MARK 5-9
This Jesus is quite a character. He moves about with a strange fluidity, at ease among a very diverse group of people who have begun to follow Him around the countryside. He speaks with authority, flouting religious rules, revealing hypocrisy and corruption, alternately alienating and endearing Himself to the powers that be.
And then there are the miracles.
There can be no other way of explaining the things that happen when He’s around. They’re miracles. Demons leave people alone. People who had once been prone to seizures or dangerous and destructive behaviour are calmed by a single sentence from Him. No big emotional ramp-up seems necessary. Just a word or a wave of His hand. Sick people are healed with a touch — sometimes it doesn’t even require a touch, just a word spoken from a distance. There are even reports of dead people being raised to life again.
Demons are one thing. Sickness is another. Death well, that’s a whole different ballgame.
People are fed — food seemingly materialises out of thin air. Storms are calmed just because Jesus tells them to. Some say He walked across the surface of a lake. It’s crazy. No one has ever seen anything like it.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
Miracles have happened before. But they only seem to happen during the really pivotal times in God’s Story, just prior to and following the Exodus, during the life of Moses, just after the nation split in two, during the lives of Elijah and Elisha. Those were special occasions, times when God was showing the world something new about Himself and the way He wanted to interact with people.
Miraculous events give a special level of authority to the one through whom such signs and wonders occur. If these miracles Jesus performs are legitimate, that means, well, that means something is going on.
It means that YHWH , the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is trying to show His people something new about Himself and how He wants to relate to us. It means that this Jesus guy has some sort of special authority. His ability to perform miracles could be seen as validation from God.
But that can’t be the case. Look at Him. He doesn’t look right. He doesn’t act right. He didn’t study with the right rabbis. He doesn’t hang around the right kind of people.
But these things that happen everywhere He goes, what should we make of them? You don’t suppose it means …?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, the Gospels proclaim the abundance of marvellous things You said and did during Your brief public ministry. You made claims no one else ever made before or since, and You had the authority to back up those claims by Your extraordinary works. You demonstrated Your supremacy over nature, demons, disease and death. Yet You did all this in a context of profound humility, never calling attention to Yourself but instead pointing to Your heavenly Father. You came not to judge the world but to save it; but the time is coming when You will return in manifest glory and power as the Judge and Ruler of heaven and earth. I thank You that You have the power to grant eternal life to all who come to You, and I wait in anticipation for the day when I will receive a resurrected body that will be in conformity with the body of Your glory.
In Jesus’s name, Amen
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