Our practice is growing, Luke. Word is spreading that Elisa and I have taken special training under Abraham of Jerusalem and we are getting patients from the surrounding villages and towns. I am no longer called "Joseph's boy," but am treated like a learned physician. But today a new healer came to town.
I know you, too, are accustomed to the wandering healers who arrive, set up a booth and sell a tonic, usually made of cheap wine and a few herbs, which they claim will cure every sort of disease. These charlatans come, stay a few days, then move on, leaving the patients still ill but now with empty pockets. However, this new healer seems different.
Elisa encountered him first. She came upon a crowd of people gathered around a man they said was healing people of afflictions for which we have no cure. A deaf person could now hear, and a lame man was on his feet and walking.
She entered the crowd and saw a man in his early thirties. His clothes were clean and neat but plain, unlike the fancy clothes that so many wandering healers wear. She watched as he went from person to person, speaking to them, touching them, looking deeply into their eyes. He did not examine them in any way nor did he give them any tonic. She did not witness any cures, but the people he touched seemed somehow changed. She hurried to the clinic to share word of this new healer in town.
"Abraham told us to be on the lookout for new methods of treatment," she said. "This man seems to have something that we do not have. Come with me. Let us learn more."
I know that Elisa is not easily fooled, so I decided to join her. We finished the work with our patients and went to find the new healer.
By the time we arrived the crowd had settled at the man's feet. He was sitting and speaking to those gathered, like the wise men do in the Temple. He was not speaking of healing but of performing good deeds, caring for those who are poor or in need.
He had a kind expression and a pleasant smile. His hair was neatly groomed, parted in the middle and braided in the back of his head in the Galilean manner. And yet he was a little taller than most Galileans. His muscles were pronounced, as if he had done heavy work. With the scars on his hands I would place him as a carpenter by trade.
Luke, I cannot find the words in Greek to explain, but just looking at him, listening to him, gave me a feeling of confidence and trust. Whenever someone came close to the man and begged to be healed, he would talk to them quietly but intently. He did not ask questions as we do in trying to learn the history of an illness. He did touch them on the arm or shoulder. Then he would say something astonishing. "Your sins are forgiven. Go and sin no more."
Luke, his words clearly had an effect on each of the petitioners. The distress lifted from their eyes and a peaceful look came over their faces. They kissed his hand and began to praise God for sending this healer. Elisa whispered to me, "I do not know this man, yet I feel I have seen him before."
"As do I. But I cannot recall where we would have met."
The crowd grew larger as word spread of the cures. But this stranger, this healer in plain clothes, somehow slipped away. Those who had gathered gradually left, still talking of what they had seen. We went to examine some of those he had touched.
"Look, there is the man with the withered leg," Elisa said. "My father treated him with the paralytic disease when we were both children. Now he walks normally with both legs."
"There is the woman who has been crippled in her back all of her life," I added. "She is walking upright and straight."
As we examined others, we found every case was the same. There was simply no explanation for these cures within our knowledge of medicine.
