Introduction: Last week we were in the synagogue in Nazareth where we heard Jesus proclaim what he had come to do. Reading from the prophet Isaiah, Jesus declared that these words were now being fulfilled in and through him (4:18-19):

 

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

 

These are important and impressive words. They point to both the spiritual and physical freedom that this one whom the Lord has anointed is going to bring. But while important and impressive, you could say that anyone could have gone from synagogue to synagogue quoting this text and promising that they were going to bring it about. The fact of the matter is, anyone can say stuff; anyone can promise “no new taxes,” or “next year we’ll win it all,” or “this semester I’m going to get all A’s.” But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Unless what is said is supported by what is done, the promises made will be empty.

 

In any generation of the life of the church, this has been the challenge, perhaps no more so than in our own. Folks outside of the church hear us saying a lot of things, but they don’t always see what we say displayed in our lives. With the incredible technology of our age at our fingertips, we have the unique ability to quickly send words throughout the world, but quite often we seem have a harder time leaving our keyboards and putting what we say into practice.

 

We would do well, it seems to me, to pay close attention to the ministry of Jesus. Jesus’ ministry was filled with both words and deeds. In fact, we could say that the preaching of the kingdom of God, which Jesus understood to be his calling (4:43), included deeds as well as words. As Jesus moves on from Nazareth to Capernaum, Luke shows us that what Jesus says is supported by what he does. In particular, we see that Jesus ministry reflects the compassion he proclaimed.

 

I. A Day of Miracles

            A. Capernaum was a fishing village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. As Jesus did in Nazareth, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath and began to teach. As those gathered for worship heard him speak, they recognized an amazing authority. He spoke, we could say, like one who was personally acquainted with his subject matter – himself! For instance, I could stand here and tell you about last week’s Super Bowl. But if the winning quarterback was standing right here speaking to you, you would instantly recognize that he was speaking with an authority that I could not match. Jesus, as he taught, was not quoting other experts or speaking about a third party; he was speaking and teaching about himself, as the one who had come to rescue God’s people and put the world to rights. No one else could speak the way he spoke.

 

            B. Interestingly, there was another in the synagogue who recognized his authority, for as Jesus was speaking, he heard a loud cry: “Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth! Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!” This was the cry of a demon, an evil spirit, who had take control of a man in the congregation. The NT describes demons as hostile and evil forces that somehow take control of a person from within. Their presence is revealed in erratic and destructive behavior. Instantly, this demon had recognized Jesus, which in a way, should not surprise us. If Jesus really does represent the powerful arrival of the forces of righteousness, the presence of the Kingdom of God, is it any wonder that he would be confronted with the forces of evil, the presence of the kingdom of this world? What is encouraging for us is to see that the forces of righteousness are far greater than the forces of evil. With a word, Jesus rids the man of the presence of evil, and even though the demon body slams this poor guy to the ground on his way out the door, the man is unharmed. The crowd is amazed. Here is one, Jesus, who has both authority and power. Here is one who not only speaks impressively about releasing the human race from oppression, he actually does it.

 

            C. Probably tired from preaching, and from battling forces of evil far greater than a disgruntled parishioner who didn’t like the opening hymn, Jesus heads to Simon’s home for what he hopes is a quiet lunch and, if he’s lucky, a little nap. Instead, he finds himself in a home where the host’s mother-in-law has been suffering from a high fever. As he did with the demon, he does with the disease. With a word, he rebukes the fever – that which is destroying God’s good creation – and the fever, like the demon, left. The woman was healed. Jesus’s power now, we see, extends from the spiritual realm into the physical, demonstrating his authority over all aspects of life. And as if to drive the point home, instead of returning to the synagogue for an evening service, the people of the town come to him and he heals all, without distinction. His compassion, we are shown, is comprehensive. His authority and power, his words and deeds, apply to the possessed and the sick, to both men and women, to the worshipping community and the townsfolk, in a synagogue and in a home.

 

II. The Purpose of Miracles

            A. This, to be sure, was a day of miracles, a day of deeds, and impressive ones at that! Let’s think about these miracles for a moment. What function do they serve?

 

1. To start, as we have said, they demonstrate that Jesus had the power to back up who he claimed to be. His words were not empty; he was the Son of God, the one on whom the Spirit of God had anointed to be the rescuer of the world.

 

2. Second, these miracles reveal his compassion. Jesus was genuinely concerned for those whose lives had become oppressed by hostile forces and illness. Jesus, actually, never does a miracle just for show of effect; his miracles always meet a deep, human need, they always restore some aspect of God’s good creation.

 

3. Third, the miracles of Jesus reveal the kind of rescuer he is. Notice that when the demons kept shouting that he was the Son of God, he commanded that they be silent, not because they were wrong, but because he didn’t want to be known solely as a miracle worker, which might then lead the crowds to believe that he was a king who had come to set up a political kingdom in opposition to Rome.  Jesus was a king, alright, but his reign would not be territorial and it would be won, not with demonstrations of supernatural power but with the weakness of a death on a cross. The miracles, then, functioned as a kind of audiovisual display of a deeper reality. They unveil the deep cosmic struggle with, and point to God’s ultimate victory over, the forces of evil that plague and twist and destroy life as it is supposed to be lived.

 

III. The Presence of Miracles Today

            A. All of that said about the purpose of miracles as Jesus performed them, what of their presence today? What can we say about the miraculous in our day and age? To those outside of the Christian faith who would claim that there is no such thing as the miraculous, not only do they need to deal with texts like today’s, but even more importantly, they need to account for how the  church came into existence less than two months after its greatest figure, Jesus, was crucified. Something must have turned the thinking of his followers, who had all scattered, around. The best candidate for that something would have to be the resurrection of Jesus, the greatest miracle of them all. If the Father can raise his Son from death, than it stands to reason that he can also be actively and miraculously involved in his creation.

 

            B. But even if we have arrived at that place, it can still leave us wondering how much of the miraculous we can expect today. Let me just say that if I thought I could answer that question definitively, then I would urge you to find another pastor! Miracles are an act of God’s sovereign grace; no one can or should say how and when they should occur. Even in Jesus day it is worth noting that there was no formula for putting the miraculous into play. Jesus healed those with faith, he healed those with no faith, and he healed those based on the faith of a friend. He acted miraculously as he, and only, he determined.

 

            C. All of this becomes even more complicated when we are made aware that in the west, we don’t see the miraculous that often while in the non-western world – South America and Africa in particular – the miraculous seems to be alive and well. In this regard, I am always challenged by something Phillip Yancey said a few years back about this apparent disparity. He said simply, “God goes where he’s wanted.” Faith in God in the west is in decline and in the non-west it is on the rise, and so that’s where we see God act. But even that, perhaps, it not a very satisfying answer, for there are still many in the west who have faith and call upon God to act. What about them?

 

D. As I have pondered this question for several years, maybe one thing we could say is that where resources are few, God chooses to pour out his compassion in miraculous fashion, but where resources are plentiful, as in the west, God calls us to use our resources to be agents of his compassion. We are, after all, called to be the body of Christ. If that’s the case, then, just like him, our deeds must match our words, our compassion must match the love that we proclaim. We must use the ways in which God has richly blessed us to serve others, even to the point of being inconvenienced. For that, on this Valentine’s Day, is what love is: giving ourselves for the good of another, even when and especially when we may not feel like it.

 

To put it differently, to try and fight against our culture by taking moral stands and railing at the inadequacies of other faith systems is poor missiology. It will not gain us a hearing. Instead, where can we engage our culture, where can we embody the compassion of Jesus? As David Krason put it to our men’s breakfast a few weeks ago, theology won’t convert people, relationships will. Superior loving, not superior reasoning, is what will gain us a hearing.

 

In that regard, I was reading about a group of Baptists who went to serve with a disaster relief team at Ground Zero, just two months after 9/11. They went to clean apartments of people who had been displaced after the terrorist attacks. These apartments had faced the Twin Towers. Their residents had watched the people jump. Not only had their windows been blown out, but all sorts of junk had been blown in. So, these residents were paying commercial firms thousands of dollars to get their apartments cleaned. This team did it for nothing. When the team was asked where they were from, what they were doing, and why, they responded, “We are from South Carolina and are here to clean apartments for people displaced by the terrorist attacks.” They could have said anything in response to the “why” because their compassion had gained them a hearing. When they spoke about the why – they were helping people in Jesus’ name – their listeners could hear their proclamation because it was clear that their deeds and their words were in alignment. And maybe, just maybe, in the west at least, those are the kinds of miracles we most need right now