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Spitting on someone has
never been considered acceptable in any culture, the height of insult. Yet there really was the common belief that
spittle contained the mysterious essence of a human being, so it was quite
useful for magic and for healing.
Jewish custom made frequent use of spit for therapeutic purposes, so
Jesus was not inventing anything. Some
believe Jesus was mimicking magical practices in his Gospel healings. Magic is basically using the right
technique to make something unnatural happen.
Jesus wasn’t using magic, but the natural power of God. Three times Jesus uses
saliva to heal, in different ways on different parts of the body. Today in Mark 7:33, he puts saliva on his
fingers and touches the dumb man’s tongue; Mark 8:23, he spits on the eyes of
a blind man; and John 9:6, he concocts that poultice of earth moistened by
saliva and places them on the eyes of another blind man. In each case, God worked. We have moved beyond
saliva as a cure-all, so the good reader of the Bible tries to imagine what
is the equivalent of Jesus’ methods today?
What Jesus was doing was physically showing the blind, deaf and dumb
persons that he was doing something tangible for them. When we lay on hands upon a youth being
confirmed, a baby being baptized, a person being ordained into the ministry,
our hands really don’t do a thing, for it is God who is doing. Somehow, hands on one’s head help you to
“feel” God. |
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