Miracles in John's Gospel

Saving the Best for Last (Luke 2:1-11)



This first recorded miracle of Jesus at the marriage in Cana certainly dispels any characterization of him as a puritanical killjoy.  C.S. Lewis in his book Miracles points to this event as an example of Jesus' miracles exhibiting the same modus operandi as God does in the process of nature transforming water into grape juice into wine, but carried out in an accelerated manner.

Troubling the Water (John 5:1-9)

Jesus healed a man who had been trying for a long time to get well by following a superstition involving a pool with five porticoes near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem. Archeologists have found the remains of a pool with that description in that location with a 2nd Century AD healing sanctuary.

Every Little Bit Helps (Luke 6:1-14)



Jesus' feeding of the multitudes is one of the hardest miracles for modern man to believe; however, it is his best attested miracle, being the only one found in all four Gospel accounts. The multiplication of the bread and fishes is another example of Jesus doing what occurs in nature, but in a much shorter time scale.

Malchus (John 18:1-11)

During Jesus' arrest, Peter cuts off the ear of the high priest's slave, named Malchus. Only John's account gives the participants' names, and Luke's parallel account adds the fact that Jesus subsequently healed the slave.  You may recognize the artist behind the door decoration in the picture above, a not-so-subtle reminder of another famous person whose ear was severed.

Thornton Wilder has written a wonderful playlet entitled Now the Servant's Name was Malchus in which Malchus is in heaven complaining to "Our Lord" that every time someone reads the account of the arrest he feels ridiculous. He therefore asks that he be erased from the biblical account. Jesus replies that many people reading the account feel that he himself is ridiculous since his promises were so vast yet he died like any other man. He concludes, "Malchus, will you stay and be ridiculous with me?"