Dear Luke,
You describe your inner struggle so
well as you put these stories to paper.
I often wish I had invested the same time and energy into the
decision. When others ask me how I came
to faith, often awaiting a dramatic story about God’s direct intervention in my
life, they leave disappointed when I tell them that someone asked me if I
wanted to follow Jesus, and I said yes, because it felt like the right thing to
do at the time. I have later built
structures under that faith, and I believe it now rests on a firm foundation,
but my own journey into faith was rather poorly thought out and entered into
without realization of the enormous commitment I was making. Had someone told me at the time that I’d be
handing over my entire life to a man who was crucified on a cross, I’m not so
sure I would have leapt quite so willingly!
The story you relate about the
healing of the woman and the girl makes me long for every detail of Jesus’
every movement. I want to know each word
that he said and every person he reached out to. I know that you have related the story with a
full account of the facts available to you, but my very soul longs for more,
for a complete knowledge of the life of this man. He fascinates me. His every act draws me deeper into faith, and
the more I learn the more I realize that I have so much deeper yet to go.
I believe the disciples were also
transformed by watching his actions. He
was constantly teaching them, preparing them for their own ministries. I can only imagine how much they learned
during times for which we have no record.
They must have had so many questions as they prepared to do something
completely new, to go out with a new message and tell others about Jesus. It probably helped that stories of Jesus’
miracles had reached every corner of the land, but to go out on their own would
surely have been a daunting task.
But send them out is exactly what
Jesus did next. He gathered them
together and gave them power over demons as well as diseases, expecting them to
use these powers not only to heal but also to announce God’s Kingdom. Just think of what it would have felt like to
be filled with such power! Imagine how
eager they were to go forth and test these powers out, to speak with authority
over a demon or lay hands on a man who has been hurting for decades. The disciples had abilities they had perhaps
only dreamed about, and they were given free license to use them. I wonder if they were nervous about
proclaiming God’s Kingdom—it would be easy to use these powers to heal and cast
out demons, but they were instructed to connect this power with God’s Kingdom,
to make sure that the witnesses knew that they were healed because of God, and
that God was calling them to renew their faith.
It would have been intimidating to think of the disciples attracting the
attention of the Roman army or their adversaries, the Pharisees, but Jesus’
confidence must have bled over into them.
Jesus did not make this task easy,
though, for he also instructed the disciples to take nothing with them on their
journey. They were to leave behind a
staff, bag, bread or money. They
wouldn’t even have the comfort of an extra tunic. This was a lesson for the disciples in
depending on God and the community. They
weren’t sent out to live comfortably on their own—they were to go into a
community and let the community support them.
They were told to stay in a house they enter, to build
relationships. If they find a community in
which they are not welcomed, Jesus instructed them to shake the dust from that
village off their feet as a testimony against them. They would learn as they went, village by
village, and the Kingdom of God would be spread through them.
So the disciples listened and they
left, going through villages throughout the area, telling the story and sharing
the good news, curing diseases as well.
Crowds must have turned out to meet them, and when they witnessed the
power of God working through them, many must have gone off in search of Jesus,
desperate to hear more. The disciples
gave the people a foretaste of what they would witness when they came before
Christ, and many must have been changed by God working through them.
What the disciples did on their
journeys through the villages is no different than what myself and other
Christians are called to do in our own lives.
We are called to let God work through us so that others want to meet God
and believe. I may not be able to cure
diseases, but I can tell the story and share the good news of the Kingdom of
God, hopeful that my own words will pique someone’s curiosity about Jesus. It’s not easy, but I certainly don’t have it
as rough as the disciples did—I have an extra tunic! I hope that the comfort with which I am
surrounded does not endanger my own witness or compromise my own faith. I will admit to wondering about that,
Luke. Perhaps I have rounded off some of
the sharp edges of Jesus’ teachings because I am unwilling to offer everything
up to God and have the type of dependence on him that these disciples had. I, too, still have much to learn. Though my commitment was rather immature in
the beginning of my journey of faith, I am growing, maturing, learning, and I
pray that other disciples will continue to teach me, that my own faith may deepen
and I may have this dependence that the disciples learned at the knee of Jesus.
Sincerely,
Theophilus
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