The story of Jesus' healing concerns a Roman centurion's slave (Luke 7:1-10)
1. The centurion was obviously on good terms with the Jewish elders because they are willing to go ask Jesus to heal the centurion's slave.
2. the centurion is clearly an outsider.
3. The centurion also seems to understand who Christ is, or at least the power Christ has, since he sends word that he knows that Jesus does not need to come to see the slave in person -- Jesus could just command the salve to be healed and the slave would be healed.
4. this all moves from conjecture and supposition when Jesus heals the slave.
5. Apparently, Jesus does that this power, and Jesus is willing to share that power with an outsider, or really the slave of an outsider.
The next story has Jesus healing the widow's son (Luke 7: 11-17)
1. Jesus' concern for a widow equates to looking after the powerless segment in society.
2. Notice that "fear seized" all of them (Luke 7:16). Fear seems to be a fairly common response to encountering God in Luke's Gospel (wait until we arrive at the birth narrative when someone is afraid in every scene!).
3. this story parallels the story of Elijah raising with widow's son (1 Kings 17: 10, 17-24) and Elijah raising the Shunammite's son (2 Kings 4: 18-37). Remember that Jesus references these healings when he preaches in Nazareth and the people get angry with him. By having this story appear twice, we can assume that Luke thinks that they are important stories to understanding who Jesus was.
4. This story also reveals a characteristic of Luke the storyteller: in three healing stories that are paralleled in Mark and Luke, Luke adds the note that the child being healed was an "only" child; Mark does not (the other two stories are found in Luke 8:42 and Luke 9:38).
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