Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine.
Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.
Then Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe."
The official said to him, "Sir, come down before my boy dies."
Jesus said to him, "Go, your son will live."
The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour at which he started to recover, and they said to him, "Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him."
The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he himself believed, together with his whole household.
Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.
3 comments:
A British Christian mystic said all the miracles in the fourth gospel are used as parables. Others said miracles are symbolic of spiritual growth, having more to do with unrevealed laws of nature than physical healing. I can see where a miracle about the blind seeing is easier to relate to. So my question is what could this mean other than what others might call magic. A royal official's son is healed.
The earlier marriage (of soul and spirit) in Cana contained the first miracle (water into wine) in the book of John, I think. The meaning of Capernaum is supposedly Nahum's town, which means consolation, according to an online source. Capernaum was a town of unbelievers for the most part, it said, and was eventually destroyed.
So ... a healing of some part of us, that has to do with consolation.
And the fact we seem to need signs and wonders to keep us believing, perhaps because our connection is so unsee-able.
This comment won't be very learned or anything but as I am reading this, I'm remembering how I felt when listening to it as a young person in church. It made me feel hopeful. This feeling came from my sense that this was a story about inclusive love and healing and that healing and renewal of life were not limited to those who fit nicely into any righteous designations. As a kid I thought about it like in the children's song, "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world."
that song brings back memories
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