The threefold mission

Christians are people who have chosen to believe in Jesus. They are also people who have chosen to accept the mission Jesus has given them. Believing in Jesus brings them into a new level of existence, characterized by knowing God, by being loved by God, and by loving him. In short, it introduces them to a relationship with the Creator of all things, an extraordinary concept. Accepting the mission Jesus has given them means being sent out to engage with the world in exactly the way Jesus did. It means that their calling is not just to a relationship with Jesus, but to a relationship with the world.

I am a Christian, a believer in Jesus, a follower, a disciple. I have therefore accepted his mission. But what does that mean?

One day Jesus called together his twelve disciples and gave them power and authority to cast out all demons and to heal all diseases. Then he sent them out to tell everyone about the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. Luke 9:1-3 NLT

Jesus explains what our relationship with the world should be by giving us a threefold mission, wonderfully simple, yet profoundly all encompassing. He said simply to his disciples, heal the sick, cast out demons, preach the Kingdom. It is what he did. It is what he wants us to do. Why these three things?

Responding to human need

I believe these three aspects of mission reflect Jesus’ understanding of the needs of the world. He knew that the two major challenges that all of us face in our journey through life are ill health and evil. He recognized the reality that different expressions of these are the cause of all human suffering. When he sent his disciples out to “heal the sick” and “cast out demons” he was challenging them to go out and engage with the suffering of the world. He was saying, “get involved with people in their suffering and pain, and do something about it.” He was saying, “people are sick, people are sad, people are weighed down by the effects of their own demons and the evil of the world… you go and release them from these things that cause them so much misery. Set them free to live a better life, to experience the joy of existence that was my Father’s intention for them from the very beginning.”

That joy of existence, that better life, Jesus called “the Kingdom of Heaven.” “Preach the Kingdom” was the third thing he sent us out to do. The Kingdom was and is Jesus’ program, his blueprint for a better world. Why did he call it the “kingdom of heaven?” Because it represents a society that is submitted to the kingship of God, that follows the directions that he has given for life since the beginning of time. But why bother with a “kingdom”? Why preach it? If we could be free of sickness and evil, surely that would be enough. We would be happy.

Or would we? Jesus’ understood the human need of a pattern to live by. Despite the modern trend to challenge all “norms” we humans find great security in structure and form. A “normless” life leads to the confusion and anxiety that we see engulfing the Western world just now. Jesus introduced the idea of a kingdom of heaven, not as a political entity, but as a plan for a better life, a better society. Our task as followers of Jesus is to understand the ways of the kingdom, and to both live by them and to offer them to the world as a better way to live.

The church I currently attend has this as its motto, “bringing heaven to earth,” which is a simple expression of this exact concept. We are to “preach the kingdom,” to ourselves, so that we never forget what Jesus taught, but also to the world, so they can know there is a better way, and have the opportunity to adopt this way of life too. This is why when Jesus taught his disciples to pray he said that we should always begin with the words, “Our Father in heaven, May your name be kept holy (that is, may people realize and acknowledge your kingship, your sovereignty, your ascendency), May your kingdom come (that is, may people discover and adopt the principles that you have taught us for a good life.)

When Jesus sent his disciples out he was challenging them to be outward looking rather than inward looking. Some Christians’ faith never moves beyond the “me and God” phase, centered solely on their relationship with God, oblivious to the world around, carried away with what God has done for them, and how it makes them feel. It is a bit like falling in love… one thinks of nothing but the beloved, nothing but “me and you… us,” intoxicated by love. It is totally inward looking. Faith in Jesus can be like that, totally inward looking, intoxicated by feelings, by what Jesus does for me. But such a faith is hard to maintain and often falters. Just as a healthy human relationship will eventually refocus outward to the world and the people around, so will a healthy relationship with God eventually refocus outward to the world. A deepening relationship with God will certainly remain the powerhouse of the outward mission, but the Christian life is about much more than just “me and God.”

Supernatural or natural?

There are two ways to understand this mission. The first is to see it in supernatural terms, in a spiritual context. Healing and casting out demons are in this context miraculous activities, requiring special spiritual gifts, as well as the courage and confidence to use them. The practice of such gifts, resulting in miraculous healing or instant release from oppressive evil power, is dramatically life changing whether it is experienced or witnessed, and becomes a powerful force for convincing people of the truth of the message of Jesus. It is exciting to be engaged in such supernatural ministry.

However, such events are relatively uncommon, even if they do occur from time to time and are theoretically possible for all believers. Jesus functioned routinely in this supernatural context, and seems to have encouraged his followers to do the same, but for most believers such signs and wonders are extraordinary rather than ordinary experiences. Many Christians feel that such miraculous signs and wonders are beyond them and better left for experts. If the mission of Jesus is for all his followers, what do I do if I don’t seem to have such supernatural gifts? If try as I might, my prayers seem to seldom produce the miraculous healing I long for. Is there still a place for me in the mission Jesus gave his disciples?

I believe there is, because the threefold mission can also be understood in a “natural” way, which makes it possible for every Christian to participate. What do I mean by natural? Simply this, it means confronting sickness and evil not in a miraculous, supernatural way, but in a more normal, everyday manner. On this “natural” level, historically speaking, Christians have been engaged in Jesus’ mission since the very beginning. Indeed, there have been times in the history of the Western world when the work of caring for the sick has been almost exclusively a Christian activity, especially when the prevailing worldview was far from Christian. Even in our contemporary “post Christian” world, the health and welfare professions have a high representation of Christians amongst them.

Just as “healing the sick” does not apply solely to miraculous healing, so “casting out demons” can be interpreted “naturally” as simply a command to stand against evil and injustice, to expose evil wherever it is to be found, to speak against it and to behave in the opposite spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. Such action is every Christian’s responsibility, whether she or he is a lawyer, a journalist, or simply an ordinary citizen. This too has been integral to the practice of believers since the very beginning, when Jesus first sent his disciples out.

Nothing of this “natural” perspective takes away from a spiritual worldview. We understand the nature of things according to how Jesus explains them: what is good in the world is the result and evidence of God’s existence and benevolence, while the evil in the world is the result of rebellion against God either on a personal, systemic or supernatural level. We act against these things in a natural, as well as a supernatural way. We labour away night and day to care for the sick, to heal when we can, to promote goodness and justice. When miraculous healings happen, or demonic powers are supernaturally broken, we rejoice. As Christians we operate in both the natural and the supernatural worlds. It is not “either or,” but “both and.”

What does the world think of all this?

The secular world copes reasonably well with our actions in the natural context, even applauding the efforts of Christians. However, it is naturally sceptical of our actions and claims about the miraculous. With its “enlightened” scientific rationalistic approach, the secular world sees claims of the miraculous as delusional, and talk of the demonic as scaremongering. All sorts of accusations are levelled at Christians for their willingness to accept or promote the miraculous. Speaking in supernatural terms is seen as something for an ignorant and bygone age when people did not have science to explain things. Christianity itself is often seen as superstitious nonsense, based on myths and wishful thinking.

This naturally creates a tension for Christian doctors like me who work primarily in the “natural” world, but believe fiercely in the reality of the “supernatural.” Yet all modern Christians share the same dilemma – living in an age when science has almost taken on the attributes of the divine, while believing that the true “divine” is something beyond and above science. Science has stopped being a descriptive discipline, seeking to understand and describe the wonders of the universe that God created, and has become instead a proscriptive discipline, seeking to explain why and dictate how we should order our lives. The debate between science and faith rages on, and we are caught in the midst of it. But as for me, I have long since decided to give my primary allegiance to faith in the Creator God. Science and human wisdom are, for me, always subordinate to God and his ways. But that is another debate.

In the meantime we Christians are called to know God and to carry out his mission on earth. We are called to engage with sickness and the suffering of humanity and bring the healing power of God into those situations. As a doctor I am privileged to engage in this in my job. We are also called to engage with evil, and combat its effects on every level we can. And we are called to announce and explain to the people of the world a Kingdom worldview, built on the values of God as revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus.

Mission: core or elective?

In chapters 9 and 10 of Luke’s gospel are recorded the first ever “calls to mission,” when Jesus sent out his disciples to do his work. I am reminded of the opening challenge of the Mission Impossible films: “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this…” Luke records it like this:

One day Jesus called together his twelve disciples and gave them power and authority to cast out all demons and to heal all diseases. Then he sent them out to tell everyone about the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. Luke 9:1-2 NLT

The Lord now chose seventy-two other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit. These were his instructions to them: “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields. Now go… Heal the sick, and tell them, ‘The Kingdom of God is near you now.’ … When the seventy-two disciples returned, they joyfully reported to him, “Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name!” Luke 10:1-3, 9, 17 NLT

Once we have decided to trust Jesus with our lives we sometimes find ourselves asking, “what’s next? What am I supposed to do now?” These verses answer that question clearly and simply. We are called to cast out demons, heal the sick and tell everyone about the Kingdom of God.

Tall order maybe. How seriously should we take this challenge? Is it like the Mission Impossible challenge, “should you choose to accept it…?” That is, is it optional for some special Christians who are called to mission, or is it an instruction for all who follow Jesus? Jesus had a band of 12 close friends, his inner circle of disciples. They were sometimes known as “The Twelve,” and they no doubt had different personalities, different strengths and weaknesses, different abilities and talents. But Jesus sent them all out, not just a few of them who felt “called to missions.” Then very soon after he sent out 72 other disciples on a similar mission. None of their names are recorded for us to remember them. But it seems that Jesus’ intention for all his followers, including us, is the same: heal the sick, cast out demons, proclaim the kingdom.

But what does that mean? Healing, casting out demons, announcing the kingdom? We live in a day when we have a highly developed health system to take care of the sick. There is also an organized justice and law enforcement system to clean up the demons of society, so what more can Christians offer? And preaching about the kingdom is surely something for the priests, the ministers, the pastors. What is there left for the ordinary Christian to do?

Looking at Jesus’s commands another way, apart from speaking about the kingdom these tasks sound distinctly supernatural. Miraculous healing, exorcism… are these to be the job of the ordinary believer? Isn’t it best to leave the supernatural ministries to those with special gifts?

Some even say that the Christian faith is not primarily about what we do at all, but rather about what we believe. We are saved by believing, not by doing, they would say. Nothing we do can earn our salvation. Quoting John 6:29 (Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent”) they point out that our work as Christians is to believe in Jesus. If we want to know our calling in life, they say, we need look no further than this. We are called to believe, to put our trust in Jesus.

Is the Christian life, then, simply an intellectual agreement to a proposition about Jesus, or is there more? I believe that the intellectual agreement is simply the first step to “believing in Jesus.” It lays the foundation for the Christian life, provides a starting point. But just as a house is more than its foundations, so are we. Jesus also said to his disciples, “as the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). We cannot ignore the challenge of Jesus to go into the world and do what he has sent us to do. Jesus was sent into the world by the Father, and we have come to know the Father as a result. We are sent into the world by Jesus, so that others may come to know the Father too. They come to know the Father as we do the works of Jesus, which are exactly the things that he lists in Luke chapter 9: casting out demons, healing the sick and preaching the Kingdom.

There are always these two aspects of what it means to be a Christian. One is our relationship with God, founded on belief, faith, trust, and the other is our relationship with the world. Jesus is our model for both. These are what we were created for, what our lives are all about, to know Jesus, and to make him known by doing his work in the world. We are his workmanship, created for good works in Christ. The good works we were created for are to believe in Jesus, to live in his love, freely given, and to go out to communicate his love freely to a needy world.

Jesus gave his first disciples a challenge. I believe that he challenges us modern day believers in exactly the same way. We are not called to withdraw into closed communities of comfort and security, but to engage with the world around us. The relational aspect of our faith is supremely important, for it is from there that we draw our strength for the task, our inspiration, our instruction. But he commands us to go out, to be involved with others, to engage with a broken and hurting world. He calls us to make a difference. He calls us to help build a better world, which he calls the Kingdom of Heaven.

Hidden

A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding, having spent everything she had on doctors, and she could find no cure. Coming up behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately, the bleeding stopped.
“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.
Everyone denied it, and Peter said, “Master, this whole crowd is pressing up against you.”
But Jesus said, “Someone deliberately touched me, for I felt healing power go out from me.”
When the woman realized that she could not stay hidden, she began to tremble and fell to her knees in front of him. The whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and that she had been immediately healed. “Daughter,” he said to her, “your faith has made you well. Go in peace.” Luke 8:42-47 NLT

Hidden. That one word describes this woman’s problem, and in a sense describes her. She had a problem that she hid from the world, and so in a sense, she was hiding her true self. Vaginal bleeding was not a subject that people talked about openly in that culture and age. Furthermore, when a woman was bleeding she was regarded as ceremonially unclean, and so therefore could not engage in the normal religious activities that were an integral part of the society and culture. If she was bleeding continuously, she could never engage in such activities. Twelve years is a long time to be on the outside of the normal social life of the community. It is a long time to be regarded as unclean. It is a long time to be avoided by others, for according to the rules of Leviticus, any person who touched her would also be regarded as unclean (Leviticus 15).

So this woman was an outsider. She was likely unmarried, since a man would not want a woman who he could not touch. If she had been married then she may have been abandoned. I like to think she had a husband who loved her and who stood by her side regardless of her awful affliction. But I know that may be wishful thinking. The likelihood is, therefore, that this woman was lonely, poor, and depressed. Not to mention very tired. She must have felt that God had abandoned her.

But she had heard about Jesus, the healer. Perhaps she had seen what he was doing with her own eyes. Perhaps someone had told her about the miracles he was performing. And for some reason faith grew within her. It is hard to imagine why. After all, she had spent everything she had on doctors, and they had not helped her. She could be forgiven for thinking she was a hopeless case. But something about Jesus sparked hope in her, and her hope grew to faith.

There was one problem. Jesus was a rabbi, a holy man. Some were saying that he was the Son of God, but she hardly knew what that meant. Whatever, she knew the rules: her affliction made her ceremonially unclean. How could she expect a rabbi to touch her? If she walked up to him and begged him for healing, as she had seen other people do, he might ask her what the problem was. There was always a crowd around him. She would be forced to reveal her uncleanness to everyone and she wasn’t sure she could cope with the embarrassment. And she was not quite sure how Jesus would respond.

She was worried for him too. She didn’t want his reputation to be tarnished. She feared what people would think and say about Jesus if he did indeed touch her, and heal her. Would they shun him for touching her, when they realized his compassion had made him ceremonially unclean? Would they be angry at her for spoiling it for everyone else?

But she longed for his touch. She had not been touched by anyone for years. She believed his touch might heal her, might free her from her prison of loneliness. She suspected that the power that was in him could heal her, even if he was not conscious of it. So she came up with a plan. “Coming up behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately, the bleeding stopped.”

Of course her plan misfired somewhat. Jesus knew, immediately, that the touch he had experienced from this woman was intentional, not accidental. He stopped and turned and sough her out. Suddenly all the attention was on her, and her problem, much to her distress. Jesus could have said nothing. He could have kept that knowledge to himself, knowing that confronting her would bring embarrassment. But he didn’t. He called her out. Why?

Jesus knew the rules too. He had read Leviticus, had it taught to him from childhood. He wanted people to know that sometimes rules had to take second place to mercy, that there was no medical problem that would prevent him reaching out and touching a person who was suffering. He wanted people to know that sickness would never be a barrier between people and God. He wanted people to know that even things that had always been thought to make a person unclean were not a barrier to them receiving his healing touch. Jesus was not afraid of menstrual blood, any more than he was afraid of leprosy or any of the multitude of other illnesses that could make a person unclean. His touch neutralised the power of such things to separate a person from God.

I think Jesus was making another important point too, that women, in a society that regarded them as second class citizens, were equal to men, regardless of gynaecological realities. He loved them and valued them as much, not less, not more. He did not differentiate between them in the way that society did. He made a point of affirming this woman’s faith, in contrast to the somewhat disparaging remarks he had made about his own (male) disciples’ lack of faith just a short time before (during the storm on the lake). Jesus was setting an example, showing us the divine order of things, an order that humanity has so often forgotten, both then and now.

The faith of women is a strong theme in this chapter of Luke’s book. Though Jesus had chosen his “apostles” from among men, Luke is careful to point out that Jesus had female followers too. These were women from the extremes of life: from a young Mary Magdalene, previously demon possessed but liberated by Jesus, to a scorned prostitute whose life was transformed by Jesus’ acceptance and forgiveness, to a group of wealthy older women from the higher social classes who gave generously of their time and money. Then there was this woman, ostracised for years because of her chronic gynaecological problems, and a twelve year old girl, dearly loved but deathly sick, restored to life even as death had its claws in her.

The men in the chapter, apart perhaps from Jairus, do not come up as beacons of faith. The disciples, caught in a storm on the lake, were characterized by fear, not faith. The Pharisees, in their self righteousness smugness, were shamed by a sinful woman’s devotion.

The woman of this story could not stay hidden, and she could not hide her problem. In a sense she is no different to all of us. We go to great lengths to hide our problems, our sins, from the world, afraid that we will be ostracised or judged by our communities. None of us want our sins, our failures, our dirty little secrets, to be made public for the world to see. We are expert at hiding our bad side and only presenting the scrubbed up, squeaky clean version of us to the world.

But when we come to Jesus we cannot stay hidden. We are forced to confess our failures, our sins, as much to ourselves as to Jesus. We are set free, released, healed, and we can go on our way rejoicing. But acknowledging what we really are, who we really are, is important if we are to grow and develop into the people he wants us to be.

Faith

Then a man named Jairus, a leader of the local synagogue, came and fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come home with him. His only daughter, who was about twelve years old, was dying. Luke 8:41-42 NLT

As a doctor, when I read an account like this I can’t help wondering what the girl was dying of.  It was an era when infectious disease was the main cause of death, especially among the young. But she could as easily have been afflicted by cancer, or diabetes, or something equally incurable.

But this is not a story about disease or it’s treatment in the ancient world. It is a story about love, and risk taking, about faith and healing. Though in some ways the central person is a young girl, it is primarily a story about two men – Jairus and Jesus. As such it is a story about an interaction between God and humanity.

Jairus was a leader in the synagogue, and would therefore have been held in some esteem by the local community. He would also have had a relationship with the religious leaders, the Pharisees. Ordinary people were excited by Jesus and were flocking to hear what he had to say and see what he was doing. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were skeptical, and apparently felt threatened by Jesus. Jairus must surely have felt caught between these two groups in the community.

But his life had become dominated by anxiety. It is hard to know how long his daughter had been sick or what he had done to help her up to that time. But one thing is clear. He had come to the end of his resources. Her time was up. He could see she was dying. So could everybody else. The Pharisees, who had always been his source of wisdom and guidance, offered him no hope of a change in this situation. Maybe Jesus could help.

He had heard about Jesus. He may have seen the results of Jesus’ ministry. But he knew that Jesus was controversial. He had heard what the Pharisees were saying about Jesus, and he knew that if he went to Jesus it might well have consequences for his career, for his position in society, for the Pharisees were powerful men.

But his love for his daughter was stronger than his fear of the Pharisees, or his pride in his reputation. So he turned to Jesus for help. The result for his daughter was her restoration to life. The story doesn’t say if there were any negative consequences for him.

Jairus was a man caught between two worlds, the world of the natural, and the supernatural, the world of respectable human religion and faith in the unconventional Jesus, a person who claimed a special relationship to God. He made a decision to risk everything and throw his lot in with Jesus because of the failure of the conventional to meet his deepest need at that point, a sick daughter who he loved desperately. His love for his daughter drove him to Jesus, the only one who could save her. It doesn’t say how either the girl or her parents responded, but presumably their lives were so impacted that they became followers of Jesus. They put their trust in him. They chose him over all other people or institutions to be the object of their faith.

It is so that many of us come to Jesus. We recognize that we have needs and desires, that the world cannot fulfill, and we turn to Jesus, who can and does. We take a risky step, put our faith in him, and he comes through: we find new life. But there can be consequences, not least for doctors, in a medical world that is increasingly skeptical and hostile toward anything that smacks of faith, or the supernatural. But the truth is that medicine, with all its wonders, does not meet our deepest needs, any more than conventional religion could meet Jairus’ longing for healing for his daughter. Only Jesus can offer us the deep healing that we need and long for.

The interaction between faith and healing is fascinating. As doctors we see ourselves as practitioners of health and healing. But we are not taught to see faith as part of this. Yet for ordinary people faith has everything to do with healing – faith in a doctor, faith in a treatment. And if we are honest, we know that sometimes people recover when they should die, and sometimes people die when they should recover. Healing is something that involves more than nature, and our man made interventions in natural processes; I believe that most people know this intuitively. When we say that we operate only in the realm of science, and not in the realm of faith, we are denying a part of reality that, if we are honest, we know to be true.

For Jairus the result of this interaction, this meeting with Jesus, and this new found faith, was that the Pharisees forever saw him as at best a bit odd, at worse a menace. For he never stopped talking about Jesus and what he had done. Or so I imagine the effect on Jairus’ life. But I don’t think Jairus cared what the Pharisees, or anyone else for that matter, thought. He had got his daughter back. He would see her grow to womanhood, marry and have a family.

For those of us who have had the privilege of such a life changing experience at the hands of Jesus, it is often the same. We cannot leave him out of our lives, and we are prepared to put up with the puzzled stares, even the outright hostility, of our friends and colleagues, because we have found a better way. We have found a person who changes us, who surpasses all our human systems and wisdom. No matter how well we understand and work in the natural world, we can never discount the supernatural, the so called heavenly realms, for that is where Jesus is king, and we have seen heaven come to earth.

So we never stop praying, as Jesus once taught us, “your kingdom come, your will be done, as it is in heaven.”

The affirmation of God

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed. Turning to the crowd that was following him, he said, “I tell you, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel!” Luke 7:9 NLT

Imagine having Jesus say something like that about you. The greatest faith in Israel? Isn’t this the kind of affirmation so many of us crave?

The extraordinary thing is that Jesus didn’t say it about one of his disciples. He didn’t say it about some religious leader like a Pharisee. He didn’t even say it about John the Baptist, who he gushes about a few sentences later in this chapter.

This person who Jesus said had the greatest faith in Israel was not an Israelite at all, but a Roman officer, a centurion. It is true that he was a Roman who liked the Jews and who sympathised with the Jewish religion. He may have even converted to Judaism, and he had certainly made large donations to the building fund of the local synagogue. But he was still a Roman, and therefore a pagan by birth, a representative of what many Jews saw as “the evil Empire.”

Jesus did not see the Roman centurion as an enemy. He did not see him as a foreigner, or a soldier, or a wealthy man of influence. He was not impressed by his standing in the world, nor was he afraid of him as an Imperial official.

So what did Jesus see? There is no indication that the two men met at all, so Jesus’s formed his impressions from what he heard about him and from him. He had the testimony of the Jewish elders, whose admiration for the Roman was clear to see. He heard the request they brought, for healing, a clear indication of the Roman’s belief that Jesus was able to heal. He heard the soldier’s own words, communicated to him by some friends:

“Lord, don’t trouble yourself by coming to my home, for I am not worthy of such an honor. I am not even worthy to come and meet you. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed. I know this because I am under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say, ‘Go,’ and they go, or ‘Come,’ and they come. And if I say to my slaves, ‘Do this,’ they do it.”

Jesus was unaffected by how the man looked, by how old he was, by his ethnic background, his professional standing, his wealth, his influence. But he was deeply impressed by his faith. A faith that was expressed in a willingness to acknowledge his own need, his own powerlessness, as well as to publicly speak of Jesus superior authority and power, and then to invite Jesus into his life to minister to his needs, expressing trust and dependence, recognition and humility. This representative of the greatest power on earth recognised in Jesus a power that far surpassed his own, or even that of mighty Rome.

That is what it means to have faith. To recognise Jesus for who he says he is, to believe that Jesus is the ultimate healer, to be ready to stick your neck out for Jesus, risking ridicule from friends or enemies, colleagues and strangers, in order to acknowledge Jesus, honour him, and allow him to change both your own world and the world of those around.

We learn much about faith from this story. But we also learn much about God, as we look at Jesus, God’s “final word” about himself. We learn that God’s heart is not just for “the chosen”, but for all peoples. We learn that God’s love is not limited to those who are “like us” (unlike our love), but extends even to our natural enemies. We learn that God gets excited when he sees faith expressed so freely and openly, and freely and generously affirms those who express it.

Maybe I’m just a little boy at heart, but I crave that affirmation from Father God. What could give any of us more pleasure than that, to know that God gets as excited about our faith as he did about the Roman’s?

Encounters: Luke 7

A Roman officer, a poor widow, a spiritual leader, a Pharisee, a prostitute: in one chapter Jesus encounters each of these. It is a broad cross section of society, and it is interesting to see how Jesus reacts to and treats each one of them. Often when I read the New Testament I find myself wondering what people thought about Jesus, but in this chapter I am challenged by what Jesus thought of the people he met.

I am a doctor, and my particular specialty is that of general practitioner, so in a way, my daily fare is not dissimilar to that of Jesus. I too meet a broad cross section of society, from rich to poor, from high society to low, from powerful to powerless.

As a follower of Jesus, I see him as my perfect role model. Jesus was a healer. If I could think about people the way he thought about them, and treat them the way he did, perhaps I would be a better healer. Perhaps the Jesus model of meeting people is more healing than the standard medical model.

I wonder sometimes if the healing that people experienced at the hands of Jesus was as much because of his attitude to them, as it was because of his supernatural power. As Christians we can get very much preoccupied with the power of Jesus to heal. We find ourselves wondering how we can access the same source of power. As doctors we seek knowledge and wisdom accumulated through centuries of scientific research and accumulated experience. Since medical training in the Western world is secular, Jesus is not a focus of our studies when it comes to knowledge and wisdom, though perhaps he should be.

But possibly the most important key to healing lies neither in miraculous power or scientific knowledge, or even carefully honed skills, as important as these may be, but in the attitudes we have to the people (patients) we meet. Perhaps the key to healing lies in the way we receive people, the way we listen, the way we care. Ultimately, it is the way we love the people we meet that is most important in healing. Jesus’ greatest challenge is always to love: “faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love.”

Not all of the encounters in Luke 7 are about healing, but all of them are about love. What is more, although healing occurs in every encounter, the focus of each story is not that healing, nor the person who is healed. In the first encounter it is the Roman centurion who is the focus of the story, not the servant who was healed. The second story is primarily about the widow of Nain, not her son, who was the one raised to life. In the third the focus is on John the Baptist, not the many who Jesus had healed as testimony to his own identity. The focus of the last encounter is as much on Simon the Pharisee as it is on the sinful woman who Jesus received and forgave.

Luke 7, then, paints some wonderful pictures of how Jesus related to the people around him. My work as a GP involves relating to many people every day. My goal is to be like Jesus as I do this, for that is the best key to healing that I know. It is a struggle to have the attitude of Jesus every day, it is a challenge to follow his instructions. But it is surely worth the effort. The sermon of Jesus that is recorded in Luke chapter 6 contains the instructions. In chapter 7 we see Jesus putting his own words into action. Reflecting on these encounters gives a strong foundation for being the kind of doctor that Jesus wants me to be.

To hear and be healed

They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those troubled by evil spirits were healed. Luke 6:18

Healing and deliverance
Why are people drawn to Jesus? This verse answers that question and in so doing says something about human need. We long to hear Jesus because we need an explanation, we desire to understand the world we live in. We long for healing because we are afflicted by every kind of sickness, of the mind and the body.

What does it mean, to be troubled by evil spirits? We understand “disease” – usually thinking of it as sickness of the body. But even now, thousands of years later, sickness of the spirit is hard for us. There seems to be so much more moral judgement associated with sickness of the spirit. As if sickness of the body is something we fall victim to, while sickness of the spirit is somehow our fault, a sign of weakness, or failure.

Oddly enough, this was perhaps not the way people thought of spiritual (or psychological or emotional) sickness back in Jesus’ day. Then there was much more talk of demons – evil spirits – than there is today, at least in the Western world. And people seemed to fall victim to demon possession in much the same way as they fell victim to physical illness: often without explanation. Not only that, they seemed equally powerless to free themselves of demons as they were to heal themselves of disease.

I have often wondered if what people of those days thought of as demon possession is what we think of nowadays as psychiatric illness, ranging from depression to psychosis. Whether it was or not, there seem to be a notable lack of judgement of the victims of either physical or non physical illness in the New Testament. Sometimes they were seen as the result of sin – but everyone was sinful and only some people ended up sick. Why? Both were things that oppressed them, and both were things from which they longed for freedom. Freedom to live healthy, happy lives.

Jesus healed them them of their diseases, and delivered them from their evil spirits. Is there any wonder that crowds flocked to him?

A different worldview
The understanding of things in Jesus’ time was very much bound up in a supernatural world view, a spiritual worldview. Everything was connected – body, mind and spirit. What could be seen and touched and measured was not regarded as the sum total of reality. The devil – Satan – was regarded as a real person, a fallen angel, who had set himself up in opposition to God. Angels were regarded as real, spiritual beings that sometimes appeared in physical form, and which sometimes interacted with people in one way or another. Evil spirits – demons – were also seen to be a real part of the fabric of life, a force opposing God and all the good things that he intended for humanity, a force aimed as separating people from God and from each other. Such demons could enter and possess people, with profound and unpleasant effects on their wellbeing.

The modern, scientific, rationalistic mindset that most of us have grown up with is very different to this. We have come a long way in understanding and responding to both physical and psychological illness. Although if the truth be told, our understanding is still limited to mechanisms rather than underlying causes. We can explain how a bacteria or a cancer invades the body, but we don’t undertand why. We have notions of the biochemical changes that occur in the brains of depressed or psychotic persons, but what lies behind those biochemical changes, what causes them in some people, remains a mystery to us.

Perhaps that is where a spiritual worldview is still needed, as much as the atheists believe it isn’t. It helps us understand the causes, not just the mechanics. Of course, as Christians we don’t think of a spiritual worldview as simply something that is needed, but as something that is true. But that is a faith statement. We can’t prove a spiritual reality, because proof in our age is largely understood to be something that can be seen, touched and measured. But neither can anyone disprove a spiritual reality.

Of course, many traditional cultures around the world have not turned their backs on the supernatural or the spiritual. Even in the modern Western world there is a deep longing for such things, as seen in the growing “New Age” movement, not to mention people’s fascination with the supernatural in fictionalised forms: popular movies, books and art. Some have tried to dismiss such longings as chemical reactions in the brain, but why should such chemical reactions happen? Could not people’s intuition that there is something beyond the visible be just because there is something beyond the visible?

Being a Christian doctor
For ordinary people, doctors seem to play a similar role in modern society to that which Jesus played in Israel 2000 years ago. People come to the doctor to be healed of their diseases, and the “evil spirits” that trouble them. But they also come to hear what doctor’s have to say, to hear the doctor’s explanation, interpretation of things, just as people came to “hear Jesus”. We are modern day healers, but another of our roles as doctors is to explain to people why things are the way they are, to interpret events – usually sickness or sadness – for those afflicted. Another part of our role is to give advice about lifestyle in order for people to experience the healthy, happy lives they desire.

The passage that follows the verse quoted above contains Jesus’ teaching on these things, Jesus’ advice about how to live a healthy happy life. It begins with the so called Beatitudes and continues through a series of radical ideas about how we should live our lives. Not many doctors I know use Jesus’ teachings as the basis for the advice they offer patients. But perhaps as doctors who follow Jesus, that should be foundational for us.

How can we as Christian doctors model our advice and our healing on that of Jesus? Few of us have the gift of miraculous healing. Few of us have the wisdom of Jesus. But we can study and seek to apply Jesus’ teaching to all that we say and do.

Jesus’ teaching was based on a worldview and value system which he called the “Kingdom of Heaven.” It is that worldview that he begins to teach in the passage that follows this verse. When he taught it he claimed to be speaking the words of God. The teachings were based on his understanding of the deepest reality and revelation of that to him by the Creator of the Universe. Jesus claimed direct access to that Creator. He claimed oneness with the Source.

As Christian doctors we need to base our healing and our teaching (the understanding and advice we offer) on this very same “Kingdom of Heaven” that Jesus taught. In much of the Western world it is frowned upon to speak to patients of our own personal faith. It is seen as unprofessional. But if we believe the teachings of Jesus to be universally true and applicable to all, regardless of their faith or lack of it, then we can pass on those teachings without demanding that people follow Jesus or put their faith in him. Much of what Jesus suggested is difficult, some would say impossible, unless a person has faith in Jesus and the power of God in them. But that doesn’t stop us from sharing with people the wisdom of God, even if we never challenge them with believing in God.

People were drawn to Jesus because he healed and delivered. They were also drawn to him because he seemed to understand the way things were. His ideas about how to live were radically different to the verbally accepted wisdom. We need to be unafraid to offer the same ideas to a thirsty world.

Which is easier?

I have been reading the story of the paralysed man whose friends brought him to Jesus (Luke 5:17-26), and how Jesus surprised everyone by forgiving him (usually, it would seem, he simply healed people and sent them on their way). The man hadn’t even asked for forgiveness. Jesus’ words caused a stir. But perhaps not for the reason we might think. Most of us would have felt Jesus’ response to the man’s need was inappropriate and uncaring. Surely Jesus could see the real problem. The man couldn’t walk. What did he care about forgiveness. It was his health he wanted back, not some airy fairy promise of “pie in the sky when I die.” Perhaps people saw it as a cop out by Jesus. He had finally met his match – a paraplegic! So instead of healing him he “forgave him.” As if that could compensate for the man’s disappointment!

Jesus knew what people around him were thinking. This was his response:

Luke 5:23 NIV
Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?

Which is easier to say?
Seems like a bit of a no-brainer. Of course its easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” Because the results are invisible, impossible to prove or disprove. You can’t see if a person is forgiven or not. He or she still looks the same. But you can see if a person is healed or not, especially if he was paralysed before and he is not paralysed anymore. If a person says to a paraplegic, “Get up and walk,” and nothing happens, then the speaker is discredited, shamed. But if a person says, “Your sins are forgiven,” it is hard to see whether anything has happened or not.

Jesus’ question highlights the tension here is between the invisible and the visible. This tension existed in the first century. It still exists today. We value the visible over the invisible, or perhaps it could be said, we believe the visible more readily than the invisible. We believe that if something is visible it is true, but if it is invisible it is impossible to prove. The physical has become more important than the metaphysical – the spiritual. Physical healing is prioritized over spiritual restoration. We value physical beauty more than inner beauty. We focus more on sex than love. The examples can go on and on. We believe in what we can see, and feel and touch, the evidence of our eyes and ears.

Jesus, in contrast, at least in this story, seemed to be saying that forgiveness was more important than physical healing. Faced with a paralytic he spoke out forgiveness of sins without healing him, at least initially. As if he was saying to everyone, “you may think that this man’s problem is paralysis, but his much deeper problem is his sinfulness.” So the solution was not physical healing, but forgiveness. Jesus knew that forgiveness is forever, but physical healing is only temporary; that physical wholeness is fleeting, whereas spiritual wholeness is eternal. In short, that the invisible is often, perhaps always, more important than the visible.

But Jesus also knows that we are usually more impressed by what we see than what we can’t see. So for the sake of the Pharisees, the onlookers, and for us (whom he knew would be reading about it centuries later) he healed the man’s physical disability too. He demonstrated his supernatural power in the visible realm to help us understand his supernatural power in the invisible realm.

Which is better, forgiveness or healing?
This event then, explores two phenomena, both of which are important to us, even if we tend to value one over the other – physical healing, and forgiveness of sins, one visible, and the other invisible. Jesus seemed to see the invisible – forgiveness – as more significant, more important, than the visible – healing. The Pharisees seemed to see Jesus’ words of forgiveness as more offensive than his act of healing, which suggests that they too thought forgiveness of sins was more important than physical healing. They saw forgiveness as the realm of God, whereas physical healing was possible by any skilled healer. They were angry because they saw that Jesus was claiming an authority only possessed by God, making himself equal with God. But was that Jesus’ intention, to simply use the opportunity to claim some sort of divine right? Or was there more to this encounter than that?

I believe that Jesus was making a point about the absolute necessity of forgiveness as a foundation for life, that as important as physical healing is, forgiveness, spiritual cleansing, is even more important. Jesus knew that forgiveness of sins is foundational to relationships, and for Jesus relationships were and are more important than anything. First and foremost our relationship with God. But also our relationships with each other. Without forgiveness, relationships founder.

In fact, forgiveness grounded in love is the foundation of all relationships that exist in a broken world. And we live in a broken world, that is easy to see. The solutions to that brokenness lie not in physical healing, even when it is miraculous. The solutions lie in forgiveness. Without love there is no forgiveness. Without forgiveness relationships break down. When relationships break down, all manner of suffering are the result. Jesus came into the world, not primarily to heal broken bodies, but to provide a way of healing broken relationships. His strategy was and is forgiveness.

Which is easier to do?
And although “Your sins are forgiven,” might seem easier to say, it is not at all easier to do. Forgiveness is the hard thing, much harder than healing. Anyone who has been sinned against knows that. Especially anyone who has been habitually and serially sinned against. Think of the abused wife or child. Think of the woman (or man) betrayed by an unfaithful partner. Think of the person who has seen their whole family murdered by evil men. Think of the person who has been serially exploited, raped, tortured.

No, forgiveness is not easy. It is not natural. It goes against all our sense of justice. Forgiveness is just as supernatural as miraculous healing. Perhaps more so. It is something that comes only from the heart of God. Spoken out of the mouth of Jesus:

Luke 5:24-26 NIV
But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

Jesus knew that people would doubt his authority to forgive sins because forgiveness is invisible. He performed a visible miracle to prove his authority to perform an invisible miracle.

But he knew, like the Pharisees, that forgiveness of sins was the greater miracle, and the key to life, far more remarkable than the healing of the body. He knew that forgiveness of sins was a God thing, and he wanted to introduce a new way of making that possible even in the human realm. He knew that the only solution to the world’s problems was forgiveness, and he came to the earth as a man to make that possible. That is why Christmas is so significant, because it introduces God’s ultimate solution for a broken and hurting world. The solution lies in forgiveness, and the only true source of forgiveness is Jesus.

Which is easier? Physical healing. Which is better? Forgiveness of sins. When we are sick we can go to the doctor. But if we want forgiveness there is nowhere to go but Jesus. For in this story Jesus says not only that forgiveness is the most important thing for a better life, a better world, but that it is available. From him.

Sin and sickness

Luke 5:18-20 NIV
Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

Which is most important? Sin or sickness? To the paralyzed man it would appear to have been sickness: he was severely disabled. Why did Jesus do what he did? Why even bring up the issue of the man’s sinfulness? Sounds insensitive and uncaring, almost cruel, as if Jesus had chosen to ignore the man’s “real” problem and focus on something irrelevant in the situation – his sinfulness. Was Jesus just using this poor man to pick a fight with the Pharisees? Jesus didn’t usually start talking about sin when people came to be healed, so why did he do it with this guy? Why not just heal him and let him go on his way rejoicing?

I don’t really like the word “sin.” It has so many negative connotations. Surely it’s better to focus on people’s strengths than their weaknesses, their potential for good rather than their propensity for bad. Why do Christians so often focus on the bad in people and the world, rather than the good? Why are we so negative? This tendency of Christians has given us a bad name in the post modern world in which we live, a world where the concept of sin has been relegated to the waste bin.

Jesus was a positive person. My reading of the New Testament gives an impression that people felt blessed rather than condemned by meeting him. Yet in this situation where sickness was apparently the main issue to be dealt with, and sin hadn’t even entered the conversation, Jesus chose to make the forgiveness of sins the focus, not the healing of disease.

It would be easy to think that Jesus was just using the man and his problems to teach the people around him a lesson and to provoke the Pharisees, but I think that would be misjudging Jesus. In my years as a doctor I have discovered that humans think in terms of cause and effect, and though it is not stated and was very possibly not even known by the onlookers, I suspect that the man before Jesus was a man racked by guilt. If Jesus chose to focus first on the forgiveness of his sin, and not on his paralysis, I believe it was because this was the deepest and most relevant need of the man before him.

How could that be? We have no way of knowing why the man was paralyzed, just that he was. Was it an act of stupidity which had damaged his spinal cord? Was he tormented by regret? Had his paralysis resulted from some wrongdoing – something “sinful”? Did he feel he was being punished for that wrong doing? Perhaps the stupid or sinful act that had led to his paralysis had resulted in the death or injury of another person, someone innocent of wrong doing. Was he racked by guilt?

I have even wondered if his sin might have been generally known in the community – that people around him knew that his paralysis was the result of his sin. Perhaps he received little sympathy for his predicament precisely because people knew it was his own fault. Perhaps he was judged by the community around him as being deserving of his suffering. Perhaps, apart from his few faithful friends, he was, like the leper in the same chapter, outcast.

The action of Jesus in forgiving the man’s sin was, I believe, more significant for the man than the healing that followed. This may be hard for us to imagine, with our preoccupation with the physical, but I believe that Jesus was in fact dealing with the man’s deepest need. The man could live with his spinal injury, but I believe his guilt was killing him. Even if no-one around him knew what was going on in this man’s heart, Jesus knew. It was that guilt that Jesus wanted to deal with first and foremost. Jesus went straight to the core issue.

Sin leads to guilt, and guilt can kill us. We ignore sin at our peril. Doctors, like anyone else, can be fooled into believing that sickness is the only thing that matters for people, but we need to seek to understand the whole person, and understand that the real problem may not be the one that seems most obvious. Sickness is, of course, extremely important, but it is not always the only thing, and it is not always the most important thing. Jesus knew, and we should be aware, that dealing with sin is often of greater significance in healing than dealing with sickness and disability. How we do that as doctors is an interesting question, but there is no doubt that it is important.

Angry about illness

Luke 4:38-39 NIV
Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her. So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.

Recently I got sick for the first time in years. It was a strange illness, with basically three symptoms: headache, body ache, and fever. Though the weather was warm I would suddenly feel cold and start shivering. I had pain all over, and I would wake up at night with my head exploding. I have never had malaria but it felt like what I imagine malaria would feel. However, we had not been in a malarial area, and it seemed unlikely.

I ended up seeing a few different doctors – my colleagues. I had a battery of tests. But apart from confirming a high fever, and getting non-specific results consistent with a significant infection, the tests were negative. The cause could not be found. It was, as doctors say so often, some kind of virus, and it would get better by itself. Three weeks later I am still tired, I still get headaches at the end of the day, but the fever, thankfully, has gone.

Natural healing

It got better by itself. My recovery has been of the natural kind. The treatment I have received has been pain relieving and fever reducing medication. But the healing process has been the result of the natural defense mechanisms built into my body, not the treatment I received. Modern scientific doctors say this is the result of millions of years of evolution. I say it is the result of a brilliant and caring God’s incredible design and engineering.

Fever is a sign of illness, usually infective. Not all infections get better naturally. Infectious disease still causes millions of deaths every year worldwide. In the last hundred years the discovery of antibiotics – substances that kill infectious organisms – has saved millions of lives. This is what I call assisted natural healing and is what we doctors concern ourselves with most of the time. What we do is intervene to either help natural healing processes or hinder natural disease processes in the body.

This of course requires an extensive knowledge of nature – how the body works and how the processes that occur in the body can be manipulated. Our knowledge of these things – which embodies the “study of medicine” – and our ability to select and provide the right intervention (the “practice of medicine”) is the service that we provide to our patients. Equally important is the ability to discern wrong interventions that patients may feel inclined to implement, which seem to exist in abundance these days and which are readily available to the unsuspecting thanks to a global information and marketing system called the Internet.

Another kind of healing

But there is a third kind of healing, and that is what we see in action here in this account of Simon’s mother. It is supernatural healing, healing that bypasses natural processes altogether, and restores health in an instant. This was the kind of healing process that Jesus employed. Its instantaneous effect places its outside the realm of natural healing, and the lack of any treatment intervention places it in a different category to assisted natural healing. It is what we call miraculous.

Modern doctors generally don’t believe in miraculous healing, even though most doctors at some stage in their careers observe patients who get better inexplicably, against expectation. Christian doctors who believe in such things are seen as being a best a bit odd, at worst downright dangerous. Modern medical ethics tends to prohibit doctors from promoting or dabbling in the supernatural. It is seen as highly inappropriate, especially if it is connected to religious belief of any kind, and is enough to motivate de-registration, the cancellation of the right to practice medicine.

How is the Christian doctor to respond to this situation? What are we to do, caught as we are between two worlds? I can’t say I have any easy answers, but I hope to gain insight as I study the writings of Luke, and the life of Jesus.

Rebuking a fever?

What can we learn from Luke’s first story of individual healing, of Simon’s fever stricken mother? I think the answer lies in the word “rebuke,” a curious response by Jesus to a fever. It almost seems that Jesus regarded the fever as a person who had offended him in some way. We don’t generally rebuke symptoms of disease. We attempt to remove them or relieve them, but we don’t rebuke them.

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines rebuke as to express sharp disapproval or criticism of (someone) because of their behavior or actions. Jesus rebuked the fever. The effect was that the fever disappeared. Was it Jesus’ disapproval or criticism that banished it? Here was a miracle if ever there was one. Once again we see that the power of Jesus was conveyed in his words, words in this case of “sharp disapproval or criticism.”

I am not suggesting that we should start speaking to people’s symptoms. But the attitude of Jesus is something we can learn from. He expressed “sharp disapproval and criticism” toward this illness. He was angry at the illness. He did not counsel acceptance of the situation. He was not a fatalist. And he used the power at his disposal to get rid of it.

Our words may not have the same supernatural power as those of Jesus, but what we say and how we say it is important in the healing process, something we should never underestimate. And we do have our medicines and treatments, and we should never be content with fatalistic acceptance. We should be angry at disease, and we should do everything in our power to dismiss – remove or relieve – the cause of a person’s suffering. Disease is, in a sense, the enemy, and we should, like Jesus, use every weapon at our disposal to fight against it.