Many years ago, early in my appointment as an Associate Pastor, my large church held a healing service in our sanctuary. It was my first time to participate in one and I approached it wide-eyed and full of awe and trepidation. Our United Methodist Book of Worship includes a healing service with the anointing of oil, but I had never seen one. People flocked to our church that night from all corners and denominations of our town.

One of our own church members was brought on a gurney by her family. She had been very ill with stage 4 cancer for over a year. We anointed her and found out the next day that she died later that night. It was a huge lesson for me. I came to realize that sometimes, healing comes through death.

Our passage in Matthew describes many different ways of healing for many different kinds of people. Jesus used touch on the poor leper who had not been touched in years. Indeed, Jewish law required a people to maintain a 6-foot distance from lepers, much akin to our separation requirements during the Pandemic. The leper approached Jesus alone, with full confidence that if Jesus so chose, the leper would be healed. He didn’t beg but knelt in worship and addressed Jesus as “Lord.” His request to be cleansed rather than healed reflects the condition of his life. He was ostracized and outcast by his disease, and Jesus’ touching him showed the community that this man was now ceremonially clean. Later in the passage we read that Jesus used a gentle touch to heal his friend’s family member of her fever.

Matthew 8 (Common English Bible)

8 Now when Jesus had come down from the mountain, large crowds followed him. ² A man with a skin disease came, kneeled before him, and said, “Lord, if you want, you can make me clean.”

³ Jesus reached out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do want to. Become clean.” Instantly his skin disease was cleansed. ⁴ Jesus said to him, “Don’t say anything to anyone. Instead, go and show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded. This will be a testimony to them.”

We also saw healing come to the Gentile centurion’s servant through a verbal command. The centurion understood Jesus’ spiritual authority and based his request on Jesus’ rank as the One in command. He spared Jesus the awkwardness of coming into a Gentile home and made a tremendous statement of faith by asking Jesus to “just say the word.”

⁵ When Jesus went to Capernaum, a centurion approached,⁶ pleading with him, “Lord, my servant is flat on his back at home, paralyzed, and his suffering is awful.”

⁷ Jesus responded, “I’ll come and heal him.”

⁸ But the centurion replied, “Lord, I don’t deserve to have you come under my roof. Just say the word and my servant will be healed.⁹ I’m a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and the servant does it.”

¹⁰ When Jesus heard this, he was impressed and said to the people following him, “I say to you with all seriousness that even in Israel I haven’t found faith like this. ¹¹ I say to you that there are many who will come from east and west and sit down to eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. ¹² But the children of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness. People there will be weeping and grinding their teeth.” ¹³ Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it will be done for you just as you have believed.”And his servant was healed that very moment.

Later in the passage we read that Jesus cast out demons by the strength and power of his spoken word.

⁴ Jesus went home with Peter and saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. ¹⁵ He touched her hand, and the fever left her. Then she got up and served them. ¹⁶ That evening people brought to Jesus many who were demon-possessed. He threw the spirits out with just a word. He healed everyone who was sick. ¹⁷ This happened so that what Isaiah the prophet said would be fulfilled: He is the one who took our illnesses and carried away our diseases.

Matthew answers the question about who is qualified to receive Jesus’ healing. A diseased Jew with no social or religious privileges. The servant of a Gentile officer of the army occupying Israel. A mother-in-law of a friend. Unnamed multitudes from every corner and denomination in the land. You. And me. By touch or by word, all may be healed.

Do you need physical, spiritual, relational, or mental healing today? Ask your Lord with the confidence of the Gentile centurion and the faith of a family pushing a gurney into a church. Then listen for God’s answer and know that you will be heard.

Healing Waters by Kathy Schumacher