Luther Seminary Chapel, Saint Paul, Minnesota
April 7, 2009 (Tuesday in
Holy Week)
Isa 53:4-5; Matt 8:14-17
Frederick J. Gaiser
“He Took Our Infirmities and Bore Our Diseases”
Surely
he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him
stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our
transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that
made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. (Isaiah 53:4-5)
We hardly
need the Holy Week sermon on this text. To read the text is to hear the sermon.
We know it well, and many of us have preached it
often. Some of us can sing it from Handel’s Messiah: Surely he has born
our griefs and carried our sorrows. Suffering servant. Vicarious atonement.
Jesus on the cross. It’s an essential sermon. A Holy Week sermon. And all of it derived from Isaiah 53.
Yet, curiously, that use of Isaiah’s text never shows up in the gospels.
Instead, in Matthew 8, we get this:
When
Jesus entered Peter's house, he saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a
fever; he touched her hand, and the fever
left her, and she got up and began to serve him. That evening they brought to
him many who were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with a
word, and cured all who were sick. This was to fulfill what had been spoken
through the prophet Isaiah, “He took our infirmities and bore our
diseases.”(Matthew 8:14-17)
Peter’s mother-in-law down with a fever. Others diseased,
possessed with demons, depressed, under the weather, or terminally ill. Jesus
“cured all who were sick. This was to fulfill what had been spoken
through the prophet Isaiah, ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.’” Nothing about the cross.
So, which is
it? Healing or forgiveness? Therapy
or salvation? What does Jesus offer? Which do we prefer? Those questions
trigger recurring debate in the current conversation about Christianity and
culture. We are told that we preach forgiveness, but people want healing. We
deal with guilt, but people want meaning. We offer salvation, but people want
therapy. And then we condemn either the people who want the wrong thing or the
church for failing to meet their needs.
I suppose we
can claim Jesus as our role model in our stubborn resistance to respond to the
demands of our day. The paralytic, you recall, also came for healing, but Jesus
said, “Your sins are forgiven.” So there. That’s the
thing that finally matters, after all. Forgiveness of sins.
Except, of course, that Jesus healed him, too. What
does that mean?
Have we made
the division between healing and saving too neat? If so, I assume it’s because
we are worried about cheap grace. Or the prudential gospel.
Jesus came to make you healthy, wealthy, and wise. Do religion right, and you can get all the goodies, lose weight, and
emerge smelling like a rose. That, to be sure, is a massive perversion of the
gospel. And there’s plenty of it around, so it’s worth worrying about. There
is, alas, that nasty little problem of sin, and the guilt word is pretty
pervasive in the Bible. We hear Jesus’ call to come and die, to lose oneself,
to give one’s life for the neighbor. New Testament Christianity is no bed of
roses.
But Jesus
also dealt with Peter’s mother-in-law, who, you know, was just running a fever.
What’s that about? Take two Advil, a couple of Our Fathers, and call me in the
morning, for heaven’s sake. I’m on the way to Jerusalem.
But that’s
not what Jesus said and did. He cured all who were sick: “cured” (qerapeu,w)—the dreaded “therapy” word. The
interesting thing is that Matthew uses Isaiah 53 here, the so-called fourth
servant song, apparently unrelated to Jesus’s work of
forgiveness and atonement, and the Gospel never quotes it directly to speak of
Good Friday. Again, what does this mean for our Holy Week preaching?
Jesus is
introduced early in Matthew as one who “went throughout Galilee, teaching in
their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every
disease and every sickness among the people” (Matt 4:23). Jesus’ whole ministry
is in that verse: the preacher, the teacher, and the healer—this is who Jesus
is in the New Testament; this is what Jesus does. All of this is his messianic
work. But sometimes our Holy Week preaching, with its focus on the cross, seems
to neglect Jesus’ teaching and healing ministries, as though those were not
part of the “good news of the kingdom,” quietly forgotten now that we’ve gotten
to the real thing.
Now, just to be clear. I’m not going to deny the centrality
of the cross—not only because I want to teach here next week, too, but because
I don’t want to deny the centrality of the cross. I think Paul got it right. I
don’t want to belittle the cross; I want to expand it. I think Matthew
did, too.
It’s Holy
Week now. Jesus is on his way to the cross. No time to worry about fevers.
Except that he does. Jesus, on the way to the Palm Sunday parade, stopped to
heal two blind men. Jesus, during that first Holy Week, took time to proclaim a
prophetic word about the temple and perform a symbolic teaching act. And while
he was at it, he cured the blind and the lame who
congregated there. Jesus, during that final week, took time to teach in
parables and give instruction about paying taxes. Jesus, in the middle of his
Holy Week preaching, took time to pray and weep over the coming desolation of
his beloved Jerusalem. Jesus, at the Last Supper, took time to address Judas
and show his concern for the consequences of his friend’s betrayal. Jesus, on
the cross, took time to worry about his mother’s well-being. A busy week! And not
just busy dying—busy living, teaching, healing, reaching out, showing
compassion to those who needed it in whatever way, and drawing all of that
toward the cross.
Jesus the healer, even as he needed healing. Jesus, healing the smaller things even as he went to the cross for
the larger things. But does that distinction even make sense? Peter’s
mother-in-law had a fever; others in the crowd were possessed by demons. Small things? Or, as with so many in need of therapy, simply
presenting problems for all the pent-up troubles of the world that show
themselves sometimes here, sometimes there; sometimes in fever blisters and
sometimes in suicides; sometimes in depression and sometimes in fury; sometimes
in ulcers, sometimes in addiction. The Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel is out for it
all: sickness and sin, always ineluctably, if mysteriously, linked in biblical
theology. For Matthew, using Isaiah’s words, Jesus “bore” it all.
Magicians, Rambos, Terminators, and superheroes zap problems;
Jesus bears them. This is not yet full-blown vicarious suffering,1
to be sure, but Matthew does use the “bearing” word here, and the gospels
report repeatedly that Jesus’ healings are moved by compassion—compassion:
feeling with, solidarity, touch, involvement—not by power, hocus-pocus, and
self-aggrandizement. In his incarnation, Jesus bears our flesh; on the cross,
he will bear our sins; and in Matthew’s text, as healer, he bears our diseases.
Healing or saving? A false dichotomy, it seems. In the Bible, the “bearing”
word includes both. Jesus departs from Matthew’s Gospel story just as he was
introduced: as preacher, teacher, and healer—never too busy to continue his
whole work of saving and healing.
This is
Matthias Grünewald’s Jesus, painted on the Isenheim Altarpiece, green and pockmarked, bearing the
diseases of those under the care of the medieval monks of Saint Anthony, even
as he bore on the cross the sins of the world. This is the Jesus seen on many present-day
South African altars, suffering from HIV-AIDS, bearing the plague of that
continent, even as he bears on the cross the sins of the world. Make no
mistake: if Jesus’ grace is not cheap; neither is Jesus’ healing. In both, he
gives himself, he gives his all. Just as have his followers: Christian
physicians and hospice care workers, medical missionaries and parish nurses,
Mother Theresa and the unknown provider of the needed cup of water, Wendell
Berry and the growing number of faithful Christians working to heal the earth
itself, the Christians of Zimbabwe who say to their neighbor’s each morning, “I
cannot be well unless you are well”—all learning from Jesus the art and the
vocation of bearing the world’s suffering. This was to fulfill what had
been spoken through the prophet Isaiah, ‘He took our infirmities and bore our
diseases.’”
Not the cross belittled, then, but
Holy Week expanded. Not the sermon we expected on the song of the suffering
servant. But, don’t blame me. Matthew started it. Or I guess Jesus did. AMEN
1Our dear friend and former college Don Juel reminded us not to overexegete such an Old Testament snippet in the gospels. See, for example, the review by Don Juel’s student Lidija Novakovic in her book Messiah, the Healer of the Sick: A Study of the Jesus the Son of David in the Gospel of Matthew (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003).