40 At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them.
41 And demons also came out from many, shouting, “You are the Son of God.” But he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak because they knew that he was the Messiah.
Spiritual – Imagine yourself in the scene
When reading the previous pericope we took a moment to re-read it and imagine ourselves as being right there in Simon’s house. When reading these verses you should do the same thing. Imagine that you are that same bystander. In your mind’s eye, imagine that you see a stream of people descending on the house. Each new visitor means someone else who needs to be healed. You watch for quite a while, perhaps hours. The line grows faster than Jesus can heal the people. You witness miraculous events and you see Jesus healing the masses. Keep these images fixed in your mind. We’ll come back to them.
Spiritual – An Encounter with Jesus
It is clear that for the people who were sick and with various diseases, there was no chance of encountering Christ unless someone brings them. In a certain light, we should see ourselves much like the people who aided the sick and diseased. There are so many people that we know who need a genuine encounter with Christ and they need help getting there. Pray for the grace to be the help that they need.
Cultural – Who is the Messiah?
Don’t you wonder why Jesus tries to keep it a secret that he’s the Messiah? He doesn’t let the demons speak about it. He doesn’t tell any of the Jews and if they do figure it out, he tells them to keep quiet. The only people he ever told during his ministry were foreigners. Why is that? After all, the Jews had been waiting for centuries and now that he’s here, he keeps it under wraps? What’s with that?
Well, it so often the case that God tells his people what He’s going to do, and when it actually does it, he manages to do it in a way that no one quite expects. Such is the case with the Messiah. In Jerusalem, at the time of Christ, there were at least a half dozen different kinds of expectations of who the Messiah would be and, perhaps more importantly, what he would do. Some people thought the Messiah would be a Davidic king and vanquish the Romans; others expected the Messiah to be a religious reformer and restore Temple worship; still others thought he would be a liberator and lead the Jews to a new Promised Land. At any rate, if you were a Jew, there was a pretty good chance that you had your own notions about the Messiah, and you expected him to conform to your particular interest.
The preconceived notions that the people had about the Messiah would have been an obstacle for them to hear Jesus Message. Imagine if he was preaching the Beatitudes and some people, rather than listen to what he had to say, were only listening for how he was going to defeat Rome, or restore the Temple, or establish a new freedom for the Jews. These false expectations would have prevented them from hearing the message of the Gospel. So, for their sake, it was best if they first regarded him as an amazing teacher, or a prophet, or as a messenger from God.
Cultural – no work on the Sabbath
Notice that the first two words of this pericope are “at sunset”. Think about it. All the ill people in the town new where Jesus was, they wanted to be healed, and yet they waited for the sun to go down. Notice that the verse also says that the sick were “brought to him”. Now let’s remember the order of the day. It began with Jesus teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Later, but still on the Sabbath, he went to Simon’s house and healed his mother-in-law. So, it is still the Sabbath day. Jews are not allowed to do work of any kind on the Sabbath, and carrying a sick person is work that was prohibited. By waiting for sundown, the people were waiting for the Sabbath to end.
Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition© 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
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