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Power, Fear and Faith - a Meditation on the Gospel for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost. Luke 8.41-56. The theme today is Jesus’ acts of healing. We read in the Gospel the story of how he raised the 12-year old daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, from the dead; and also how, while he was on the way to the ruler’s house, a woman who touched the hem of his garment was cured of a haemorrhage from which she had been suffering for 12 years. Unfortunately, when I read the story of Jairus’ daughter, I am reminded, rather irreverently, of an Indian lady I know. In the East people of all faiths still indulge in the public weeping and bewailing when somebody dies as described in the story. This lady is particularly good at it; but, unfortunately, she doesn’t always wait until the person is dead! She visited a young man in the intensive care unit at the local hospital who had been run over by a car. As soon as she arrived began her wailing. The staff had to usher her out, for fear she should cause a relapse. What can we say, though, about Jesus’ acts of healing? Surely the first impression is of tremendous power. Jesus has absolute power over the natural world. Not only does he heal the sick; he raised Jairus’ little girl from the dead. It is what we should expect. He is the incarnate Son of God. There is also something physical, as well as spiritual, about this power. For when the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of his garment, Jesus felt power go out of him. Divine healing is physical as well as spiritual. The second thing we notice about Jesus’ power of healing is that it inspires fear. When the woman healed of the haemorrhage realised she had been noticed she was terrified, and prostrated herself, trembling, before Jesus’ feet. Rightly so. She was encountering divine power. Jesus is the Son of God. On the other hand, Jairus and his wife do not seem to have been afraid. At least there is no mention of their being afraid in the story. Perhaps they were so anxious about their only child they could think of nothing else. For we can confront the Son of God only with reverence and fear. There are congregations in the West these days which encourage their members to believe that “Jesus is our mate”. Jesus is not our mate. He is our Creator. Of course Jesus is also “one of us”. For our sake, he willingly became one of us by being born of the Virgin Mary. But we must never forget that Jesus Christ is God as well as man. We approach him with reverence and fear. But we also approach him with faith. That is the third thing to notice about Jesus’ acts of healing. Jairus and his wife and the woman with the issue of blood had faith. They trusted Jesus completely. Divine healing works only when the people being cured have faith. God does not act without our co-operation. God does most of the work. Healing is mostly the work of divine grace, which is God’s gift to us. But the person being healed must co-operate. He or she must have faith. Jesus said to the woman cured of the issue of blood: “Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole. Go in peace.” (Luke 8.48). He did not say, “I have cured thee”; although, of course, he had. Her faith was needed as well. We should remember, though, that our faith is also God’s gift. God made us in his own image, and so everything we are is God’s gift. God offers us his grace, and has provided us with the ability to accept it. So there are these three things to note about Jesus’ acts of healing - power, fear and faith. We should approach the power of God in Jesus Christ with fear, but also with faith. It is important for us to keep this in mind, for we are all in need of healing; if not of physical healing, certainly of spiritual healing. Jesus has the power to heal us, which is the power of the Son of God. So we approach him with reverence and fear; but also with complete trust in him - with faith. Often our faith is weak. I know mine is. It is difficult to go on believing in the absolute power of God in today’s world, in which the forces of secularisation (which means the forces of evil) seem overwhelming. We may feel especially despondent at present, after what has happened recently in a theatre in Moscow. When so many innocent people have been killed (some would say unnecessarily). What can our mostly small (indeed sometimes tiny) congregations do against the forces of secularisation? The answer is - nothing, of ourselves. But God can do everything. If we co-operate with the power of God - trust in the power of God, with both fear and faith; by the power of God, our parish, our part of the country, the whole of Great Britian - indeed the whole world will become a very different place. Peter Sizer |
