After the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus became mobile again. But before leaving Capernaum, on the NE corner of the Sea of Galilee, he met a Roman Centurion who was concerned for his valued young slave. The young boy was, as Luke records, sick and near death. The Centurion (leader of 100 foot soldiers) asked Jesus to heal the boy, but with a twist. When Jesus said, “I will come and heal him,” the Centurion demurred, telling Jesus, “Lord; I am not worthy to have you come into my home. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed.” Jesus was amazed at the Roman’s faith, telling his disciples that he hadn’t found such faith in all Israel. “Then Jesus said to the Roman officer, ‘Go back home. Because you believed, it has happened.’ And the young slave was healed that same hour.”
It’s amazing what Jesus is willing to do in our lives when faith is present.
Having healed the young man, Jesus took his disciples, a large band by this time, to Nain, about 28 miles to the SW, about a strong day’s journey. Luke gives us the detail that a large crowd followed him from Capernaum. (Luke was a physician, a trained observer. As such, Luke’s gospel is full of such details as the time of day, the weather, the size of crowds, and crowd reactions to the words of Jesus. When healings are being recorded, Luke often gives a diagnostic aside. The other gospel writers often miss these little details.)
As Jesus and his accompanying crowd began to enter the village, another crowd was coming out, a funeral procession. A widow’s only son was being carried to the place of burial, and most of the village was going with her to share her grief. “When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion. ‘Don’t cry!’ he said. Then he walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearers stopped. ‘Young man,’ he said, ‘I tell you, get up.’ Then the dead boy sat up and began to talk! And Jesus gave him back to his mother.”
Do you believe in miracles? I’ve seen too much of life not to. Every mythology records miracles of some kind. That being so, how are the miracles of Jesus any different from those spoken of in Greek mythology, or Buddistic events, or Hindu mythology? Good question, and one we should not shy away from.
While I’ll not put forth an extensive discussion of miracles, I’d like to make this observation: In all the miracles of Jesus the incarnate God does suddenly and locally something that God has done or will do in general. Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written, or will write in letters almost too large to be noticed, across the whole canvass of nature. The miracles of Jesus focus at a particular point either God’s actual, or his future, operations on the universe.
The fitness of the miracles of Jesus and their difference from mythological miracles lies in the fact that they show invasion of nature by a power which is not alien. They are what might be expected to happen when she (nature) is invaded not simply by a god, but by the God of nature; by a power which is outside her jurisdiction not as a foreigner but as a sovereign. They proclaim that He who has come is not merely a king, but the King, her King and ours.
In both the healing of the Centurion’s son, and the healing of the widow’s boy, Jesus acted with compassion, compassion so visible that the gospel writers must include that detail. So, as the King of nature and the King of us all, in these small events Jesus wrote the heart and action that would grow to include the cross, then the resurrection, and through them, his compassion and healing for all of his creation, even for you and for me.
Prayer: “King of creation and King of me, I place my life and loyalty at your feet. I choose to be your subject in this life and in the next. I know that this small miracle which I call my life will be swept up in the incredible miracle of a new creation and that I will then lift my voice in a shout of joy. Take the blinders from my eyes and my mind so that I might see your presence in all the moments around me. I rest in your compassion. Amen.”