Long Distance Healing – John 4:43-54

Cana in Galilee is about 24 miles from Capernaum, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  My Adventures Across the World travel site gives directions for a four-day hike called the Jesus Trail.  Part of it goes from Cana to Capernaum with a stop at a site between.  Someone has figured that walking from Cana to Capernaum would be about a day’s journey.  This figures into Jesus’ long-distance miracle for an official whose son is dying.

After these two days Jesus left there for Galilee.  (For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own homeland.)  When he arrived in Galilee all the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen what he did in Jerusalem at the feast, since they also had gone to the feast.

He came again into Cana of Galilee, where he had made the water into wine.  There was a royal official in Capernaum whose son was sick.  When he heard that Jesus was there in Galilee from Judea he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, since he was about to die.  So Jesus said to him, “If you do not see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”  The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”  Jesus responded, “Go, your son lives.”  The man believed the word Jesus spoke to him and he left.  And already, as he was going down, his servants met him and said his child lived.  The man asked at what hour he had gotten better, and they told him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.”  Because the father knew that this was the hour Jesus had told him, “Your son lives,” he himself believed in Jesus with his whole household.  This was now the second sign Jesus had performed when he came from Judea into Galilee.  (John 4:43-54)

Jesus leaves for Galilee because it is time for his home region to recognize his prophetic ministry, though as the proverb he quotes says, a prophet is often without honor in his hometown.  Jesus’ immediate reception in his homeland is positive.  And almost immediately upon arrival an official who hears he is in the region comes from Capernaum to Cana to ask Jesus to heal his son.  It is possible he was a Gentile.  If so, John has shown us Jesus ministering to a Jewish leader, then a Samaritan woman, and now a Gentile.  The gospel is for everyone.

The man’s request sparks a challenge from Jesus to the man, and to all who are listening, that faith cannot be predicated only on miracles.  Jesus’ message must be looked at as well.  But he declares the man’s son healed and the official gets evidence that it was Jesus’ word that healed him. 

This is the second miracle that John has chosen to include in his Gospel (the second one in Galilee) but others have been performed, as we have seen.  This does not seem to be the same miracle recorded in Matthew 8:5-13, but it is similar.  In that miracle, which takes place in Capernaum, not Cana, a Centurion has a servant who is sick and whom Jesus heals long-distance as he marvels at the Centurion’s faith.  As John will tell us at the end of his Gospel, Jesus did a lot of miracles that he did not record (20:30) and if all were recorded the world could not contain the books they were recorded in (21:25).

Discussion Questions

1. Have you ever had someone ask you, in essence, to heal them or someone they cared for?  What happened?
2. Why do you think the proverb is normally true that an important person is not honored in his own hometown?
3. Is Jesus saying it is not important for him to do miracles?  Why or why not?
4. Why do you think he rebukes those looking for miracles?
5. What do you think is the significance of the man’s whole household believing?
6. What is God teaching you from this passage?