Ep. 20: One evening at Capernaum
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MATTHEW 8:14-17, MARK 1:21-34, LUKE 4:33-41
It was the first Sabbath after his return from Jerusalem and the calling of his disciples. He was now being watched from afar. It seems that the authorities of Jerusalem had sent people to track his steps in Galilee. But all seemed calm and undisturbed. It is morning and Jesus goes to the synagogue at Capernaum. He goes to teach there and among the hearers was someone in deep trouble.
Jewish ideas at that time of demonic activity were vague as to the means proposed for their removal. These may be broadly classified as; magical means for the prevention of such influences (such as the avoidance of certain places, times, numbers, or circumstances, amulets etc.) or magical means for the cure of diseases and direct exorcism (either by certain outward means or else by formulae of incantation). While the Gospel accounts aren’t clear as to the views of Jesus or of the Gospel writers regarding the exact character of the phenomenon, they do give details as to how the demonised were set free. This was always the same. It consisted neither in magical means nor formulae of exorcism, but always in the Word of Power which Jesus spoke, or entrusted to his disciples and which the demons always obeyed.
In the synagogue at Capernaum on that Sabbath morning, what Jesus had spoken produced an immediate effect on the demonised, though one which would have surprised all. The very presence of the Christ meant the destruction of this work of the Devil. The two couldn’t live together! One stronger than the demon had entered the building. It was the Holy One of God, in whose presence the powers of destruction cannot be silent, but must speak and accept their ineffectiveness and ultimate doom. There was no battle, victory was secured by virtue of who Jesus was. He had come not only to destroy the works of the Devil but to set the prisoners free.
He gagged the confessions of the demon. It was not by such voices that he would have his Messiahship ever proclaimed! Such testimony was both unfitting and dangerous. Jesus was perhaps the only person in history to control his own narrative! Those who witnessed this turned to their neighbour and asked, ‘What is this? A new doctrine with authority! And he commands the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’
From the synagogue, we follow him and his disciples to Peter’s home, to his mother-in-law, prostrate with a burning fever. The Talmud gives this disease the name Eshatha Tsemirta and prescribes for it a magical remedy involving an iron knife and a thornbush! Bending over the sufferer, Jesus ‘rebuked the fever,’ as he had done to the demon earlier, then lifting her by the hand, she rose up. Healed, to ‘minister’ to them, as the first Deaconess in Church history! And what a Sabbath meal it must have been, after that scene in the synagogue and after that healing in the house, when Jesus was the guest, they who had witnessed it all sat and ate together.
It was evening. The sun was setting and the Sabbath was over. All that day word had spread about what had been done in the synagogue. It had also been whispered what had taken place in the house of their neighbour, Simon. One conviction had been clear to them all, that he spoke with authority; with authority and power he commanded even the unclean spirits and they obeyed. No scene is more characteristic of the Christ than that on this autumn evening at Capernaum. Let Edersheim explain:
‘On that evening no one in Capernaum thought of business, pleasure or rest. There must have been many homes of sorrow, care and sickness there and in the populous neighbourhood around. To them, to all, had the door of hope now been opened. Truly, a new Sun had risen on them, with healing in his wings. No disease too desperate, when even the demons accepted the authority of his rebuke. From all parts, they bring them; mothers, widows, wives, fathers, children, husbands. The whole city throngs, a hushed, solemnised, overawed multitude, expectant, waiting at the door of Simon’s dwelling. There they laid them, along the street up to the marketplace, on their beds or brought them, with pleas and hopes. What a symbol of this world’s misery, need, and hope; what a symbol, also, of what the Christ really is as the great consoler! Never, surely, was he more truly the Christ than when, in the stillness of that evening, under the starlit sky. He went through that suffering throng, laying his hands in the blessing of healing on every one of them and casting out many devils.’
So ended that Sabbath in Capernaum, a Sabbath of healing, joy and true rest (though perhaps not for Jesus himself!) But far and wide, into every place of the country around, throughout all the region of Galilee, spread the tidings and with them the fame of him whom demons must obey, though they dare not pronounce him the Son of God. And on men’s ears fell his name with the sweet softness of infinite promise, ‘like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth.’
This is an extract from the book, Jesus : Life and Times, available for £10 here (Finalist for Academic Book of the year at 2023 CRT awards)