It’s
been a bumpy ride for you and your fellow disciples . . . it started on this
side of the Galilee, speaking to your fellow Jews in parables, then explaining
them all to you in private . . . like that
helps a lot . . . then, on the trip to the Gentile side he sleeps in the back
of the boat, and calms a raging storm with the flick of his voice . . . in
Gentile country he sends a demon – Legion by name – into a passing herd of
swine, then tells the former demoniac “Go home to your friends, and tell them all
how much the Lord has done for you . . .”
And
now you’re back on home turf, back on the Jewish side of the sea, and right
smack dab in the middle of a crowd. And
you know about crowds, how dangerous
they can be . . . and this one’s no different, it’s riled up, roiling and
pressing and trampling and the sun heats up the air very nicely, thank you very
much, so you are sweating, the master’s sweating, everybody is sweating, and your Right Guard Sport-Stick deodorant
failed hours ago, before you even got
to the shore, and the crowd jostles you and everybody could use a chill pill,
they’re just a little keyed up to see Jesus in person, and you’ve gone from the
Sea of Galilee to this sea of people, equally dangerous, equally unpredictable,
you know that a contagious violence
can rip through a crowd, turn it from friendly curiosity to deadly force, from
an eagerness to see and experience, to an eagerness to kill . . . and you’ll
see this in action yourself before too many months are up . . . so you’re
nervous there beside the sea, nervous and hot, hot and nervous, and the sweat
stings down into your eyes . . .
So
it’s a welcome diversion when this synagogue official, this stereotypical
symbol of the establishment religion falls on his knees – no mean feet in that
crowd – and begs Jesus over and over again, my little daughter is dying, my
little daughter is dying . . . come and lay your hands upon her and she will
live . . . and you’re thinking . . . “Hah!
Now he comes, now when he wants something . . .” and you’re
thinking “hey mister synagogue authority, mister high-muckety-muck, mister
Roman-collaborator, where’s all your authority now? Where’s all the “can’t
pick corn on the Sabbath” all the “shame
on Jesus, eating with sinners” all the “he must have Satan in him, casting out demons like that” . . . they’re all just
dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind, when one of their kids is
involved . . . well, to be honest, you’d probably do the same thing, if it was your kid . . . but still, the hypocrisy of it all, and you expect Jesus to say something, you expect him to at least point out the irony, the hypocrisy of
this critical, self-righteous, let-just-face-it, downright enemy of Christ and all he stands for, but no, he just goes along,
quietly, pushing his way through the crowd . . .
And
speaking of the crowd, it’s getting worse, if that’s possible, pressing in all
around them, so you can feel them dangerously close, jostling and touching and
bumping, and you’ll be lucky to have any insole left, all the foot-stomping going on, you’re all gonna be breaking out the Dr. Scholl’s inserts – be gellin’
like a felon – before too long . when
all of a sudden, Jesus puts on the brakes, and you almost run up his, and he
stands stock still, just staring, and then he says “Who touched me?” and you
can’t believe your ears, whaddya mean
who touched me, everybody in the
whole world has touched him, or at
least everyone in that crowd, and you’re wondering if the heat is finally
getting to him, if the strain of all the demon-castings, all the storm-rebuking
has finally unhinged him, and you tell him so, you say “how can you say who touched me?” but he just keeps
looking straight ahead . . .
And
then . . . a voice – tremulous, hesitant, quivering – saying “Master, it was I”
and you look down and there, prostrate before him, one of the filthiest women you’ve ever seen – road-dust-clogged
red-encrusted robe – and the sweet-iron smell of fresh blood, and you instinctively
recoil, something inside you shouting like that TV-show robot “warning,
warning” only it’s saying “unclean, unclean,” but the hard-pressed crowd won’t
let you back away, they’re holding you upright and real close, so you can’t
help but hear the woman’s words “I’ve been bleeding uncontrollably for 12
years” and you don’t fail to get the symbolism – twelve years indeed! – and
further, you know where that bleeding is from, it usually comes only once a
month, and it upsets your very Jewish, very male
constitution, because you know what happens when a woman’s has her period, she’s
shut away in the back, shunned, and how dare she be out here among folks,
transmitting her uncleanness to the rest of us, she just as easily could’ve
touched you, and then you would have been unclean, you would have been an outcast, and you
want doubly to run, but the crowd
won’t let you, and you hear her say “I’ve spent all my money and all my father’s money on doctors, but they only
made it worse, and I knew that if I
could but touch the hem of your garment” and Jesus’ face is transformed in that
instant, its muscles relax and his eyes light up, and compassion washes across
his features like the tide on that nearby sea . . . “Daughter,” he says “your
faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
And
though you don’t get it at the time – you’re too busy being horrified at all
the “unclean” – you reflect on it later and see the powerful connections . . .
she has been unclean twelve years, twelve – the same number as Israel’s tribes
. . . twelve – the same age as Jairus’ little girl, the girl Jairus called
daughter, just as Jesus called the hemorrhagic woman “daughter,” and when you
have time, you ponder in what way she can be Jesus’ daughter, and marvel at his
effrontery in taking a priestly role . . .
But
things are moving too fast, a runner comes from Jairus’ house saying “Your
daughter is dead” and Jesus says “Do not fear, only have faith,” and you’re
beginning to see another connection, the woman had faith, the woman believed,
but so did Jairus. Both of them fell to their knees, both of
them stepped out of the crowd, both of them separated themselves from the
masses, from the dangerous same-faced violence-prone crowd. And Jesus allows just you three, just James
and Peter and John, to go with him, and when you all get to the house, people
are wailing and moaning, and the professional grievers are wailing and moaning
and rending their clothing, and Jesus says “Why all the fuss? Why all the bother? The child is just sleeping” and raucous, derisive laughter breaks out,
and you gotta admit it’s pretty funny, but Jesus just flicks his wrist, like
he’s brushing off flies, and suddenly they’re alone in the house, everybody has
fled, everybody but you three and the mother and father and the little dead
girl, and when Jesus sees her, he touches her – and this sets the sirens off in
your brain again, unclean, unclean, here he is, touching a corpse, the ultimate
unclean – but then he speaks Talitha cum
. . . Get up, little girl . . . and for a moment, nothing happens, and
everything is still, even the dust motes in the sunlit shaft of air are still .
. . Talitha cum . . .
And
she does, she sits up and starts to breath, no shuddering, nor gasping, just
one minute she’s not breathing, and the next . . . she is. And then you let out a big gust of air, for you’d been holding your breath yourself . . . and
everyone is stunned, and from somewhere in your amazement you hear Jesus as he
tells everyone in the room to tell no-one, to not spread the Good News of this wonderful resurrection, and
finally to give her a little something to eat, just like that, practical as
always, and besides . . . dead girls don’t eat.
And
you are amazed, even after all this time, even after his death and
resurrection, when you can see this as a pre-cursor, a predecessor to the resurrection . . . Christ being raised from the
dead by God, the loving parent – and now you understand the “daughter” part,
for just as God raised God’s son from the grave, so did Jesus raise his
daughter . . . but there is more than that, because it’s easy for you to see –
as a Jewish Christian – that Jesus is fulfilling a priestly role, as a stand-in
for God, restoring life to the dead girl who is certainly more than just a dead
girl . . . as a daughter of the establishment religion, she is twelve years
old, she represents the twelve tribes of Israel, and Jesus is bringing her back
from the dead . . . he is making her clean, restoring her to right relations
with God . . .
As
a Jew, you are under no illusions – overlaying the entire episode are questions
of ritual purity, of clean versus unclean . . . the hemorrhagic woman was about
as unclean as you can get, apart from being dead, that is . . . she was
penniless, broke and just to touch her was anathema . . . she was as outside as you can be, the complete
opposite of the synagogue leader, who was the consummate insider. And you are amazed
that Jesus healed them both, he worked at both ends of the political and social
spectrum – he healed the daughter of the guy with all the power, but also the penniless, destitute, unclean
beggar . . .
And
today we come to this story, not with fresh eyes like the disciples, or even the
perspective of Mark’s congregation forty years later, but with jaded hearts . .
. we’ve heard this story time and again, and what possibly can we glean from it
when religious categories of clean versus unclean no longer apply, when for
those of us in this room – none of us observant Jews – that boat has long since
sailed? We don’t classify folks as
clean or unclean, do we? We don’t refuse
to associate with folks who are different from us, who aren’t like us, who don’t bathe regularly or
have a different skin color or are in a different social class from us, do
we?
We don’t think that we should “take
care of our own” first, before we help the other . . . do we?
Did
you notice the order in which Jesus
heals in our tale? He makes Jairus, the
well-off, well-connected established-religion guy, who gives a lot to the
church – without him, it surely wouldn’t make its budget – he leaves him
standing there, life draining out of his child, while the outsider is
healed. And for us today, that’s a
powerful statement . . . not only does Jesus heal the outsider, not only does he take care of their needs, but
they are his priority . . . he actually lives out his own dictum that the
first shall be last and the last first . . .
What
would happen if the church lived out
that saying in its day to day life? What
if it put its money where its mouth is, what would it look like? Would money for the poor still be an
afterthought to maintaining the building?
Would it still be the first to go during a budget crunch? Would there be any poor or hungry left
if the church put them first and itself last?
And what would building use
patterns look like? Would church
members still get first priority? I
don’t know . . . it’s all pretty theoretical, if you ask me . . .
But
what isn’t theoretical is that Christ
heals both ends of the spectrum, both sides of the street, so to speak . . . because
even though he stopped for the outsider, even though he healed the outcast
first, even though, as our Catholic brothers and sisters say, he has a
preferential option for the poor, the Good News for us middle-class,
hardly-outsider Christians is that he restores us as well . . . there is more
than enough grace to go around, it is grace unbounded, grace overwhelming,
amazingly abundant, never-ending grace.
And it saved a wretch like me. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment