Main news for 19 July 2018

King James Version (en)

Luke, Chapter 8, verse 45

⁴³ healeth the woman of her bloody issue

⁴⁵And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?

NOTES

Christ is already widely known among the people. They are glad to receive Him and therefore await His coming. Alas, His popularity so far has little connection with an understanding of who He is and...

All the history of the Savior's earthly ministry is the history of the Kingdom entering the world. And today's reading is the best confirmation of this. On the one hand...

All the history of the Savior's earthly ministry is the history of the Kingdom entering the world. And today's reading is the best confirmation of this. On the one hand, there is the raising of Jairus's daughter (vv. 41-56); on the other, a kind of story within the story about the healing of the woman who suffered from a flow of blood (vv. 43-48). It is interesting how this healing happens: as if in passing. Jesus does not even turn His attention to the woman; He simply feels that the power of God, which He carries in Himself, was needed by someone, though He does not know exactly by whom (vv. 45-46). This became possible because Jesus' healings were not exactly medical cures; they had no direct relation to medicine. Jesus simply carried in Himself all the fullness of God, and therefore the fullness of the Kingdom, and everyone who shared in this fullness was healed, if only he had at least a drop of trust in Jesus. And the woman who was healed could not have lacked trust: the bleeding from which she suffered made her unclean, and she herself could have defiled anyone she touched if healing had not occurred. It was necessary to believe completely in the possibility of healing and to trust completely this mysterious Teacher who heals everyone who comes to Him with faith. Jesus Himself confirms that the woman who was healed was saved by her faith (v. 48).

The same is true with Jairus's dead daughter: here we have before us not an ordinary return to life, not something like resuscitation, as some commentators of the modern age interpreted this event. After all, they had already begun mourning the dead girl (v. 52), and Jesus still needed time to reach Jairus's house when He was told of the death of the one He was going to heal (v. 49). But the death of Jairus's daughter could not be called natural. Death is natural when a person dies after exhausting all his physical and spiritual strength. Of such people the Bible says that they died "full of days." Here, clearly, there was nothing of the kind, and it was still too early for Jairus's daughter to die; she was killed by the evil in which our world, not yet transformed, lies.

Of course, every death is the visible triumph of evil and a manifestation of that damaged condition of the universe in general and of human nature in particular that is connected with the fall, but even in the fallen world the manifestations of this evil have their limits. And when someone who has died before his time comes into contact with the Kingdom, it can deliver him from death, bringing the manifestations of world evil within the bounds into which they can be brought without the complete transformation of the universe. Of course, from the point of view of the final goal, the full triumph of the Kingdom of which the Bible tells us, everything described is only a partial and temporary victory. But these victories become a foreshadowing of that final victory, when evil will be expelled from the world forever, and it will become part of that Kingdom in which there will no longer be any place for sickness or death.

There is no doubt that healing and resurrection are nothing other than manifestations of the power of the Kingdom and its breath...

There is no doubt that healing and resurrection are nothing other than manifestations of the power of the Kingdom and its breath. But how does this power affect a person of this world, still living the old, untransformed life?

Here is the woman who risked touching Jesus in the hope of receiving healing. She really did risk it: her illness made her ritually unclean, and she risked defiling the One she touched if she did not receive healing from Him. And He did not even notice her; He only felt the power of that Kingdom which He bears within Himself going out from Him, going out because someone needed it, someone who did not dare address Him personally. And here is the dead daughter of Jairus, whom Jesus raises by taking her by the hand. Here too the power of the Kingdom is at work. Yet outwardly, from the point of view of the Savior's relationship with those whom He heals and raises, the situation is exactly the opposite.

He knows nothing about the healed woman until the very moment when she touches Him, and even then He understands what is happening not because He singles her out from the crowd surrounding and pressing Him on every side, but because He feels the power going out: the woman healed by Him has touched the Kingdom, has shared in its life, and the Savior immediately felt it. But Jairus's daughter, whom He raised, wanted nothing by the time He came to her: she was dead. His touch brought her back to life. In both cases, the relationship between the Savior and those He helped is initially one-sided: in the first case the initiative belongs entirely to the woman seeking healing, and in the second to Jesus Himself.

But the miracle happens when the relationship becomes mutual. And here, apparently, it is no longer so important what happens outwardly at the moment when such a relationship is established, or how this process is projected into our transforming but still untransformed world. From here it may seem to us that the Savior does not notice the one He heals, or, on the contrary, that the person He raises knows nothing about his Savior. In the Kingdom, what must happen happens all the same: those seeking salvation find the Savior, and He finds them. It cannot be otherwise, for only in this way can one share in the life of the Kingdom. And only in this way can the Kingdom enter our transforming but not yet transformed world.

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