Healing in His Wings
My favorite Christmas carol is Hark, the Herald Angels Sing. The lyrics were written in 1739 by Charles Wesley, one of the leaders of the Methodist movement in 18th century England. Wesley wrote a staggering 6,500 hymns, and this familiar carol is one of his best known, thanks to a gorgeous melody added by Felix Mendelssohn a hundred years later.
The words of this carol read like a beautiful poem, describing with utmost clarity the reason Jesus came to earth:
Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.
Immediately before this couplet is another set of lines that have always intrigued me, mainly because of their description of Jesus as “the Son of Righteousness”:
Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings, ris’n with healing in His wings.
These ethereal words come directly from a prophecy in Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, that foreshadows the coming of Jesus, the “rising sun” who “will come to us from heaven” (Luke 1:78):
But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture (Malachi 4:2).
What has intrigued me is that Jesus is described as one who has “wings.” Is this metaphorical, or is there more to the description? Oh, there’s more.
The Hebrew word for “wings” in Malachi has a broader meaning that also includes the “extremity” or “edge” of a wing or a garment, such as a cloak or a robe. Using that rendering, the line would read like this:
Light and life to all He brings, ris’n with healing at the edge of his robe.
Okay, that doesn’t really work as poetry, but stay with me. What comes to mind when you read “the edge of his robe”? If it sounds familiar, here’s why. The phrase is found in the New Testament story of the woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the story, but Mark does the best job of explaining her desperate situation and why she came to Jesus.
She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition (Mark 5:26-29).
The woman must have known the prophecy because she had enough faith to recognize Jesus as one who could heal her, and he could do so from the very edge of his robe. Is it any wonder Jesus told her the reason for her healing?
“Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering” (Mark 5:34).
No doubt the story of the woman’s healing spread throughout the region because Mark later records that people in need of healing followed Jesus wherever he went and tried to touch him as the woman did.
They begged him to let the sick touch at least the fringe of his robe, and all who touched him were healed (Mark 6:56).
This is Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness who stood up in the synagogue in the power of the Spirit and opened the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, proclaiming his authority to heal:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the time of the Lord’s favor has come” (Luke 4:18-19).
This is Jesus, who heals the sick, binds up the wounds of the brokenhearted, and sets the captives free.
This is Jesus, who is the ultimate expression of God’s love and mercy, whose compassions are new every morning, and whose healing power knows no bounds.
This is the Jesus of Christmas, who the world needs now more than ever. That is why we sing,
Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings, ris’n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.
Hark! The herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King!