Send word

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

SEND WORD

Matt 14:34-36

34 When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret. 35 And when the men of that place recognized Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to him 36 and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed.

NIV

This seems sort of a short record of a situation which must have been a striking moment in the time of the people of Gennesaret. We are told that when Jesus and his disciples landed some men recognized him. We are not told as to how they recognized him other then they must have been around him before, seen him heal, hear him teach or perhaps been healed themselves. What we are not told is how different his disciples must have been. They had just witnessed him walking on the water, Peter climbing out of the boat and walking on the water, at least for a while, then both of them walking up and climbing in the boat with the storm calming at the same time. They proclaimed he is the Son of God. We wonder if their continence was any different. Although they had been following him, as he had called them to do so, they may not have understood just how divine he was, until now. He had defied the law of physics. Of course they would not know about the law of physics, but they would know their realm of reality which is not being about to walk on water. However in the realm of God all things are possible. So it may well have been a whole new group of men accompanying Jesus. Still we are told it was Jesus who was recognized by the townspeople. What they did is our lesson. They sent word to all the surrounding country. Surely they did not post it on facebook, or sent out a text message, or even called on their cell phones. They must have sent a person as a runner, or perhaps several runners to proclaim Jesus has landed on their shore. We do not know how long that took, but the result was that people brought their sick to Jesus. For the sake of the just considering the thoughts of Jesus, let us imagine this sending word took several hours. Then the time it took the people to respond and gather their sick and make the trip to the shoreline where Jesus had landed. What was he doing during all this time? Was he just standing there waiting for all the people to show up so he could minister to them? It would seem that is exactly what he did. The point of that is when we send word that Jesus is here, he is waiting, for those  to whom we send word, for them to come and be ministered to. But we must send the word he is here. How we do that would seem to be the same manner these men did. We send word, we are the runners. Someone came to us and told us Jesus was here and we came to be ministered to and in fact we were. We were healed of our sinful state and some of us received physical healings as well. So then being the runners now, being sent, by Jesus himself, to go into all the world and preach the good news, Jesus is here, that is our mission. We need to tell people Jesus is here, come and get healed. Of course today we do have Facebook, twitter, instant messaging, text messaging along with a host of other not physical, person to person, forms of communication. Yet would it not seem more appropriate to tell someone in person that Jesus is here? Sure some of those forms of communication including television, radio and even books can reach large numbers of people we cannot possibly get to on the personal one on one method. But it seems the one on one is far more personal with the other person being able to see our excitement of Jesus being here. Maybe that is why we do not use that method. Maybe we are not that excited Jesus it here. Maybe we use all those other forms merely out of a sense of duty, feeling we are fulfilling our call, as an obligation. But if we are truly excited about Jesus being here, having recognized who he is, and then we would be running to others, telling them to come meet him. Maybe we have just become too modern in our methods, or have accepted this new changing world and have forgotten the age old way of sending word. Maybe we have been harassed by Satan so much that we fear rejection of people to the word we send them. Maybe we have been suppressed enough by the world’s view of us, we just want to hide in our church, being content to learn more about our walk with Jesus, and have given up on sending word, or feel we are doing that my supporting a missionary to send word in some far off place. But there are people right in our own neighborhood, in our workplace, in our shopping places, and recreation areas that need to be told, Jesus is here. Will we send word?