“Then the news about him spread throughout Syria. So they brought to him all those who were afflicted, those suffering from various diseases and intense pains, the demon-possessed, the epileptics, and the paralytics. And he healed them. Large crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.” - Matthew 4:24–25
While a few of Jesus’s earliest disciples appear to be His primary audience, we must not forget the others who populated the hillside that day—those craning their ears over the disciples’ shoulders. Today’s passage tells us just what type of people generally made up the crowds who followed Jesus. As we touched on yesterday, they were the hurting, those on the fringes of society, the diseased, paralyzed, pain stricken. The demon possessed.
We must get out of our heads images of crisp, gingham picnic blankets spread about with well-kempt middle-class families sitting in linen sundresses and ironed button-ups, snacking on baguettes and cheese while listening to Jesus give a Sunday school lesson. Those to whom Jesus first announced His kingdom were a desperate, mostly impoverished, hard-scrabble lot. We aren’t given details about how controlled the setting was on the day Jesus delivered His Sermon, but I imagine it was a somewhat rambunctious scene of restless children, hungry babies fussing, and the sick moaning. Perhaps some were asking questions or dissenting.
When I imagine that day’s setting, I think back to one of my first trips to the Amazon jungle with Justice & Mercy International (JMI). We were in a village partnering with an indigenous pastor to assist with a day camp and worship service for kids and families among the riberinhos (people of the river). It was a sweltering day where the humidity wrapped itself around me like extended relatives on Christmas, and there wasn’t an air-conditioned building within a thousand miles. From our boat we unloaded guitars and a djembe for worship; crayons, construction paper, and glue for crafts; and reams of pasta for lunch.
My vision of an orderly service where information would be transmitted from one party to the other with an end result of people’s lives being on-the-spot transformed by Christ was about to be tweaked (read: dashed). What instead transpired was a chaos I wasn’t used to in our orderly American church services where squirming babies are slipped into special rooms with rocking chairs and the distracted feign attention. Moms pressed forward for prayer, sporadically calling out for the needs of their families. Kids poked and prodded one another. Toddlers walked up to their mother’s breasts and started nursing—standing up. The men swatted away flies with one hand and swiped sweat from their brows with the other. Everyone was eager for the meal we’d prepared to serve after the service. Few seemed to be paying attention to the worship songs I’d taken the time to learn in Portuguese—the nerve.
If the goal was orderly conduct and listeners’ absorbing information I deemed important, it was an utterly disastrous worship service. But when I consider that Jesus met physical and emotional needs, in addition to spiritual ones, that day proved a turning point for me. In hindsight, it was a classic case of my having no concept of what it’s like to wake up in the morning and spear fish, feed mouths who may or may not be your own offspring, lumber to the closest outlet for clean water, tend your family’s diseases with your own bare hands—all while praying to God your husband comes home with a hunted animal that can be carved into stew for dinner. I needed to be reminded that Jesus cares for the whole person.
The physical needs of the riberinhos in many ways resemble the ones of Jesus’s first-century followers. As they listened to His famous Sermon on that patch of earth, they did so not as those without need but as those deeply in touch with their need. How remarkable and tender that Jesus didn’t only address their spiritual depravation without also being keenly sensitive to address physical and emotional needs too. (Matthew’s intentional pairing of His teachings and healings affirms this reality.) And how important is the reminder to you and me that whatever the specific scene looked like on that hillside, we can know for sure the ordinary and the suffering believed Jesus had a place for them.
This is good news for those who have assumed they can only approach God in their Sunday best. It’s good news for the ones who have tried everyone and everything else only to be disappointed. And it’s good news for those who feel on the outside because if this passage tells us anything, it says, you belong.
So before you sit down in the tall grass to listen to Jesus, the Teacher, may you first take in this good news. May you receive the reminder that He is not one to pass over your needs, pain, longings, loneliness. . . . He is not simply about transferring information but transferring a kingdom to you. Yes, He has truths upon which you can build your house, ethics that will shape your decision making, wisdom that will confound your instincts. But you will only revel in Him as Teacher because He has first given Himself to you as Savior.
What needs do you need Him to address today? He invites you to bring them.
“Excerpt taken from The Blessed Life by Kelly Minter, B & H Publishing Group, Nashville TN. Copyright © 2023 Kelly Minter. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.”
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Aricka Lewis
