Saturday 24th January
Read Matthew 4:23-25
“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and illness among the people. 24 News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralysed; and he healed them. 25 Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.” (NIVUK)
In the Lord of the Rings, after the battle of the Pelennor Fields before the walls of Gondor, Aragorn the Ranger from the North led an invincible, and invisible, army to clear away the enemy from the city. The battle however was fierce and the wounded were many. Tolkien devotes a chapter to the aftermath of that battle and we read that the hands of the true King will be the hands of a healer. Aragorn takes what was thought to be a common weed and used it to heal all sorts of injury. Tolkien agrees that the King should be triumphant in battle, but they are also to care for and heal the people.
Matthew has presented Jesus as the true King of Israel. Herod was certainly threatened enough by the mere mention of His birth to seek to kill Him. At His baptism He was declared to be the royal Davidic Son and the genealogy reinforced that truth. But when Jesus commences His ministry it is not with a challenge to the leaders in Jerusalem, or to the Romans in the countryside, it is with words and healings. Words and healings that spread like wildfire amongst the people. Jesus starts His ministry amongst the poor and the poor respond in droves.
