Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

When the two days were over, he went from that place to Galilee (for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honour in the prophet’s own country). When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival. Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’ The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household. Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

The prophetic voice we hear is Isaiah who prophesied after the return from the Babylonian exile. What they found when they returned to Jerusalem was depressing. The city was in ruins and the task of rebuilding seemed impossible, given the scale of what was required and the meagreness of their resources.

In such a situation, the prophet offers high vision for low morale, speaking for the God who urges the people to undertake the sacred task of rebuilding, no matter how impossible it seems. The rebuilding will be God’s work. “Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating”, says God through the prophet, “for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight” (Isaiah 65:18).

So too the son of the royal official seems a lost cause. But for Jesus there is no such thing. All he does is speak a word from afar. He doesn’t even go to the house. Hearing the word of Jesus and seeing its power, the royal official and all his household come to faith. They make their own the vision of new possibility that Jesus offers. Their despair turns not only to hope but to praise of the God who does what we cannot do, who can even turn death to life.