(Back) The Walking on the Waters Experience Popular Messianic Expectations (Next)
This is a series of lectures given by Mr. Edward Rabel, member of the faculty of S.M.R.S.
Winter semester 1976 - 2nd. Yr. Class. Part of Lecture 19 given on February 22, 1976
14:34And when they had crossed over, they came to the land, unto Gennesaret. 14:35And when the men of that place knew him, they sent into all that region round about, and brought unto him all that were sick, 14:36and they besought him that they might only touch the border of his garment: and as many as touched were made whole.
Notice that we have here the full crew, Jesus and the twelve.This passage is beautiful; it is too bad that it appears in a place in the Gospels where it is so easily overlooked. You could read that and not even realize you read it, but here at least in our Harmony it is set apart.
I once heard a Unity teacher say that the only time anybody was healed by touching Jesus’ garment was in the healing of the woman, but here we can see it again. What a contrast this is to that sad state of affairs in his home town where he was not able to do much healing because of their unbelief and you see, it was a mass-type of unbelief. Probably many of those individuals in his home town did not themselves cook up their own unbelief just out of sheer willfulness. It is quite sensible to say that all they did was to fail to be individuals; they fail to utilize their own individuality and did what mobs so often do. They simply merged into the prevailing consciousness, and if the prevailing consciousness was unbelief, many of them subconsciously or unconsciously joined them, not wanting to be different, and so missed out on a healing. But you see the different, the very different back door here? These people tune into a prevailing consciousness of belief, "And besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole." The question often comes up folks, you might want to give this some room in your mind.
Over the years a number of students have asked,"well, since Jesus had this power and didn't have any problem about using it, why didn't He do more going around seeking people and just touching them all over the place, it seems that in almost all cases it was a matter of whether they came to him and when he did seek out people or individuals to heal, it was always at somebody's request, but he had the power, why did He have to wait for requests? Why did He depend on them making the first movement? I leave this to your own understanding.
Text of the original transcript of the last paragraph of page 115 through the first paragraph of page 116.
Transcribed by Margaret Garvin on 03-30-2014
