Healings

Basic Info

Most of the artworks depicting healing stories from the Bible focus on Jesus’ healings, but occasionally artists have depicted the healing miracles effected through God’s favor on the Apostles and Old Testament prophets such as Elijah and Elisha. In the Bible, the people who are healed or resurrected in these stories are either at or near physical death or are ailing in some way that makes them outcasts from the community or socially dead. The faith of the sick people or of their loved ones (e.g., Jarius [Mark 5:21–34] and the friends who lowered the paralytic from the roof [Luke 5:17–26]) in the power of God to heal is usually a factor in the healing. Sometimes the healing is done with a physical sign, other times with a word. In the stories the healed person is usually able to live a new life in the community after the healing.

Leprosy, blindness, paralysis, deafness, an issue of blood, illnesses that cause death, and demonic possession are some of the maladies healed. Resurrection from the dead happens three times in the Old Testament in the stories of Elijah and Elisha. Jesus resurrects his friend Lazarus (Martha and Mary of Bethany’s brother) in the New Testament. Jesus’ own Resurrection is usually not treated as a healing story.

What to Look For

• The malady that keeps the ill person from being in relationship with the community
• An expression of faith (reaching out, touching, pleading, words, etc.) in the power of God
• Jesus’ response to the ailing person (expression, gesture, words, etc.)
• Evidence of the person’s new life (sight, carrying a stretcher, standing up) after the healing

Questions to Focus a General Interpretation

Does the artwork seem to focus more on the faith of the ill person or on the power of Jesus?

Does the artwork focus more on the darkness of human suffering or on the lightness and hope that are the eventual rewards of faith?

What does the artwork offer as a picture of “new life” in Jesus’ community after one is healed?

Questions to Guide a Personal Interpretation

What about the artwork attracts you? What repels you? What might that say about what is going on in your life right now?

What ails you? What aspect of your life (physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual) is in need of healing? Does this depiction of Jesus’ power / God’s power inspire faith that your malady can also be healed?

Questions to Suggest a Historical Interpretation

What was or might have been going on at the time and place of the artist to make healing miracles especially significant?

How might the healing metaphor reflect the power dynamic between Church leaders and people in the artist’s time and place?

How might the artist’s framing of illness and healing relate to the medical-industrial complex that we rely on for healing in our time?

Three Reflections on Artworks Depicting Jesus Christ Healing a Blind Man