This week I want to revisit Mark chapter 7, specifically the
last passage in the chapter. This is story is the story of a healing of a man
who is both deaf and mute. The people who bring him to Jesus are from the
region of the Decapolis. You may remember them. They are the ones who not long
ago asked Jesus to leave their region because of the demons who killed a herd
of pigs. Their attitude is completely different now. They were once terrified
of him, and now they say “he does everything well.”
Jesus heals this man in a very interesting way. He could
have healed him with a word; he had done that before. He could have healed with
a touch. Instead, he goes through an elaborate, and frankly gross, ritual. He
sticks his fingers in the guy’s ears, spits, and touches his tongue, and says
be healed. Why go through this whole ordeal?
Jesus knows the source of our infirmities. He doesn’t heal
us the same way as everybody else. He treats every one of us as an individual.
Jesus separates the man from the crowd before he heals him. We are not just a
number to him, not just a nameless face. The scripture says he has every hair
on our heads numbered (Luke 12:7). Jesus personalizes this miracle, I believe,
to suit the needs of the deaf man. He does what is needed to address the root
of the problem.
There is a connection between the way Jesus heals and the
way the Holy Spirit moves in the book of Acts. Jesus worked his miracles
through the power of the Holy Spirit. We saw how he began his ministry when the
Holy Spirit rested upon him at his baptism. He promised that we would do the
same things (John 14:12). The power that was at work in Jesus is at work in us
as well.
If Jesus had always healed in the same way, we would have
tried to formulize it. We would have made it ritual. We would have tried to
take the steps and divorce them from the person of the Spirit. People love
formulas. We want things to be a set way, and we want it to work every time. Look
at the Pharisees at the beginning of this chapter. Jesus rebukes them for giving
more attention to their traditions than the commandments of God. They had
turned the worship of God into a series of formulas.
This is the appeal of witchcraft. Witchcraft is a way of
getting power apart from God. If Jesus had always said the same words, or
always done the same thing, we would have made it into an incantation.
We see an example of this is in Acts 19. The seven sons of
Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, tried to cast out demons using Jesus name, like
Paul was doing. “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to
come out.” The demon possessed person laughed at them, beat them up, tore off
their clothes, and chased them off. They were trying to use the formula. They
didn’t know Jesus, and they didn’t have the Spirit. They were just trying to
use his name to get what they wanted.
But that is not how the Holy Spirit works. He is not some
impersonal force that we can bend to our will. We are in a relationship with
him. His power is worked in our lives when we yield to him.
Later on, in Acts 19, the people build a huge bonfire with
all their books of magic spells. They have realized that the formulas don’t
work. Relationship is what is needed.
We can rest assured in God that we are unique to him, and he
knows exactly what we need. He is not interested in rituals. He does not care
about traditions. He wants a relationship with you.
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