In the Acts of the 1532 Bern Synod, the Strassburg reformer Wolfgang Capito asks why it is that the Gospels contain so many miracle stories, given that evangelical preaching proper focuses on Christ’s death and rising. He argues that in fact all these various physical healings and miracles not only demonstrate the truth of Jesus’ divine power and compassion but also show us something about the spiritual healing Christ performs in us. As I put it in my earlier reflection on this Synod, Capito teaches that Jesus arranged his acts and miracles, and the evangelists recorded them, to be images of “the inward progress of grace and the spiritual operations of Christ in the heart” for those possessing the Holy Spirit.
This hermeneutical principle, in which Jesus’ acts are true in and of themselves and also point to what Christ accomplishes in us spiritually here and now, helps us to make sense of the connection between the two readings appointed for the Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity.
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