14. The Gentile Healings
Three of the gospels tell how Jesus spoke in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth, but was rejected by the people there. It is clear that the message Jesus took to these people was not welcomed by the Nazarenes, but his response to their rejection particularly enraged them. Luke tells us that as a result of the rejection by his own neighbors, Jesus said:
"Truly I tell you … no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian" (Luke 4: 24-27). When they heard this, the Nazarenes' passive rejection turned to active rage, and they attempted to kill Jesus because he had said that God had chosen to send his servant Elijah to a widow in Sidon (a non-Jewish area) and had Elisha heal Naaman (another non Jewish person) over people of Judah with the same problems.
It is easy to continue reading the gospel accounts without noticing the striking parallels between the examples Jesus gave and two of his own miracles in clearly similar circumstances. First, Matthew 15 and Mark 7 tell how Jesus travelled to the Phoenician area of Tyre and Sidon and there healed the daughter of a Syrophoenician woman, just as Elijah had travelled to Phoenicia and raised up the son of a widow in the city of Sidon (1 Kings 17). In Luke 7 and Matthew 8, we find that Jesus also healed the servant of the Roman centurion at Capernaum. There it is the servant of the military leader who is healed rather than the military leader himself (as was the case in Elisha's healing of Naaman the Syrian general – 2 Kings 5), but the parallels between the stories are clear.
Naaman was an officer of Israel's enemy Syria just as the centurion was an officer of Judea's enemy Rome – both were not only Gentiles, but also of the same hated profession. Both widows were Gentiles of Phoenicia – regarded by the Jews as religiously and socially inferior in terms of both gender and ethnicity. There are further similarities: Naaman was a highly valued servant of the King of Syria who is told he need not go all the way to the prophet's house. In the centurion's case, the servant is said to be highly valued by his master, and the centurion sends word that Jesus need not go all the way to his house. Both the individuals involved in these two healings by Jesus – the only clearly Gentile individuals recorded as being healed by him – are directly parallel to the Old Testament examples he had cited earlier in Nazareth. Where Faith Grows But there is also a difference in the stories. In the Old Testament examples, both the widow of Sidon and Naaman the Syrian general showed an initial lack of faith – though they did make full expressions of belief after they were healed. In the case of the Syrophoenician woman and the Roman centurion helped by Christ, Jesus commented specifically on the great faith these two individuals already had. While the Old Testament examples show God's concern for even despised individuals who were not of his people, the New Testament examples show not only Christ's concern for these same types of rejected individuals, but also their notable faith.
If the people of Nazareth were offended at Jesus' stress on the faith of the Gentiles helped by Elijah and Elisha, they would doubtless have been even more incensed at Jesus praising the Gentiles he himself helped as having greater faith than the Jews of that place and time (Luke 7:9). And there is perhaps a lesson for all of us in these parallel miracles. We understand that it was difficult for the ancient Jews to accept the idea that the Gentiles might actually have faith in God, but do we carry a similar bias in our own minds against those of other denominations or faith groups? Perhaps we should remember that Jesus chose to teach a lesson by replicating two great miracles of the Hebrew Scriptures – by helping Gentiles whose faith was greater than many of those who were sure they were of the "true" faith. We must always remember that God honors trust in him wherever he finds it, and perhaps that is a lesson for us, too.