerchief and laid a new, clean, white linen one in her hand.  Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman put her handkerchief to his face and began to weep, to sob with grief as she had done, his shoulders shaking.  Yet she was left without a tear.

          ‘Rags!  Rags!  New rags for old!’

          In a little while, the Ragman found a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage.  Blood soaked her bandage.  Blood ran down in a line down her cheek.

          ‘Give me your rag, and I will give you mine.’ 

          The child stared back helplessly.  So he untied the bandage and tied it to his own head.  Then he put a brand new bonnet on hers.  I gasped at what I saw, for the wound went with the bandage!  Against his brow it ran with fresh blood, his own!

          ‘Rags!  New rags for old!’ cried the sobbing, bleeding Ragman.

          The Ragman met a man slumped against a telephone pole.

          ‘Do you have a job?’ the Ragman asked.

          ‘Are you crazy?’ said the man, showing that the right sleeve of his jacket had no arm in it. 

          ‘Give me your jacket and I will give you mine.’  He took off his jacket, and I trembled because the Ragman’s arm stayed in its sleeve.  When the other man put it on, he had two good arms, but the Ragman had only one.

          I wept to see the change in the Ragman.  He stumbled, weeping, bleeding, exhausted to the garbage pits of the city.  He climbed a hill.  With clumsy labor he cleared away a little space on that hill.  Then he sighed.  He laid down.  And then he died.

          I slipped into a junked car and cried because I had come to love the Ragman.  The wonder of this man remained in my mind, and I sobbed myself to sleep.  I slept through until Sunday morning when I was awakened by a light.  Light slammed against my sour face and I saw him.  The Ragman stood there, folding the bandage carefully, a scar on his forehead, but healthy!  And all his rags were clean and shined.  I lowered my head, trembling, and walked to him. 

          ‘Please dress me,’ I said.  And he put his new rags on me, and I am alive beside him:  the Ragman, the Christ.  (paraphrased from Walter Wangerin’s The Ragman)

          ‘He himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.’   Amen, thank you, Lord Jesus.