Jesus's Power of Touch

Everything Jesus touches is made whole. The woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years was healed by so much as taking hold of the “hem of His garment” (Mark 5:28). When Jesus traveled through the land of Gennesaret, the people of the village “brought to Him all who were sick, and begged Him that they mightonly touch the hem of His garment,” and as many as had grabbed hold of it were completely healed (Matthew 14:34-36).

Jesus had felt in His body that “power had gone out of Him” (Mark 5:30); even the fringes of His robes were energized by the healing power of the Holy Spirit. Everything that touched Jesus became powered by the divinity that was embodied in Him. Everyone who knew of Jesus recognized that power, so “little children were brought to Him that He might put His hands on them and pray” and Jesus blessed the little children by laying His hands on them (Matthew 19:13-15). Jesus’s power was universal loving-kindness – that that no matter where it goes it heals, it makes whole, and blesses it.

Jesus had bestowed that power to His disciples before He ascended: He breathed His life-giving breath on them, and that was the transmission of the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). The bed-ridden were made well when the shadow fell on them as Peter was passing by (Acts 5:15). Jesus had even blessed the apostle Paul and had given him of His power to work miracles: “Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them” (Acts 19:11-12).

None of these objects were “holy relics” per se. These were ordinary, mundane, everyday objects that were energized because of the power and love that had exuded from Jesus. Jesus’s power was so real, that it manifested itself through His clothes; His love was so powerful, that it spread to everything that came into so much as physical contact with Him. That power spread from person to person, from object to object because that powerful energy resonated within Jesus, and flowed out of Him in a very real way. It was the power of the Christ that was real and had resided around Jesus in a very concrete way.

Early Christian Experiences of the Trinity

        We know how profoundly mysterious the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is. The wisdom behind God’s triune nature is so sublime that it defies our common patterns of thinking. Our knowledge of the Trinity must be beyond intellectual and must go above any verbalization. The early Christians, though not possessing of the most eloquent philosophers, were nonetheless recipients of that revelation.

        So, the doctrine of the Trinity is based on revelation and experience. I will set forth the main three: experiences of the Father, that of the Son and that of the Holy Spirit: 

  

           1) Father: when Jesus took Peter, James and John up on the mountain by themselves to pray, and after Jesus was transfigured, the disciples were enveloped in the white cloud; the disciples had experienced God’s presence there in the “pillar of cloud” as in Exodus, within which they heard His voice: “This is My beloved Son. Hear ye Him” (Luke 9:35). As the children of Israel became fearful of God’s presence on Mount Sinai, so the disciples “were fearful as they entered the cloud” (Luke 9:34). 

         2) Son: As Paul was on his way to Damascus with letters from the chief priests to arrest Christians there. As he neared the city, “suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And He said, “Who are You, Lord?” Then the Lord said, “I am Jesus, who you are persecuting…” (Acts 9:4-5). Paul had seen the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus as had the earlier disciples: “and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once…” (1^st Corinthians 15:5-6). Jesus’s presence was very real indeed and that was the early Christian experience of the second person of the Trinity. 

3)  Holy Spirit: When the disciples were in the small house church in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, they suddenly experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit: “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting…And they were filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:2-4).

So, we see from these three main events how the Trinity was fully manifest in the lives of the early Christians. It was a reality that was seen, heard, felt, and handled (cf. 1^st John 1:1). This is how the apostles were energized and strengthened. They did not have to believe in it as some theological proposition – they have seen God in His Triune presence themselves by their own experience.

Deserted Place

There are many cryptic passages in the gospels concerning Jesus’s ministry. We read about the way Jesus transitioned from one village to the next, or the way He would travel by or through the Sea of Galilee, and the way He would just appear and disappear at will; and when He was found, He was always found to be by Himself in some deserted place.

Mysterious passages abound. Jesus was a rather solitary man. He came from Nazareth to Jordan to be baptized alone. He went into the synagogues of Capernaum almost as a stranger to preach, no one being aware of His origins. He walked by the seashore by himself and suddenly call fishermen as His disciples.

Even after He had amassed an immense following, mustered a group of some seventy disciples, and the crowds from all the adjoining countries would press on Him on all sides, Jesus would withdraw in a “solitary place” (Luke 4:42) by himself, no doubt, to pray and to contemplate.

When a man tells him, “I’ll follow you wherever you go,” Jesus retorts, “foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Matthew 8:20). Jesus was the prototype and the paragon to those who would follow Him after Him through faith.

The book of Psalm, I think, sets the precedence for Jesus and His disciples’ withdrawal from the crowd, and hence from the world they had been a part of: “They wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them” (Psalm 107:4-5). Jesus’s disciples, both His contemporary and future followers, are “called out,” and “elected” out of this world as God’s special people, the “resident aliens and pilgrims.” Jesus was the prototype.

When the crowd hemmed Jesus in on every side, “He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed” (Luke 5:16); and not just for the sake of avoiding the crowds would Jesus withdraw, but He even had set times for himself: “Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place; and there He prayed” (Mark 1:35). Devoting Himself to His Father was His regular custom, and it involved a form of “self-isolation.”

When Jesus could no longer walk about through the streets of the cities or of towns, He would often go “outside in deserted places” (Mark 1:45). When the disciples had told Jesus of the death and the secret burial of John the Baptist, “He departed from there by boat to a deserted place by Himself” (Matthew 14:13). Jesus even had to use a sail boat to get to His solitary space beyond the shore somewhere.

The Spirit that was in Jesus in His morning meditations was the same Spirit that had influenced David to sing: “My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; In the morning I will direct it to You, and I will look up” (Psalm 5:3). Such is the devotion and Spirit-filled life of God’s chosen people.

And when things got more hectic, Jesus would urge His close followers to, "”Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while"”…So they departed to a deserted place in the boat by themselves” (Mark 6:31-32). Despite the crowds, Jesus withdrew with His disciples “to the Sea” (Mark 3:7). Getting away from all the hustle and bustle, Jesus, sometimes along with His disciples, would seek a place to focus solely on God.

Jesus was also in the habit of going away to a lonely place after the conclusion of His discourse: “These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them” (John 12:36). Sometimes, Jesus would take His disciples for a very private occasion: at the Mount of transfiguration to witness His glorious transfigurement, at the Mount of Olives when asked about the end of the world, at a mountain where He picked out His twelve, and on many more occasions: “Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves” (Matthew 17:1).

The mountain was no doubt the main locus of Jesus’s private meditations and of His escape from the frenzied mobs – whether for the sake of being healed by Him or for stoning Him. It was on the mountain where Jesus was tempted by Satan; it was on a mountain where He fed the crowd of five thousand; it was on the mountain where He delivered the great Sermon on the Mount; it was on the mountain where He was also crucified.

The common gospel phrase “deserted place,” “solitary place,” or a “lone place” is the English rendition of the original Greek “heremos topos” which means just that, deserted/solitary/lone. On its own, the first word literally means, “wilderness,” which was also the scene of Jesus’s flight into Egypt and the scene of His wilderness temptation.

To get closer to God, one must approach God within one’s solitary place; to pray to God, one must “shut the door of the room and pray in secret” (Matthew 6:6). That oneness with God is a solitary devotion; and such a devotion is a religious path; and such a path is the way of Jesus; and the Way of Jesus is faith.

This does not, however, mean that we must so completely drop out of the society that we become sort of like monks – though monkish lifestyle is the kind advocated by Jesus (Matthew 16:24). We do not want to go to the extreme of degenerating into anti-social individuals. Between His practices of wilderness withdrawal, Jesus would often interact with His people, eating in their homes.

When the world becomes mad, we know when to just step back and withdraw. When our lives become manic and chaotic, we know when to keep still and meditate alone with God: “commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still” (Psalm 4:4), and “be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).