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Praying about Jesus’s miracles: Crumbs are an abundant feast

Lynne Baab • Tuesday May 7 2024

One of my favorite prayers from my childhood evokes crumbs. I feel sure Thomas Cramner (1489-1556), writer of The Book of Common Prayer, was thinking about Jesus’s healing of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter when he wrote the prayer. I’ll start by describing the prayer because I knew it long before I learned about the story in Mark 7:24-30 and Matthew 15:21-28.

In my childhood, we were in church every Sunday, even though we prayed only at dinner and bedtime, and my parents never mentioned God in conversations. Our churches were Episcopalian in the many places we lived in the U.S., and Anglican...

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Praying about Jesus’s miracles: Let’s find someone to blame!

Lynne Baab • Wednesday May 1 2024

Human brains love dichotomies. If this thing is true, then this other thing is wrong or a lie. Human beings also love to assign blame. Something inside us longs to believe that the universe is ordered and logical. Therefore, when things go wrong, someone or something must be at fault.

In John 9, the human love for dichotomies and blame is on full display. Jesus and his disciples have just left the Temple because some of the Jewish leaders started throwing stones at Jesus.

“As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this...

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Praying about Jesus’s miracles: Jesus heals a blind man twice

Lynne Baab • Thursday April 25 2024

When I first encountered the story of Jesus healing a man twice at Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26), it seemed crazy. I was 20, I’d been a committed Christian for a year, and I felt that things related to faith should be clear and straightforward. Why would Jesus have to heal a blind man twice? If he was there at creation (John 1:3), he surely knows how eyes work. If he sustains the creation and all things hold together in him (Colossians 1:17), he surely knows how to heal eyes the first time.

This is the story where Jesus puts saliva on the man’s...

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Praying about Jesus’s miracles: Jesus heals a blind man

Lynne Baab • Wednesday April 17 2024

Early in his ministry, Jesus reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue on the Sabbath. After he rolls up the scroll and sits back down, he says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). One component of the prophecy in Isaiah is “recovery of sight to the blind” (Luke 4:18). In his ministry, as recounted in all four gospels, Jesus heals a good number of people who are physically blind.

Jesus often juxtaposes physical healing of blindness with direct or indirect statements about spiritual blindness. Jesus’ concern with spiritual blindness is a strong call...

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