Punctum Saliens

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The next two miracles add to faith an aspect of action. They bring to mind platitudes such as, “Just do it” and “Leap and the net will appear.” These are the stories of the man lowered through the roof (Matthew 9:1-8, Mark 2:1-12, and Luke 5:18-20) and the woman with the hemorrhage (Matthew 9:20-22, Mark 5:25-34, and Luke 8:43-48). In the former story, the narrative says that Jesus saw their faith. Now, putting aside any supernatural interpretation, what Jesus would have seen was their determination to get their friend in front of him—a determination demonstrated by destroying someone else’s property. Many, many people brought the sick to Jesus and they were healed (see Matthew 8:16). So, why was this group singled out as particularly faithful? Again, putting aside any notion of Jesus “seeing into their hearts” or “seeing their true nature,” we are only left with their deliberate action of putting the man in front of Jesus with the expectation of healing. They did not wait in line, they did not ask, they were essentially presumptuous that Jesus would heal if they got in his face. What about “make your requests made known unto God”?

The latter story of the hemorrhaging woman also indicates that faith is manifested by action. In this case, Jesus plays a passive role in the miracle and it is almost as if the woman heals herself. Again, we see presumption on the woman’s part: “If I only touch his garment I will be made well.” There is no notion of asking Jesus for healing or if it is his will. There is only “If I do … I will …” Now, many people were touching Jesus but only this one was healed because she knew she would be. It makes one wonder, did she have to touch Jesus’ garment to be healed? Could her faith not have healed her without doing that physical action? Or did she need to demonstrate her faith with a physical action?

In what do we have faith? The pat answer is that we have faith in God or Jesus. A clue to a more precise answer is in Matthew 16:5-12 where Jesus scolds the disciples about seeing his past miracles and not thinking he could do it again. So, the object of the faith is Jesus but the motivation for faith is in Jesus’ past actions. Is that not the most logical reason for the actions of people we’ve discussed so far? Perhaps Jesus exuded some special pheromones or had a magnetic personality but it seems more likely that people saw his miracles and some had faith that he could do it again. Obviously, not everyone held this opinion as our current story indicates with the disciples apparently forgetting that Jesus fed 5000 with five loves and two fishes. Indeed, in what else could these people possibly have had faith? It was not a foregone conclusion, at this stage, that Jesus was the Son of God so he would have been nothing more than another teacher; yet a teacher who was working miracles and teaching, perhaps, an offbeat message.

Part III