Progressive Healing

Homily on Haggai 2:1-9 and Mark 8:22-26

I love reading the records of Jesus' healing miracles. Most of them are pretty straightforward. In many ways, they follow the first-century Greco-Roman pattern for gift-giving. There’s a request or a requirement expressed in faith or an anticipation of a favourable result, there’s a positive response, and there’s a reaction, usually one of gratitude.

 

But as with most things, there are exceptions…one being the healing of the man at a pool steeped in pagan superstition. There was no request made in faith or otherwise…the man didn’t even know who Jesus was…and there was a rather bad response in the end that appears to have been vindictive as he seems to have snitched on Jesus. No thankfulness to speak of…no gratitude…

And then there’s this healing in Bethsaida. While there certainly was a request made by the blind man’s friends, both the response and the reaction were a little different. The response was performed in private, the healing was partially delayed, and any form of public reaction seems to have been prevented. 

Now, Bethsaida was an interesting place. On one hand, it was home to five apostles, far more than any other New Testament town. It was also the target of one of Jesus’ “Woe” sayings in which he lashed out at Bethsaida and two other towns for their failure to repent (Matthew 11:21). 

Recently in 2017, due to the receding waterline of the Sea of Galilee, archaeologists managed to uncover ruins old enough to be the biblical Bethsaida. Unlike the previous site, this one presented evidence of a Jewish presence including a fisherman’s house complete with bones of kosher fish. But the archaeologists also discovered a large Roman bathhouse and evidence of pagan worship: bronze incense shovels like those found in Roman temples and votive objects in the shape of boat anchors and grape clusters.

We know that Philip the Tetrarch made this his second capital and renamed it Julias in AD 30 in honour of Livia-Julia, the wife of the emperor Augustus and mother of Tiberius, but that probably happened at the end of a long process of paganization. Perhaps this was the reason why Peter and Andrew, James and John, and perhaps Philip, relocated to Capernaum and perhaps this was the reason why Jesus refused to perform the miracle in the town…but that is pure speculation on my part.

But what intrigues me the most about this healing was that it seemed to have been progressive. After having wiped the eyes of the blind man with spittle (an action that reminds me of a mother wiping sleep out of her child’s eyes), the man testified that the healing was incomplete. He saw people, but indistinctly…which may indicate that he had not been born blind because apparently, he knew what he ought to have been seeing. After a second laying on of hands, the man’s sight was fully restored. 

Why the progressive healing? Why was the man not healed immediately? Was this perhaps another one of Jesus’ acted parables – perhaps a lesson he was trying to teach his disciples – that faith grew gradually and with difficulty? All of them had to unlearn many things they had been taught and we see them struggling with the relearning process all the way up to the ascension and, some might argue, even beyond the ascension.

It is interesting to note that right after this progressive healing Peter both gets it right by declaring Jesus to be the Messiah as well as gets it wrong by attempting to prevent Jesus from fulfilling his sacrificial ministry. In fact, all the stories that follow on the heels of this incident in Bethsaida, seem to indicate a gradual growth in spiritual sight, with Jesus repeatedly returning to the theme of his death, a theme that was only comprehended after the resurrection. 

Now, I dare say that this is not totally unlike our own growth in spiritual awareness. Like Paul, we often see things through a glass darkly…or like this blind man, we see people walking about like trees. Or like the Jews during the restoration period, we may think back to a time of former glory, when our Christian walk was vibrant and pulsating with spiritual energy. Or like David, it may be that the joy of our salvation needs to be restored. 

Perhaps we need a second touch from our Lord Jesus so that our focus may be redirected from what appears to be insufficient and inadequate, to that beatific vision of the heavenly Jerusalem where the river of the Holy Spirit flows from the throne of God the Father and of the Lamb, bringing life in abundance through us to the nations. 

Gratitude or thankfulness is often a product of corrected vision and perception. It is only once our spiritual sight has been restored that we will be able to see that God will fill his house with glory…a glory that will be greater than the former…and that he will give peace. 

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2023