In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’ healing ministry is particularly crucial to his identity as Messiah.  In Matthew 4, Jesus “goes public” by calling his first disciples and “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.”  Matthew goes on to report that “his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them.”  After the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), Jesus continues to heal.  He cleanses a leper, heals the centurion’s servant, and restores Peter’s mother-in-law.  Later, he heals the demoniacs, a paralytic, the leader’s daughter and the woman with the issue of blood, two blind men, and a person who was mute.  Jesus especially heals the poor, the destitute, the outcasts, the marginalized, though he does not refrain from healing the rich or powerful who earnestly come to him.  The healing of the sick is, for Matthew, one of the primary ways in which Jesus demonstrates the truth that the “good news of the kingdom” has come.  It is how Jesus reveals the compassion of God.  

“Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness” (10:1).  This passage, often seen as a kind of “commissioning” of the apostles, demonstrates that Jesus’ followers are called to imitate his works of compassion and justice.  After the text names the apostles, it says that they were “sent out” (from the same Greek word as the noun “apostle”) to proclaim the good news by their acts of healing and ministry among the people of Israel.  Like Jesus himself, the disciples are called to minister especially among those people who had been marginalized by their society: the ritually unclean, the spiritually and mentally embattled, the desperate, the lepers, even, it seems, the dead.  Embedded in their mission is their utter dependence on the hospitality of others; Jesus is clear that there are no profits to be had in the process of becoming a faithful disciple.  

Throughout his gospel, Matthew details the many ways that Jesus attends to the bodily needs of the people around him.  The good news is not a spiritualized abstraction, but rather a new reality that Jesus graciously offers to the sick and the poor.  And Jesus calls his followers to do the same, in his name.  As Jesus indicates, this work is both gift

and responsibility.  Jesus demands that his disciples go to the forgotten and marginalized places in society to bring a loving word and a healing touch, laboring tirelessly to bring health, hope and life to all in need.  

BY CHRIS LIU BEERS, PROGRAM ASSOCIATE

NC COUNCIL OF CHURCHES