A Month of Miracles Part 11 - Exorcism of a Demon Possessed Man

Title: Untitled (Exorcism of a Demon Possessed Man)
Artist: David Leiberg
Medium: Digital
Size: 1135 x 1600 pixels
Date: 2010
Location: n/a

Matthew 9:32-38 - Now as they were going away, behold, they brought to him a demon-possessed man who was unable to speak. And after the demon had been expelled, the one who had been mute spoke, and the crowds were astonished, saying, “This has never been seen before in Israel!” But the Pharisees began to say, “By the ruler of demons he expels the demons!”

Jesus has demonstrated the ability to cure both natural ailments and demonically induced ailments, even though we may not always be able to discern the difference apart from divine guidance. But Jesus' religious contemporaries were so sure they were right, and that He was wrong, they preferred to explain His works as emanating from a source other than God. Jesus himself, however, countered this argument best when He said in Luke 11:18: “If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand?”

David Leiberg is a contemporary artist and illustrator who studied for his Masters of Fine Arts/Illustration at the Academy of Art University. Working in both digital and traditional media, more of his compelling work can be viewed at http://leibergart.com/

A Month of Miracles Part 10 - Jesus Heals Two Blind Men

Title: The Healing of the Blind Men
Artist: Ilyās Bāsim Khūrī Bazzī Rāhib
Medium: Illuminated manuscript
Size: 11 x 16 cm   
Date: 1684
Location: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Matthew 9:27-31 - As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They replied, “Yes, Lord.” Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”; and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.” But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region.

The blind men's initial act of faith is approaching Jesus with a plea for mercy, recognizing that they are dependent on his kindness rather than on any merit of their own. Their initial faith also includes recognition of Jesus' identity. Here two blind beggars confess Jesus' messianic identity (Son of David) before Peter does! Yet despite their initial acts of faith, Jesus forces them to clarify that they acknowledge his ability to heal this otherwise irreversible disability. Jesus refuses to heal without faith; he is not a magician, but one who seeks to glorify his Father.

This illuminated and illustrated Arabic manuscript of the Gospels by Matthew (Mattá), Mark (Marquṣ), Luke (Lūqā), and John (Yūḥannā) was copied in Egypt by Ilyās Bāsim Khūrī Bazzī Rāhib, who was most likely a Coptic monk, in 1684. The text is written in naskh in black ink with rubrics in red. The decoration is comprised of illuminated headpieces, numerous floral paintings, and approximately fifty illustrations. It is bound together in brown goatskin with blind-tooled central oval medallion, pendants, and corner pieces contemporary with the manuscript.

A Month of Miracles Part 9 - Christ and the Woman with the Issue of Blood

Title: Christ and the Woman with the Issue of Blood
Artist: Paolo Veronese
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: tbd.
Date: c. 1565-70
Location: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Luke 8:42-56 […] As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. “Who touched me?” Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.” But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.” Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

This woman has been hemorrhaging for years, which means she has been in a perpetual state of uncleanliness according to Jewish law, shut out from religious life, a social outcast. In despair over her loneliness and condition, she hopes that an underground approach, a surreptitious touching of Jesus, will change her fate. This is why she came up behind him. Jesus turns to the crowd and asks, "Who touched me?" Amazed at the question, Peter points out that many are crowded around Jesus. It is as if a current celebrity or political leader turned to a herd of reporters upon exiting a building and asked, "Who just took my picture?" For the woman there is no sense in trying to hide from Jesus now. She comes forward to give her public testimony of how she has been healed. Despite the embarrassment of her past condition and the timidity of her approach to Jesus, she declares what Jesus has done for her. In response Jesus issues a simple commendation: "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace." He makes her faith an example, timid as it was. The one with faith does not need to fear approaching Jesus and his authority. He is accessible and available.

Paolo Veronese (1528 –April 1588) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice. He adopted the name Paolo Cagliari or Paolo Caliari, and became known as "Veronese" from his birthplace in Verona. Veronese is known as a supreme colorist, and for his illusionistic decorations in both fresco and oil. His most famous works are elaborate narrative cycles, executed in a dramatic and colorful Mannerist style, full of majestic architectural settings and glittering pageantry. His large paintings of biblical feasts executed for the refectories of monasteries in Venice and Verona are especially notable

A Month of Miracles Part 8 - Healing of Two Demon Possessed Men

Title: The Healing of Two Demon Possessed Men
Artist: Brian J. Turner
Medium: Acrylic on board      
Size: 10.2 x 7.6 cm 
Date: 2007
Location: Private collection

Matthew 8:28-34 - When He had come to the other side, to the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met Him as they came out of the tombs. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. Suddenly they shouted, “What do You have to do with us, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?” Now a long way off from them, a large herd of pigs was feeding. “If You drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” the demons begged Him. “Go!” He told them. So when they had come out, they entered the pigs. And suddenly the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the water. Then the men who tended them fled. They went into the city and reported everything—especially what had happened to those who were demon-possessed. At that, the whole town went out to meet Jesus. When they saw Him, they begged Him to leave their region.

The demons have an apparently legitimate complaint; it is not yet “the time,” - the Day of Judgment. But Jesus is present and is already breaking the powers of darkness. Jesus permitting the demons to enter the pigs is, again, perhaps because the true Day of Judgment had not yet arrived.

 

Brian J. Turner is a contemporary English painter, whose stated ambition is to paint his way through the Bible. Turner completed a one year Foundation course in Fine Art at Hertfordshire College of Art & Design in 1974, before moving to Exeter to undertake his B.A.(Hons) Fine Art Degree, graduating in 1978. On his website his current project is planned to unfold over the next twenty years. Viewers who browse this site are invited to spend time with the paintings - variously narrative and abstract - as they appear online, and as one route to spiritual growth and understanding faith

A Month of Miracles Part 7 - Man With the Withered Hand

Title: The Man with the Withered Hand
Artist: James Tissot
Medium: Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper
Size: 21.9 x 16 cm
Date: c. 1890
Location: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York.

Mark 3:1-5 - Jesus entered again into a synagogue and a man with a withered hand was there. And they were watching him carefully to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath, so they could accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Get up and step forward.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?” But they remained silent. And after looking around at them in anger, grieved at the hardness of their heart, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched out his hand and it was restored.

When Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath, he flouts rules against work and further upsets the devout. Although Jewish law permitted the saving of lives on the holy day, Jesus defies the rigid rules of the Sabbath by extending his help to a man afflicted, but not threatened with death.

James Jacques Joseph Tissot (October 1836 – August 1902) was a French painter. After the death of his longtime companion Kathleen Newton in 1882, Tissot spent some time in Palestine. He began work on drawings of the life of Christ, which debuted In Paris in 1896. With the same meticulous attention to detail that he had applied to painting society, he strove for historical authenticity in his precisely rendered watercolors of the life of Christ. They were subsequently published by the firm of Lemercier in Paris, who paid Tissot 1,100,000 francs.

A Month of Miracles Part 6 - Healing the Paralyzed Man

Title: They Lowered the Paralyzed Man
Artist: Sadao Watanabe
Medium: Color Stencil
Size: 68.6 x 58.4 cm
Date: 1973
Location: Various; self-published, edition of 70.

Mark 2: 1-12 - A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves: “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

The man had come for physical healing, but Jesus speaks about the more profound illness of sin, of which physical illness generally was thought to be a consequence; and about the radical healing of forgiveness, of which this particular physical healing was a sign. Jesus claims for Himself the power to forgive sins, which in all the Bible can be attributed only to God (Ex. 34:7; Is. 1:18). The teachers of the law immediately accuse Jesus of “blaspheming”, a proper conclusion if He were a mere man.

Sadao Watanabe (1913 – 1996) was a Japanese printmaker famous for his biblical prints rendered in the mingei (folk art) tradition of Japan. He was born in Tokyo, and the young Watababe worked in dyers’ shops, sketching patterns and dyeing clothes. In 1937, he saw an exhibition of Serizawa Keisuke’s (1895–1984) work, and the event sowed the seeds of Watanabe’s artistic endeavor. Few years later, Watanabe attended a study group in which Serizawa taught his katazome technique of stencilling and dyeing, which originated in Okinawa. By 1958, Watanabe received first prize at the Modern Japanese Print Exhibition held in New York City for The Bronze Serpent showing Moses and the people of Israel.

A Month of Miracles Part 5 - Christ and the Centurion

Title: Christ and the Centurion
Artist: Paolo Veronese
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 38 x 69.5 cm
Date: 16th century
Location: Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Matthew 8:5-13 - When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.” Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?” The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment.

The Gentile mission was at most peripheral to Jesus' earthly ministry: he did not actively seek out Gentiles for ministry. Therefore, the emphatic Greek "I" in 8:7 would place the emphasis in Jesus' question as: "Shall I come and heal him?" Most Palestinian Jews, after all, considered entering Gentile homes questionable: an outsider who would entreat his favor must first acknowledge the privilege of Israel, whom other peoples had oppressed or disregarded. Such initial rejection was a not uncommon ploy for demanding greater commitment, and rather than protesting, the centurion acknowledges his questionable merit before Jesus, adopting the appropriate role of a suppliant totally dependent on a patron's benefaction.

Paolo Veronese (1528 – April 1588) was an Italian painter and draughtsman who, along with Titian and Tintoretto, was one of the greatest painters of the late Renaissance in Venice. He adopted the name Paolo Cagliari or Paolo Caliari, and became known as "Veronese" from his birthplace in Verona. He is known as a supreme colorist and for his illusionistic decorations in both fresco and oil. His large paintings of biblical feasts executed for the refectories of monasteries in Venice and Verona are especially celebrated