Jesus' healings
“When Jesus expels demons and heals the sick, he is driving out of creation the powers of destruction, and is healing and restoring created beings who are hurt and sick. The lordship of God, to which the healings witness, restores sick creation to health. Jesus’ healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world. They are the only truly ‘natural’ thing in a world that is unnatural, demonized and wounded.”
—Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions (London: SCM, 1990), pp. 98-99.
"There is the woman 'with an issue of blood'. She creeps through the crowd from behind until she has reached Jesus and takes hold of his coat. 'If I could only just touch his clothes I should be well again', she says to herself. By touching Jesus she makes him 'unclean', as people thought then. But she extorts her own healing from him. Jesus 'perceived in himself that power had gone forth from him.' He looks at her and says: 'My Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.' He experiances the healing power whcih goes out from him wihtout his will, and learns to know this helaing power through the faith of the sick women. He grows from the expectations of the sick and in this atmosphere learns what the kingdom of God in its reality is."
- Jurgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994),15.
I want to jump up and say, "Amen!" Lord, let your Kingdom come!
I'm puzzled by that quote. A creation without destruction is a creation without life, I should think. One animal's eating is another animal's getting eaten, as it were. And the same holds, mutatis mutandis, true of humans, I think. How can you construe society in such a way that conflict isn't even possible?
Worse: The concept of health becomes void when there's no "not healthy". How can you have feelings without bad feeling? Saying that such a thing is merely "truly natural" is not enough. Or is it if you believe, is that expression of Belief? If so, is that perfect restored world you believe in something one can think about or something one can only feel vaguely about?
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