158 What a Miracle Does

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “What a Miracle Does”, originally shared on October 18, 2021. It was the 158^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    Jesus performed many miracles, yet most of the people who were ill during Jesus’ physical presence on earth were not healed, cured, or even raised from the dead. Why didn’t Jesus cure everybody? And, what do the miracles he did then mean to us today? Today, we’re going to find out.

   I’m old enough to remember the comedy team The Three Stooges, and I remember one routine where “the boys” are condemned to death and the executioner gives them a choice, being burned at the stake or having their heads cut off. This stuff was hilarious.

   Moe holds his throat and says, “I’d rather have my head cut off.”

   Larry holds his throat and says, “I’d rather have my head cut off.”

   Curly says, “Burned at the stake.”

   The other two look at Curly in disbelief and Curly says, “Yeah, ‘cause a hot steak is better than a cold chop.”

   Here’s another question. If you had to lose one of your five senses, which of the five would you least want to lose. I think that most of us would say, “Sight.” I don’t think there would be much disagreement.

   We read, in Mark 10, verse 46,

⁴⁶ They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside.

   Do you remember what had happened in Jericho, many centuries before?

   The people of God had followed Joseph to Egypt during a regional famine after he saved the country, and they lived as welcome guests until, the Bible says, a Pharaoh arose in Egypt who didn’t remember Joseph, but he knew he had a growing number of Israelites on his southeast border and a powerful enemy on his northwest border. The Israelites were being fruitful and multiplying and he couldn’t afford to fight two wars so far apart if they rebelled. So, he provided less food and made their work harder to keep them weak, until they were in slavery in Egypt and were stuck there.

   It’s said that nature abhors a vacuum, and after 430 years in Egypt, at least 86 of which were in slavery, and 40 years wandering in the desert, others had moved into the Israelites homes and land. The children of Israel, God’s chosen people, had left a vacuum in that land by their absence, and now they had to take it back.

   Jericho was the first walled city the people of Israel encountered as they returned to the land that God had promised Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob (whose name changed to Israel) in an everlasting covenant. Joshua was called to tell the people what to do as God was going to give them the city in a mighty miraculous act of God’s will that brought down the walls of Jericho.

   I don’t think that the meaning of the coming of the Messiah, the deliverer who had been promised for 1,000 years, was lost on the disciples as they came to Jericho.

   Was Jesus, whose name in Hebrew is a variant of the name Joshua, going to do a mighty act of God among them?

   Jesus would enact the power of God, but the reference that Jesus made was not to the fall of Jericho. It was to the beginning of Creation.

   Jesus had attracted a crowd while he was in town, and as they and his disciples and Jesus left the city, there was Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, sitting by the roadside.

   In Mark 10, verse 47, we continue,

 ⁴⁷ When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

   If you were a blind beggar in Jesus’ day and Jesus walked by, what would you ask for? Blind Bartimaeus asked Jesus for mercy. Why?

   In Jesus’ day, people believed that if you were rich, it was because God was rewarding you for being righteous. If you were poor, it was because you were being punished for being unrighteous.

   Jesus often spoke against this belief, but here was a man who may have believed it, and he was asking Jesus for mercy. Or he for some reason simply believed that Jesus could heal him.

   How could Jesus show mercy in the face of this man’s sins? How could he heal him? Only if he was God. Blind Bartimaeus believed. He cried out for healing. It was the first indication of his faith.

   But many wanted Bartimaeus out of the way. He was nobody.

   The story continues with Mark 10:48,

 ⁴⁸ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

   Wouldn’t you ignore the crowd if you were blind? Wouldn’t you beg, not for money, but for healing where you thought there was a chance for you? Wouldn’t you double-down in spite of the crowd’s discouragement?

   Jesus responds, starting with verse 49,

 ⁴⁹ Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”

   “Jesus stood still…” Why did Jesus stand still? The guy was crying out. Loudly.

   I think that Jesus wanted to stop and take some time. He wasn’t going to do a drive-by healing. He was going to demonstrate something, and it wasn’t that he could heal.

   Bartimaeus was pretty excited. Look at what he does. What does it take for a blind man to jump up? And how did he know which way to turn?

   I think that he recognized who Jesus was, because of the relationship he had with God, a second indication of Bartimaeus’ faith.

   We continue with verse 50,

 ⁵⁰ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. ⁵¹ Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” ⁵² Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”

   I know a man who lost part of his hearing in one ear and could have lost it all if he hadn’t gone to a specialist.

   When he first visited the doctor, the doctor asked him about his symptoms.

   The man said that they started when he had lost hearing in that ear for 30-seconds. But then his hearing came back, and he figured it was just something transitory and he ignored it.

   The doctor asked him what he would have done if he had lost his sight in one eye for 30 seconds?

   The man answered that he would have gone to a doctor right away.

   The specialist said that he, sadly, heard that story all the time.

   We are a visual culture. We depend upon our eyes for everything.

   In Jesus’ culture people depended on their hearing more than on their eyesight. Most people couldn’t read, there was almost no visual media, and they learned about the world from what others told them.

   Still, if you couldn’t see, your job possibilities were limited, your ability to care for a family was limited, you couldn’t see your friends, and someone would have to care for you and lead you around. Someone took Bartimaeus to where he could beg.

   “What do you want me to do for you,” Jesus asked. I guess there were lots of things Bartimaeus could have said, but the blind man asked that he could see again.

   And Jesus answered him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”

   So, what just happened? Faith hadn’t healed Bartimaeus. Jesus had healed him. Faith doesn’t heal; God heals. The outcome of Bartimaeus’ faith in Jesus was his healing.

   And Jesus healed Bartimaeus by speaking it.

   The mighty act of God that Jesus was referencing wasn’t the fall of Jericho, but the creation of the world.

   That’s what a miracle is.

   It’s not a suspension of the laws of nature.

   It is a reminder of the origin of nature.

   “Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.” Genesis 1:3

   “And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” Genesis 1:6

   “And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.” Genesis 1:9

   “Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so.” Genesis 1:11

   Do you see the pattern? It continues through Genesis 1, verses 14, 20-21, 24, and 26-27.

   God speaks, and things happen.

   I think that Jesus’ miracles are a reminder to us that the world is not the way it’s supposed to be. Evil enters the world by human rebellion against God, as it always has, and that rebellion takes the form of wanting to be God ourselves.

   Jesus’ miracles point us to the way everything is supposed to be, and how they were created.

   But Jesus didn’t heal everybody. People’s “Yes” to God doesn’t mean anything unless they have the ability to say “No” and people continue in rebellion against God.

   We can’t even link particular “No’s” to particular consequences. If a factory owner dumps toxic waste into a river to save money in order to pay his employees and stockholders more, they’re happy. If someone downstream drinks that water and gets cancer, all they know is that evil has entered the world.

   What Jesus did do was to overcome the consequences of our “No’s”, our Sin, by restoring the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created for all who accept the gift of faith by dying for us on the cross. We can’t do anything to save ourselves, we reject God whenever we do anything that is contrary to God’s intentions, big or small. But Jesus did it all for us.

   The cross is Jesus greatest miracle: death on the cross to gain life for all who believe.

   Jesus, who was fully God and fully human being, healed Blind Bartimaeus in the same way that God brought everything into being out of nothing: with a spoken word.

   Jesus heals us of our rebellion, even though we still struggle, even though are still sinners.

   Jesus points to God’s intention in Creation for us, and we in response can experience that intention now, in this world, as an act of grace, a foretaste of the feast to come. We can be saved.

   Open your heart now to God, confess your rebellion against God and turn away from it.

   Receive the miracle that Jesus has for you right now and be made whole.