I determined to listen to God for guidance in all matters, and I promised Him I would obey whatever He told me. There were so many things which needed solutions. One was a feeling of friction between my colleague and myself. She had ten children and often was not well, and could not carry out her work program regularly. I felt very critical of her for trying to hold onto her job.

One morning early I asked God for guidance: what could I do to dissolve the critical feeling I had in my heart for her? “Take her a fresh egg,” came a thought. Well! That wasn’t my idea, and who would say that was guidance! A dozen fresh eggs might be reasonable – but one! That might insult my colleague. So, I wrote it off and gave up for that morning.

I went to school to teach my classes in the Mission School. At noon when I came home, there was a chicken in a large armchair in my living room! (Our houses in India were wide open to the public.) The hen flew down and started to cackle and there was an egg, freshly laid! Dear me! That had never happened before, nor since. I remembered what I had scratched out in my new “guidance” notebook: “Take her a fresh egg.”

“Why not obey?”

“She’ll laugh at me.”

“Results are not your business. Your business is obedience. You promised.” I took the egg and went to her house. Her little son was outside. That helped. “Here, Tumby, take this egg to your mother, please, it’s for her.” He took it and went in the house. I didn’t wait, but left quickly.

That evening the mother came to me. “How did you happen to bring me that egg? It was so fresh and good.”

“Well, that was my guidance this morning.” And then I told what happened. “Oh! That’s just like God!” she said. “He knew I had nothing to eat this day. There just wasn’t enough food for all, so I went without. Then you brought the egg for me. When I ate it, I felt so satisfied and strengthened.” From that day she and all her family began to “listen to God” daily for guidance. And all the friction in my heart was gone, and there sprung up an understanding and Christian love for her and for all her family.

(Mary Geegh, God Guides, pp. 2-3)

Copies of God Guides, 60+ pages of short stories such as this one, can be purchased here

I see a rather significant flaw in this understanding now. Quite simply, when I am offended or wounded by another person, it is most certainly not “ok”; nor will it ever be “ok”. An offense is an offense; it is a wrong that was done, and a wrong can never be “alright”.

Forgiveness, then, came to mean something quantitative for me. If I had enough “it’s ok” in me to match the offense, I could forgive. But what about those times when the offense was so heavy, the wound so deep, that I couldn’t bring myself to think of it as being “alright”? It would take time to “get over” those wounds; the wounds needed to heal before I could say “I forgive”.

But is that right? If I were being honest, during those periods of time when I was waiting for a wound to heal before I could say “I forgive you”, I would have to recite my daily Our Father in this way: “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, except for so-and-so, because I’m still not over that one yet.”

Another problem presented itself as well: in those times when I could muster up enough strength to say “I forgive you”, even before the wound was healed, why would I still feel the sting of the offense? What happened to “forgive and forget?”

And what about those offenses for which the offending person had still not even asked forgiveness? My recitation of the Our Father would now have to look more like, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us and been decent enough to repent.”

I have mentioned the Our Father a few times now, because it was precisely this prayer that finally helped me unlock the mystery of forgiveness. Actually, it was an alternate rendering of the prayer that contained the key: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” As I meditated on that word “debts”, eventually I came to a different perspective on forgiveness.

When someone commits an offense against me, I believe that they become indebted to me. They have wronged me, the scales of justice have been thrown off balance, and now that person owes me something – restitution of some sort, perhaps, or at least an apology. They have become my debtor.

The act of forgiveness is not, in my understanding, the process of excusing the offense and saying, “it’s alright.” It isn’t alright. Rather, the act of forgiveness is, for me, a deliberate act of saying to God, “So-and-so has offended me, and they are now legitimately indebted to me; they owe me now; but I am handing that debt over to you, Father. They owe me nothing; they owe it to you now instead of me.”

And I consider that exchange, it strikes me as profoundly right. If someone has wronged me, they have wronged God first; the debt is owed to Him. And when that person turns to Him in repentance, He cancels the debt completely, which is precisely what I believe He has asked me to do.

Handing the debt over to God is not the same thing as saying “it’s ok”. It allows me to acknowledge that a wrong was indeed done, and that my wound is indeed real. I have a legitimate reason to feel hurt. But that does not stop me from handing the debt to God, where it belongs, and saying “this offense hurts, but the debt belongs to you, so I forgive the debt as it relates to me.”

I have come to believe that this act of genuine handing-over to God actually triggers a chain reaction in the spiritual realm. As long as I am holding on to the debt, I may actually be creating a spiritual block for the offender. When I release them from the debt, and give the “chains” of that debt into God’s hands, I step out of the way and leave Him room to work with that person.

I had an experience in this realm that confirmed for me the truth of this reality. A close friend of mine went through this process of releasing the debts of people in his life who had hurt him. It was early in the morning when he went through this prayer of forgiveness, and on that same morning, my sleep was interrupted early in the morning. I woke up out of a dead slumber, and the first thought that popped into my mind was my friend, and specifically, an event from several years earlier in which I had offended him. I had forgotten about that event during those intervening years, but it came back as clear as a bell as I was jolted out of sleep on that morning.

It was several days later that my friend told me of his experience of forgiving all the people in his life who had hurt him, and so I asked him: “Was I one of the people you had to forgive?” He confirmed that I was. That exchange gave me the opportunity to apologize for what had happened several years ago. In this case, his act of forgiveness preceded, and in some way made possible, my act of repentance. Something “clicked” in the spiritual realm, something strong enough that it woke me out of a deep sleep with an immediate and clear memory of something I had long ago forgotten.

This has taught me that forgiveness is not conditional on receiving an apology. It has taught me that forgiveness doesn’t mean waiting until my emotions have healed enough that I can say “it’s ok”. It means releasing the offender from their debt, from any obligation they might have to me. They owe me nothing; they owe God everything.

And I believe this is actually key to the process of healing the wounds themselves; for me, the hurt persists because I believe this person owes me something, and I am not receiving what I am owed. That hurts. And it continues to hurt, until I am given what I was owed. That is, unless I release the debt and release the person from owing me anything. Then my wound can finally begin to heal, and God can begin to work with the person I have released.

The key was there all along, in a simple prayer that I have prayed every day for years – it just took an alternate translation to make me look at it with new eyes. Forgiveness isn’t about being “ok” with getting hurt; it’s about releasing someone from their debt, in imitation of what the Father does for us on a daily basis.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors …
]]> http://thesacredlimp.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/to-forgive-is-divine/feed/ 1 Jacob http://thesacredlimp.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/praying-with-expectation/ http://thesacredlimp.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/praying-with-expectation/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:45:22 +0000 Jacob http://thesacredlimp.wordpress.com/?p=125 ]]> It was late at night, and we were on our way back from a prayer service that focused on praying for healing. I know I was feeling energized, both by what I had heard and what I seen in that past hour. The presentation on praying for healing was nothing new to me, but still I had “forgotten” most of it; forgotten it in my heart, I mean, if not in my head.

These were reminders I needed to hear. Jesus said that those who believe would lay hands on the sick, and He said the sick will recover. He gave believers – and yes, I find it difficult sometimes to personalize that and say “that includes ME” – authority over every kind of disease (Matt. 10:1).

And when Jesus and the Apostles prayed for the sick, they prayed with expectation. They expected healing to take place. They knew the authority they possessed, and they believed the truth of God’s promise. No wonder they spoke with such confidence: “get up and walk”, “receive your sight”, “go, you are healed”, and so on.

For some reason, I find that authority difficult to utilize. It just sounds strange coming out of my mouth, so I find myself falling back on default modes of prayer: “Father, I ask you to release your healing power”, “Father, if it is your will”, “Father, please just touch this person with your healing hand”, and other such phrases.

It’s not that those kinds of prayers are wrong. It’s just that they don’t strike me as entirely lining up with what I see in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Do I believe I have been given authority or not? When Jesus says, “you will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover”, do I believe Him or don’t I? When Jesus says “you have seen me do these works, and greater works than these you will do”, why do I normally find it easier to believe those words for everybody else except me?

It was with these reminders rattling around in my head that I drove home, when it happened. Her left eye started itching, watering, and swelling up. “Ow, it itches, it hurts, I think I’m having an allergic reaction!” To what, she couldn’t tell me. It made no sense, but her eye was definitely starting to swell and puff up, and this wasn’t a moment for diagnosis. What really didn’t make sense was the fact that she had just, only moments earlier, been the recipient of prayer for healing of her allergies. And now, with no seemingly related stimulus, her eye was itching and swelling.

My mind was racing, the fear was starting to settle in, and then I heard that quiet voice in my thoughts again: “Why aren’t you praying for her?”

Duh. What have I been doing for the past hour?

Whenever I hear stories like this one, this is the part where the story-teller says, “and then I prayed for healing.” And I’m the curious one, so I’m always thinking, “yeah, ok, but what did you pray?” So I’ll tell this story the way I would want to hear it; I’ll tell you what I prayed.

I laid a hand on the afflicted eye, and with one hand on the wheel, I prayed the way I had just been reminded to pray during that service: “In the name of Jesus, I command this itching to stop now, and leave your body; I command this swelling to go down right now, in Jesus’ name, and with His authority; this allergy has no business being here, and so I break and remove its power, and command it to leave now, in the name of Jesus.”

No need for shouting, really. Just a prayer of confidence, knowing that Jesus did give me that authority, and that I needed to use it right then and there.

I took my hand off her eye, and the swelling was gone. The eye was normal again. She exclaimed, “the itching is gone, it stopped hurting!” And together, we had a little exchange of grins and “God is so amazing!”, “Yeah!”, “Thank you, Father!”, and so on.

I want to remember that moment. I want to remember it the next time I’m wavering in my belief. I want to recall that experience the next time I’m presented with an opportunity to pray for the sick. Because I want to pray believing, with confidence, and press right through to the end result, which is to see God move and be able to praise Him on-the-spot with all kinds of excitement. He really, really does some incredible things.

I find it almost impossibly difficult to strike the balance between trusting God and sharing with Him my honest feelings of heartache. Maybe you do too. And if you do, then maybe praying this lament with me will help you find your own voice.

Why do you make me wait so long?
Every day that passes
Without your healing touch
Brings a fresh wound
Have you forgotten me entirely?

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there? [Jer. 8:22]
Why then is there no healing for my wound?

They that wait upon the Lord
Will renew their strength
They will soar like the eagle
Running, but not growing weary [Is. 40:31]

Yet here I am
Waiting
Growing weary
More acquainted with lying in the dust
Than soaring through the clouds

How long, O Lord, will you tolerate this violence?
How long will you permit
My belief and my experience
To sit so grossly out of alignment?

How long must I call for help
But you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
But you do not save? [Hab. 1:2]

Yet the hand of the Lord is not shortened
That it cannot save
Nor is his ear dull
That it cannot hear [Is. 59:1]

So I must believe
In the face of proofs to the contrary
While my spirit faints and wilts
And my tongue grows dry
For lack of water

Would you really have me sing the songs of Zion
While still in the chains of captivity? [Ps. 137:3-4]

My enemies have become bolder still
The more I cling to you
The more they dig in their heels
And refuse to surrender
Now they have drawn close
And come to the very door of the Sanctuary
They promise to defile it
They insist, “it will be done.”

Am I alone in caring about this?
Or does the vindication of your own Name
Still stand as a priority
As it did in ancient times?

“Cry louder!” they shriek at me
“Perhaps your God is sleeping.”
“Maybe he is away on a journey.”
“He will not deliver you. Surrender now.”
And how shall I answer them
As they continue to inflict damage?

Surely you will not forsake me
Surely you will not give me over to my enemy
What kind of Father would you be
If you abandoned your child
In his moment of deepest need?

Would that not further profane your Name?
Would I not then become a curse?
“He trusted in a God who could not save!”
The children will learn the lesson
From the life of their father
Will they find there a reason to believe?
Why should they be scandalized and fall away?

I have no more words
I have only the groaning of a heart
That trembles and shivers
As it waits, and waits, and waits
For a Deliverer who has chosen to delay

Renew my faith
Build up my trust
Let me not be put to shame
Or confusion
Forever

Come quickly
Do not delay
Lest I sink down for good
And become a curse

Do you want to see God start moving? Do you want to see big things happen? Do you want to see miracles? I do. But why? I guess, for me, that question has several answers, but the “right” answer was buried in the pile somewhere. But that answer strikes me as the key: be oriented to the glory of God, and He cannot refuse the request. It’s just that simple.

There are other good reasons for making requests, don’t get me wrong. God is not unmoved by our suffering, He’s not against the idea of blessing us just because He loves us, and I think He takes us seriously when we pray for someone else out of a spirit of deep compassion for that person. That’s mimicking the heart of the Savior. That’s a good thing.

But God’s glory comes first, and when we align ourselves with that desire, the desire to see Him get all the credit and praise, He answers that request and everything else follows naturally.

When God spoke to Ezekiel about His plan to bring deliverance to Israel, He made it clear what His motivation was: “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name … I will vindicate the holiness of my great name … and the nations will know that I am the LORD, says the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.” (Ezek. 36:22-23)

Likewise, God spoke through Isaiah about the coming deliverance of Israel: “For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” (Is. 48:11)

I think we get to see something of this in action at the Wedding at Cana. Mary asked Jesus to intervene when the guests had run out of wine, and He made it clear that this request was a bit premature: “My hour has not yet come.” (Jn. 2:4) But He did the miracle anyway, and the rest of the story tells us why: “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” (Jn. 2:11) In other words, Jesus adjusted His timeline, and in the end He showed His glory and brought His disciples to faith.

I don’t think I need to add any more than this. Keep God’s fame, His glory, His reputation at the forefront, and expect Him to start acting.

Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. (Jas. 5:14-15)

This passage has been used throughout the history of the Church to establish the ancient pedigree of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction (or the Anointing of the Sick).

John Calvin wrote that “The Papists boast mightily of this passage” of the epistle, and goes on to say that this Scripture is “wickedly and ignorantly perverted” when used to defend the sacrament of the sick. What strikes me as most interesting are Calvin’s reasons for disconnecting this passage from healing and from the sacrament of healing; rather than engage in an argument from the text, he argues from his present-day experience.

Calvin admits that “it was used as a sacrament by the disciples of Christ”, but argues that it was temporary, because “the reality of this sign” – physical healing – “continued only for a time in the Church”. For Calvin, since “God has taken away from the world for more than fourteen hundred years” the gift of healing, it only follows that “nothing is more absurd than to call that a sacrament which is void and does not really present to us that which it signifies.” In short, the anointing of the sick was at one time a sacrament, but it was a temporary sacrament, “because it is evident that the thing signified has long ago ceased.” (John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of James, 5:14-15)

The Council of Trent addressed this view of Calvin’s, and instructed Catholics to disregard the teachings of “those who assert that [the sacrament] has already ceased, as though it were only to be referred to the grace of healing in the primitive church.” (Council of Trent, “On the Sacrament of Extreme Unction”, chp. 3)

The universal catechism that was published by order of this council provided an answer to Calvin’s objection concerning the fact that healings no longer occurred in his day:

And if in our days the sick obtain this effect [of physical healing] less frequently, this is to be attributed, not to any defect of the Sacrament, but rather to the weaker faith of a great part of those who are anointed with the sacred oil, or by whom it is administered; for the Evangelist bears witness that the Lord wrought not many miracles among His own, because of their unbelief. (Catechism of the Council of Trent, “The Effects of Extreme Unction”)

In other words, if it was a rare thing to see people actually being healed through this sacrament, it was because those who received it and/or those who administered it had a lack of faith in its healing effects. This admission strikes me as something of a rebuke against both priests and parishioners in those times: the catechism applies to them the words of the Gospels, in which the people of Jesus’ hometown are said to have hindered the healings of Jesus because of their unbelief.

Sometimes we can let experience dictate our theology. Calvin saw no healings taking place, and concluded that what St. James taught was a temporary provision. The Church could not very well counter this by pointing to healings taking place all over the world; they just weren’t happening. But I like that the Church didn’t then concede the point, or try to say, “well, obviously the only ‘healing’ intended here is spiritual healing.” Instead, the response was, “maybe we’ve become too much like Nazareth, and our unbelief is what prevents more healings from taking place.”

I am praying that this becomes less and less true of priests and Catholic faithful in our times. The sacrament was instituted for the healing of the sick, and I believe it still retains that power and purpose today.

* God’s thoughts are not my thoughts – but that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t want to get His thoughts into my thoughts

* The heart is deceitful above all things (Jer. 17:9), but Jesus promised that His Spirit would guide us into all truth (Jn. 16:13)

* God can (and does) use even the wicked to perform His works (cf. Jn. 11:49-52), but the prayers of the righteous are powerful in their effects (Jas. 5:16)

* God never loves me less, even if I act less-than loved; I’m the one who changes, not God

* The facts are not always the truth (the fact of the Red Sea did not cancel the truth that God promised to deliver His people)

* Even Jesus had to pray more than once to bring about someone’s healing (cf. Mk. 8:22-25)

* God finishes what He starts (cf. Phil. 1:6, Is. 55:11)

* We lack things because we have not asked for them (cf. Jas. 4:2)

* Jesus said that these signs will follow those who believe: “they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (Mk. 16:18)

* God speaks to us, and we do hear Him: “A man’s mind plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps.” (Pr. 16:9), “your ears will hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.” (Is. 30:21)

* God understands that I’m only human, and He knows and respects my limits (cf. Ps. 103:14, 1 Cor. 10:13)

* When I ask God for wisdom, He will give it to me, every time (cf. Jas. 1:5)

* Jesus Himself never acted on His own initiative – He waited to see what His Father wanted Him to do (cf. Jn. 5:19). I should follow that example.

* God is able (and willing!) to do far more than I have asked Him to do (cf. Eph. 3:20-21, Rom. 8:32)

* God keeps a record of my desert wanderings, and He preserves in a bottle every tear I weep (cf. Ps. 56:8)

* When God decides to act, no one can stop Him or hinder His plan, not even me (cf. Is. 43:13)

And then it was suggested to me that allergies have a spiritual root, and that root is a spirit of fear. The body, I believe, eventually will agree with and align with the spirit. Fear and anxiety can keep a person “on edge”; expecting the worst, planning for disaster, frequently worrying, not at ease (or at dis-ease). It’s as if the spirit has become hypersensitive to events in life, or to emotions, or to thoughts of the future. And I believe the body eventually will come to reflect this hypersensitive spirit.

Hypersensitivity strikes me as a pretty good summary of what has gone wrong in the body that suffers from allergies. The immune system has become “on edge”. It overreacts. Going beyond its natural job of fighting off infection, the immune system starts reacting to allergens, releasing unnecessary chemicals into the body. That’s when the “allergic reactions” start; the itching, the rashes, the sneezing, the cramps, the swelling.

The body and spirit agree: better safe than sorry; better to expect the worst and react that way.

For my part, I’ve had seasonal allergies since I was a pre-teen, and I’ve had food allergies for about 10 years. Every spring and fall, I could expect to go through at least a week of watery eyes, sneezing, sore throat, congestion, and so on. If my diet included gluten and dairy, I could expect to be dealing with digestive problems and stomach cramps the next day. I dealt with the seasonal allergies by taking over-the-counter drugs to fight the symptoms, and I dealt with the food allergies by eliminating gluten and dairy from my diet.

But during the past year, I’ve also been addressing the deep spiritual roots of fear in my life. Fear of what? Ultimately, fear of God, which seems to have led to fear of life in general. Somewhere along the line, early in my childhood, I developed an expectation about God: that He wasn’t all that happy with me, that He expected the worst from me, and that His “plan” would always be for “my best”, in the sense that people use that phrase after a tragedy has occurred – “That’s so unfortunate, but … in the end, it’s for the best.”

I suppose if I had to dig even deeper, I would say that this deep-rooted fear was the result of not believing in God’s love for me. St. John teaches that fear and love are polar opposites: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” (1 Jn. 4:18) To whatever degree I was living in fear, to that same degree I was lacking a realization of God’s love.

My story isn’t one of those “instant miracle” stories. I didn’t come to these realizations all at once, repent of agreeing with the lie of fear, and instantaneously experience healing from my allergies. In fact, I started dealing with the root spiritual issues, with the help of a spiritual counselor, before I ever knew about the fear/allergy connection. In other words, I wasn’t consciously seeking a physical healing; I just wanted to correct my misconceptions about God and my relationship with Him. And that process was a “walking out” process that took a few months, at least; I don’t know that I could mark it with a precise begin and end date. It was gradual.

What I do know is that I am a lot less fearful today. Yes, there are still some question marks hanging over my future, and I still get anxious from time to time; but I am a lot less likely to waste days and weeks losing sleep over it, and I am a lot more likely to take those issues to God in listening prayer and wait for His answers, in a spirit of greater trust than I had before.

The end result, which came as something of a late surprise to me, was a post-hoc (“after the fact”) realization that my allergies are gone. The seasons have changed, without bringing the usual allergic reactions. My diet has included gluten and dairy for several months now, and I haven’t had the digestive nightmares that I had come to expect in years past.

In short, fear has been replaced by love, and my body has been healed of its allergies as a result. Thank you, Father, that your perfect love casts out fear, and that your name is still Adonai-Rapha, the Lord Our Healer (cf. Ex. 15:26).
]]> http://thesacredlimp.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/goodbye-allergies/feed/ 0 Jacob http://thesacredlimp.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/how-did-jesus-do-it/ http://thesacredlimp.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/how-did-jesus-do-it/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:10:55 +0000 Jacob http://thesacredlimp.wordpress.com/?p=106 ]]> Well, of course Jesus healed the sick instantly, He was God!

It might seem like a trivial point that is best left for theologians to bat around, but then again, maybe not. It gets down into the murky waters of Christology, and understanding (as if we ever could) the mystery of how Jesus could be fully God and fully Man at the same time. Can anyone plumb those depths and not get a cramp in the brain?

And yet, I see an important point at issue there, a point that even seems critical to me if I’m going to get any further down the path of understanding the power of God in healing today. What is that critical point?

It’s really a question: when Jesus healed the sick, did He do so by the power of His divinity, or did He do so as a man who was relying on the power of God?

Why is that so important? I think it’s important for this reason: if Jesus healed the sick because He was operating in His divinity, then the time for healing has passed. Jesus no longer walks among us as God-on-earth. But if Jesus healed the sick, operating as a man who relied on the power of God to work through Him, then perhaps you and I can do the same.

What does Scripture tell us?

St. Peter said, in the sermon that he preached on the day of Pentecost, that “Jesus of Nazareth” was a “man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst.” (Acts 2:22) To me, that’s a very strange way of putting it. St. Peter could have said that Jesus was a man who did mighty works, wonders, and signs; but instead, he says that God did mighty works, wonders, and signs, and that He did them through the man called Jesus.

Some time later, St. Peter was preaching to the house of Cornelius the Gentile, and he said something very similar. In this sermon, he said that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power”, and that Jesus “went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” (Acts 10:38) It’s a slightly different angle, but it sheds a little bit more light on the mystery. Jesus did these miracles because “God was with him”, and specifically, God was with Jesus through this anointing “with the Holy Spirit and with power.” I guess that explains the Pentecost sermon, and how God did these mighty works through Jesus.

The two sermons together paint a very Trinitarian picture. Who did the mighty works? God the Father. Through whom? Through Jesus, His Son. By whom? By the power of the Holy Spirit, who came upon Jesus when He was “anointed” by God Himself. That anointing, of course, took place at Jesus’ baptism (see Matt. 3:16-17); it makes a little more sense, then, why Jesus entered the synagogue after this baptism (and after His temptation in the desert), read the passage from Isaiah that says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me”, and then announced, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (see Lk. 4:14-21)

In the next chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel, this same point is highlighted again:

On one of those days, as he was teaching, there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem; and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. (Lk. 5:17)

This verse took me by surprise when I read it in light of the healing ministry of Jesus. It certainly seems to be drawing a distinction between Jesus and the power of healing; through His anointing with the power of the Holy Spirit, this “power of the Lord” rested upon Jesus and allowed Him “to heal”.

With this understanding, I can make better sense of Jesus’ words to the disciples when He told them that, after He had gone to the Father, He would send the Spirit upon them: “the Father who dwells in me does his works … I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father … it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” (Jn. 14:10, 12; 16:7)

The promise of Jesus is that He would go to the Father, and then send the Holy Spirit; with the coming of the Spirit, the Father who dwelt in Jesus and did His works through Jesus will also work through us, and to an even greater extent! “Greater”, in the sense of doing more powerful works? Perhaps, although it is hard to imagine how any of us could top raising someone from the dead, as Jesus did. I suspect that Jesus said “greater works” in the sense of “more numerous”, because now, after His return to the Father, His Spirit would rest upon more people. What began with one man soon grew to twelve men, and continued to spread to thousands.

It’s one of the aspects of the Acts of the Apostles that I had overlooked for a long time. In the Acts, it’s more than just the Apostles who perform the works of God by the power of the Spirit. A man called Ananias heals Saul (soon to be Paul) of his blindness (9:17-18); St. Stephen, who was a deacon, “did great wonders and signs among the people” (6:8); through the ministry of St. Philip, another deacon, “unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed … and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed.” (Acts 8:7)

However we choose to slice and dice the Incarnation of God in flesh, trying to understand the implications of how His divinity and humanity met (remember, He was fully God and fully Man), this much seems clear from Scripture, that Jesus healed the sick and did other mighty works because the power of the Spirit was upon Him. St. Paul said that Jesus “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” (Phil. 2:6-7)

And if it was by the power of the Spirit that Jesus was able to do what He called “the works of the Father”, and if that same Spirit is given to us, then God can continue to perform His own mighty works through us.

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it. (Jn. 14:12-14)

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy. (Is. 35:5-6)

A few chapters later, this same prophet spoke in detail of the work that this coming Messiah would accomplish:

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. (Is. 53:4)

These two prophetic texts find their echoes in the Gospel of St. Matthew, although I find it interesting what St. Matthew does with this text from Isaiah 53. Watch closely for the textual change-up:

That evening they brought to him many who were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” (Mt. 8:16-17)

Where Isaiah writes of the Messiah bearing our “griefs” and carrying our “sorrows”, St. Matthew sees Him bearing our “infirmities” and carrying our “diseases”. It turns out that “sickness” is the primary meaning of the Hebrew word translated as “griefs”, and the word translated “sorrows” means “pain”, whether emotional, physical, or mental.

Later in the same gospel story, John the Baptist sends his messengers to Jesus to ask Him, “are you the one who is sent, or should we look for another?” In short, “are you the Messiah?” I find it interesting how Jesus chooses to answer this question:

And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” (Mt. 11:4-6)

Just as in Isaiah 35 and its description of the coming Kingdom of God, Jesus points to the facts that the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk – this is proof enough, or so He seems to be saying, that the Kingdom has indeed come. In a similar way, He said to the Pharisees, “if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Mt. 12:28)

The healing of the sick – the blind, the lame, the deaf, etc. – and the casting out of demons are identified by Jesus as works that demonstrate the arrival of the Kingdom of God. For me, this perspective brings a new depth in understanding the meaning of Jesus’ words, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” The coming of the Kingdom, if I had to summarize it, would mean “wholeness” and would stand in opposition to the “brokenness” of the Kingdom of Darkness.

Within that “wholeness” would be found wholeness of soul as well as wholeness of body. It would mean restoration to friendship with God, freedom from slavery to sin, liberation from the oppression of the evil one (and I would include mental and emotional brokenness in that), and healing from physical infirmities. It certainly does seem, in looking at Isaiah and St. Matthew together, that the arrival of Jesus’ Kingdom – and, by extension, the continued presence of that Kingdom “among us” – means healing from “infirmities” and “diseases”.

In Jesus’ own words, the Messianic age in which we now live brings with it the healing of the lame, the blind, and the deaf, in addition to the preaching of the gospel; it brings with it the defeat of the enemy, as is evidenced by the fact that the devils are cast out by God’s own hand.

When someone asks me about my faith, and the evidence I have to offer, I would like to be able to answer with the words of Jesus: “Go and tell John what you see and hear …”