The healer healed

Now when Jesus heard [John had been killed by Herod], he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. (Matthew 14:13-14)

It is the little things that move my love for Jesus, little things that reveal a human heart like my own, and yet so very unlike me.

Learning of John’s execution, he retreats, wanting to be alone to feel what he feels and make some sense of it, praying, too, communing with the Great Love he called the Father.

But there is no quiet retreat, no space free of human want and need. The aching hearts of those who wanted to touch and feel the mystery of what was in him drew the needy and the hurting and the curious wherever he went.

The scene is not difficult to imagine: the people keeping an eye on the water to see where the boat is going, the boat grinding in the shallows as it is guided to shore, Jesus stepping out and pausing, his eyes scanning the crowd, sensing the ache of hearts more needy than his own.

He walks among them, and here, too, imagination takes over. It is easy to see him walking slowly among the crowd and reaching out to touch one then another, easy to imagine a heartsick mother holding up a child to be touched and blessed, hoping for healing.

Imagining him walking among the crowd transports me to a long-ago day in southern Ethiopia, a thatch village racked by famine and AIDS. Naked children, many without parents, crowded around my every step as I took notes and shot photos to document their plight.

I wanted to pick up every one of them and hold them in my arms. I wanted to feel the life in them and they to feel the life and love in me, even though there was little to nothing I could do for them.

If my heart, so cramped and small, can feel so much, surely there is no doubt Jesus felt the need and pain and unfulfilled hopes for life that called out to him as he walked among the crowd that scrambled to be near him. Otherwise, why would they have come to him? Why bother, unless they believed the compassion in his eyes held the promise of healing?

But I also wonder if they healed Jesus’ sorrow. I wonder if the currents of need and hope and love, flowing between his heart and theirs, was a river of grace washing over him as he gave his heart to them and they to him, all of them carried in the great tide of Love flowing from the heart of the Father.

Amid the sadness, confusion and threat raised by John’s execution, perhaps Jesus found what his heart needed not in solitude, but in the current of divine love that flows when we open our hearts to each other.

Jesus never looks more divine than when we see the depth of his humanity.

David L. Miller