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Wednesday 26 January 2011

Matthew 9:18-26 - Faith to heal

The synagogue leader went to Jesus because his daughter had died. Mark says at first she was very ill, then messengers came with the message that she had died. Matthew condenses this into the phrase "she has died". Mark seems to be more interested in the human aspects than does Matthew. The man recognised Jesus' stature and knelt down before Him. He believed that if Jesus laid His hands on the girl she would get well. So Jesus and the disciples went with the man.
On the way a woman who had been subject to bleeding for many years touched Jesus. This bleeding, as well as being physically troubling, would have been embarrassing and would have rendered her "unclean", unable to take part in religious activities. She knew that if she could just touch Jesus' cloak she would be healed. 
So these two people both had faith. The synagogue leader demonstrated it in a "respectable way", but we might tend to mock the woman, thinking what good would touching His cloak do? The point is she had faith in Jesus, touching His cloak was the expression of this. We need to be careful here. There are some "healers" today who offer to pray over handkerchiefs and things like that. Now there are instances of that in the Bible, but the key thing is that it was the faith that counted. We can easily turn the "touching the cloak" into the thing that heals. We need to focus on faith. We must not, on the one hand, dismiss actions which are an expression of faith, nor on the other hand make these actions into religious rituals.
When they got to the leader's house there were many mourners there. Jesus ushered them out of the room. This was not the time for mourning, but for healing. There are times to get well meaning "mourners" out of situations. Jesus then simply healed the girl.
So in both cases the faith "worked".

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