Seeing through the Eyes of Faith

Text: Mark 10:46-52

Blind Bartimaeus is one of my favourite people in the Bible.  He is one of those insignificant characters in the Gospels who only show up once to show us true faith.  We’d think that would be the role assigned the disciples, but oddly the disciples only show us an incomplete faith.  They hear Jesus’ call and quite remarkably leave everything behind to follow him yet they never quite get who he is or his mission of the ministry of the Kingdom of God.  Neither do the religious authorities.  Though they should know what faith is, they actually wind up showing us anti-faith, a very distant relationship with God that they (we) control by rules, rituals, and judging others.  Leaving everything behind and following has no place in their religion.   But here is Blind Bartimaeus, an insignificant outcast, and he has the audacity to approach Jesus simply because he knows that Jesus alone can bring salvation to his life.

Since salvation is tied to faith, let me step aside here for a moment and define salvation.  We have inherited a rather downsized definition of salvation in comparison to what it actually is in the Bible.  We think of salvation as simply going to heaven when we die because of believing Jesus died for our sins.  Oddly, salvation is never spoken of in that way in the Bible.  Rather, it is an act of God that brings to a person or people healing, freedom from oppression, or freedom from demonic possession in order to restore them to authentic human community.  It is an act that either gives or restores life.  Salvation in its biggest sense is bodily resurrection into a new creation and a new humanity where there is no longer sin and death.  But most frequently salvation as we find it in the is a present event in which God delivers us from what ails us and brings us into the authentic loving community of his people.

Blind Bartimaeus is a prime example of salvation.  Though he was blind he was looking for salvation, a real act of God in the right now of his life to restore him to true life.  He was a blind beggar.  In his day any physical disability was seen as punishment from God for some great, secret offence.  People with disabilities were ostracized.  They were the bottom rung of the social ladder.  All they could do to live was beg.  It should be a lesson to us that Jesus, the Messiah, whom the crowds were expecting soon to be king, would turn aside to speak to one such as Bartimaeus.  But he did, for Bartimaeus had something called faith. 

Bartimaeus sat there at the road side and when he heard Jesus of Nazareth was passing he began to cry out as loud as he could, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  The crowds, annoyed by him, commanded him, “Be silent!”  What right did this cursed blind beggar have to address the Messiah?  But, Bartimaeus had faith.  He could not see Jesus.  He couldn’t just go to him.  He could only keep shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Jesus hears him and stops his triumphal entry and gives the command, “Call him!” and out goes the good news to Bartimaeus, “Take courage!  Rise!  He is calling you!”  Bartimaeus sheds his cloak, the clothes of his old beggarly self, and jumps up from his roadside grave alive in hope and sets off groping in his blurry darkness to find Jesus. 

Suddenly Bartimaeus hears a voice, “What do you want me to do?”  The last time Jesus said that it was to John and James, who several days before had come to Jesus asking him to do whatever they asked of him.  Prideful, self-assured of their own worth, they thought themselves worthy of sitting at Jesus the Messiah's right and left when he became king.  They were power seeking, trying to use Jesus as the means to fulfill their own ambitions.  But, Bartimaeus his request was for salvation, an act of God that would restore him to life.  “Let me see again!”  He's asking for something God alone could do.  So, he realizes that Jesus isn't simply the Messiah of Israel; he is somehow the Lord God of Israel.   His request was one he could only make to God himself.  “Give me back my sight so that I can live again.  Give me back my worth in peoples’ eyes.  Give me back my human dignity.  Restore me to community.  Have mercy on me.”

Jesus’ answer was brief and to the point, “Go!  Your faith has saved you.”  Immediately, Bartimaeus began to see again.  The theologian Karl Barth defines faith like this: “This then is faith: the fidelity of men encountering the faithfulness of God.  Now, when this occurs, the KRISIS introduced by the resurrection of Jesus is set in motion, His appointment as Son of God is made manifest, and the servant of God has reason to give thanks” (Barth, Karl; Commentary on Romans, p. 32).  Bartimaeus was blind yet in faith he saw the faithfulness of God in Jesus the Son of God and he trusted it.  Indeed, he regained his sight.  He regained his life.  Bartimaeus the blind man saw that Jesus was indeed the Son of God and clearly understood his ministry of salvation. 

Bartimaeus was not blind from birth.  Somehow in life he stopped seeing.  If we want to play out this analogy seeing as living and faith arising in the midst of blindness we could say that for what ever the reason he had to lose his life, his sight, so that he could discover faith and truly come to know God through Jesus in order to have true life.  Things happen in life that challenge our sight – the death of parents, spouses, or children; marital infidelity and divorce; being rejected by our children; losing jobs; life threatening illness – these are things that take our lives away and often wipe us clean of sense of faith we may have had in life or God or ourselves.  But the example of Bartimaeus, of his faith is the one we should hold on to.  In times of grief, anger, and shame crying out to Jesus for salvation is our only hope for truly, when the time is right, he answers.  It might take days, months, even years of crying out but he answers and saves us, he calls us to himself and gives us new sight, a new way of seeing life as being filled with him.  Some of you have been through this blindness and know this to be true and have reason to give thanks.  So give thanks and tell about it.  Some of you are blind at this very moment.  Cry out.  Jesus does hear and will come to save.  Often, he doesn’t come immediately because he’s using the blindness and the crying out to heal even deeper hurts than the ones we are presently suffering.  Call out to Jesus.  Don’t let anyone try to silence you.  In time he will call you and you will be healed.  I’ve been there I know.  Amen.

The Missing Bread

Text: Mark 7:1-23
          One of the table blessings that Jews have said every Friday night at the Sabbath dinner since before the days of Jesus is, “Blessed are you O Lord our God, king of the universe who has sanctified us with your commandments and commanded us to wash our hands.” This prayer consists of two parts: something God does and something we do in response. The first part says that God sanctifies us with his commandments. Sanctify is a big word that means to make holy. Holy means cleaned up and set apart for God’s purpose and use. We must also note that God does the holy-making. We cannot make ourselves holy or sanctified. God did this for and to Israel by calling Abraham and promising to give him and his descendants a land and make them a great nation, then by God’s delivering them from slavery in Egypt, then at Mt. Sinai by God's unilaterally declaring that he is their God and they are his people, and then giving them the Law. In doing all this the LORD created a people, declared them to be his own, and then by giving them the Law he sanctified them. He made them holy. Being the only people to have God's Law made the Hebrew people distinct among the nations for the purpose that as they lived according to the Law they would become a just and compassionate community among the nations who by their way of life would reveal that the LORD God was the one true God.
          The second part of that blessing, the response, we would expect to be something like "Gratefully, we will live accordingly." But, instead we get a command to wash hands. That seems odd for there is no command to wash hands anywhere in the Old Testament. It apparently is part of tradition rather than Scripture. The thinking seems to be that if they ate something with dirty hands they would defile the food and the food could defile them nullifying the sanctifying work of God in giving them the commandments. Jesus hit the nail on the head with respect to the Pharisees and Scribes quoting Isaiah “you have forsaken the command of God and are holding to the traditions of men” and then he said, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!” The Gospels are full of stories about the Scribes and Pharisees trying to keep up the appearance of being faithful by observing dress codes and food rites, but when it came to actually keeping the Law and actually being just and fair they failed miserably...as do we all.
          To take the finger off the Pharisees and Scribes, they aren’t the only ones to miss God for trying to keep up with traditions. We do it too. North American churches today also have some sad and unbelievably tacky ways of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe our own traditions, rites and rituals, and ways of doing things, and what's moral and immoral, and who's included and who's not. But, I’ll not rant on about that because I don’t want to get bogged down in the topic of hypocrisy. There is something bigger going on in this passage. What I would like to point out is that the disciples are indeed eating bread, the bread of the kingdom of God come by the hand of Jesus. The Scribes and Pharisees can't see it because they are more concerned about the ritual purity of the disciple’s hands and thus are missing out.
          We need to talk about what the disciples are eating. I bet you didn’t know they were eating bread? You wouldn't. Our NIV says food. Most modern English translations just say "eating" to emphasize the unclean hands stuff. Yet, the Greek New Testament says they are eating bread, in fact eating the bread. It is the bread that the disciples are eating with defiled hands. Almost all Modern translations have omitted this simple fact and it has to be among the biggest Freudian slips in the Bible translation industry in the Western church. We in the Western Church are predisposed to read this passage through the lens of the issues that the Reformers in the 16th Century had with Roman Catholicism and its corruptions and abuses. This text is not about justification by faith as opposed to works righteousness. It's about the bread and how it symbolizes Jesus being God with us and his Kingdom being at hand and our partaking of that no matter the state of our hands.
          This text is located within a major section of Mark that runs from 6:1-8:21 in which bread, be it loaves or crumbs, is a major recurring theme. The section begins with Jesus sending the Twelve out with no bread to carry out his ministry of bringing in the Kingdom of heaven. They go without him for he stays behind; thus, no bread, no Jesus. They still meet with great success. We’re just supposed to realize a correlation between Jesus physical presence and the presence of bread.
          Immediately after their return, Jesus creates some bread by feeding the 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish and there are twelve baskets of left overs. From here on out we have to use our imaginations as to what happened to those twelve baskets of left over bread. Well, I think they set out on a journey to distribute it to the surrounding nations to symbolize that the Kingdom is for all nations not just Israel. So, with these twelve baskets in hand they start out on a journey to take the bread, Jesus and his Kingdom, to the people of the surrounding nations.
          First, they land across the Sea of Galilee in Gennesaret (Jordan) and Jesus heals a lot of people. We can imagine that while there they shared the bread. Then, they cross back over and we have today's passage. Jesus’ disciples here are eating the bread presumably from the twelve baskets of leftovers and the Scribes and Pharisees are upset that they have not washed their hands and were defiling the bread and in turn themselves. They don’t understand about the bread.
          Next, we find them having travelled up into Lebanon and there is a Gentile woman who wants Jesus to cast a demon out of her daughter. Jesus at first refuses but she gets his attention by saying that even dogs get to eat the crumbs that children drop under the table. She must have seen the baskets and was noting that she understood about them. Jesus says he has seen no greater faith than hers in Israel and heals her daughter. They then return to Israel and Jesus heals a deaf man and goes on to feed another crowd of 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread and this time they have seven basketfuls of crumbs left over. Then the Pharisees come again demanding a sign from Jesus to prove who he is and he refuses presumably because there are still baskets of the bread around. You’d think that was enough?
          The section ends with Jesus and the disciples getting in a boat and the disciples have forgotten to get bread and all they have between them is one loaf; i.e., Jesus. Then Jesus warns his disciples about the yeast of the Pharisees. They think they are in trouble for only having only one loaf and Jesus then takes them to task for not trying to understand what the feedings were all about. From five loaves Jesus fed 5,000 and they had twelve baskets of crumbs left over and so with the 4,000. They were missing the point about who it was that was in the boat with them. The Lord God and his kingdom were there in their midst and they were sharing in his mission and ministry. Would they get that? Do we?
           Well, back to the disciples eating the bread with dirty hands. We’re supposed to grasp the significance of the bread here. Jesus' disciples’ eating the bread signifies that they are sharing in Jesus and his kingdom something the Scribes and Pharisees didn’t get because they were more concerned about keeping the religion they had created rather than about maintaining their relationship to God. Something we Christians have gotten good at over the centuries as well.
          Like the disciples we are the community that is consuming the bread of the presence of God. Just as ancient Israel was made holy by the gift of the Law so are we made holy by Jesus presence in and among us through the fellowship created in and by the Holy Spirit so that we are cleaned up and set apart to participate in Jesus mission and ministry to save his creation. The church isn’t about traditions and what conditions must be met before someone can participate in what Jesus is up to. The church is about Jesus and his kingdom working in, with, and through us even though our hands and indeed our hearts are dirty.

          My friends, Jesus the Bread of Life, is here. The kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus, God the Son become human to deliver the creation from its slavery to sin and death is here in the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. He is here and in this moment that we are sharing with each other right now in his presence he is making us to participate right now in the greatest thing to have ever happened in this creation, even greater than the event of creation itself. Just simply being here together in his presence is healing, restorative, for us and for anyone who comes. While we are here the Holy Spirit, the Presence of God with us makes us able to go forth to share the Bread of Life evidenced by our being compassionate and healing influences in all our relationships. We don’t really have to do anything in particular while we're here. Our Lord, the Lord of all creation, is here ministering to us, making us holy, making us like him, and all we’ve got to do is be here and keep coming back and soon we find people will want the bread that we've been eating. Jesus is here. We’ve got one loaf, Jesus Christ and he is all the bread we need. Amen.

Dealing with the Seeds of Evil

Text: Matthew 13:24-43

I've often wondered why grass is the preferred ground cover for a lawn.  In the first place it is a food source but not for us, for livestock.  Cows eat grass.  Horses eat grass.  Sheep eat grass.  But, we don’t let them live so close to the house.  They give us parasites.  Actually, if we are so insistent on a food source growing right outside the door, we should consider the dandelion.  It suits us humans much better not only as a food source, but also for wine and herbal medication – everything our anxiety ridden North American lifestyles need; eat, drink, and medicate.  Down south we always said that a mess of greens three times a year kept the pipes clean.  I’m here to testify that dandelion greens work well for that.  Dandelion root tea (possibly the nastiest thing you’ll ever drink) makes the liver very happy.  They are also a richer source of Vitamins A and C, calcium, and iron than is spinach.  Sorry Popeye.  Even the milky juice of the dandelion is useful as bug repellent and wart remover.  It makes more sense for us to fill our lawns with dandelions than grass, but we just can’t tolerate a weed.

I have thought long and hard on this matter and I think I have figured out why we prefer grass in our yards: a well-manicured lawn of grass meets some deep psychological need in us to show that our wheat fields are plentiful.  After all, grass is just a miniature, ornamental form of wheat.  A weed-free lawn would mean that we are very successful.  Therefore a weed in the yard is a deep-seeded psychological insult to what we call prosperity and we can’t have that.

Weeds in food crops are an entirely different matter.  Weeds didn't become weeds until humanity became agriculturally based.  Before that, weeds were simply plants in the flora that could be food or a remedy for whatever ails you.  So, we let them be.  Yet, in a field of wheat or in a garden weeds can wreak havoc on food production.  Someone did a study that showed that weeds and food plants could co-exist up to three weeks in a plot of soil without encroaching upon one another's water and nutrients.  But, if a weed goes four weeks, crop production can be reduced as much as 50% depending on the plants involved.  When it comes to actual food production weeds aren’t just an insult to our vain need to appear prosperous.  They are harmful and need to be removed.

So, looking at Jesus’ Parable of the Weeds we should be surprised that the sower tells his servants to let the wheat and the weeds grow together.  That's preposterous.  But, the sower gives his reason and it’s a good one.  If they were to pull up the weeds, they would also uproot the wheat and destroy the whole crop.  Hmm...How can that be?  Well, you have to know that there is a somewhat poisonous weed present particularly in Israel and Syria called the darnel.  When it is sprouting it looks like wheat and you can't tell the two apart until it is too late.  While sprouting the darnel will intertwine its roots with the surrounding plants so that if you try to pull it up you will destroy the roots of its neighbours.  The only way to deal with darnel is to let it grow along with the wheat until harvest time when it happens that the wheat stalks will bow over because of the weight of the seed while the darnel, which has a nearly hollow seed, will stand straight up.  Then you go through the field and remove the darnel and then harvest the wheat.

Jesus uses this parable to describe the kingdom of heaven.  The kingdom is being sown into the world as individuals who have been made alive by God in Christ through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Yet, there are also weeds sown by Satan that look like the children of the kingdom but are evil imitations.  The only way to tell them apart is at harvest time when the children of the kingdom are bowing over from the weight of the fruits they have born, a gesture of humble worship, and the children of the evil one are standing straight up, their empty fruits bearing no weight as if to say “Pick me first.  I'm fruitful.”  A life of true, heartfelt worship and compassion is what tells the wheat from the weeds.

Well, if we were to look at the world today, the field, we would not be too far afield to say that it looks like there was way more evil seed sown than good.  There is a great deal of evil in the world and indeed we all are infected with it.  Truly, one thing we must remember when talking about evil is that it has infected everyone and everything, so that there is no way anyone of us can point the finger of judgement at somebody else without first pointing it at ourselves.  We each have done evil things even when at the time it seemed like the right thing to do.  We have all done and continue to do evil and if we want God or government to go on an evil-cleansing tirade, then we have to be prepared to let that tirade start with us each.  No one is innocent in a world where even our best intentions can wind up being the cause of evil and where evil can be used to do good.  In this world that bears the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we have to be careful not to look at others as if they are simply weeds needing to be removed.  Its way more complicated than that.

So, in this world of wheat and weeds it is better that we deal with our own weediness.  We like the slaves in this parable have a unique vantage point – it has been given to us to be able to distinguish between what is wheat and what is weed.  Therefore, we must look at ourselves.  One of the signs of true Christian faith is that we come to realize the evil in our own hearts and our powerlessness over it; that of our own accord we cannot just step up and be evil free like the wheat.  That’s what the darnel tries to do.  Instead, we must humbly accept that there is no way out for us other than the Triune God of grace acting to save us, free us, and heal us of it.  The wheat will entrust their lives to God’s will and care and be grateful and bow in worship before a God who as Jesus of Nazareth become one of us just as we are in our twisted brokenness and lived faithfully that we might truly have life.  He suffered evil in order to do away with evil.  He died in order to put an end to death.  He was raised from death bringing into being a new humanity reconciled to God and filled with his very life under his life-giving reign.  He brings us each into this new human being by the free gift of the Holy Spirit.  May you receive him now.

The weeds, on the other hand will continue to go it on their own.  They say they believe in Jesus or God or in just being a good person.  They are even for the most part most of the time very good people who do mostly good things.  But their hearts are weedy.  Instead of taking that long disturbing look deep into their hearts to see who they truly are as persons created in the image of the God of love and grace they step back, shirking that responsibility for this very essential human task and let it ride with that insidious cover-up, “Nobody’s perfect.  But, I’ve done my best to be a good and successful person.  Just look at my front yard.  By gummit, I’ve worked hard and it’s weed-free.”  The weed seed keeps us from seeing ourselves in light of God's will and care for us; from seeing in all honesty that we can say nothing other than “I” am unable and have been unable to do anything other than fail on most to all points considered when it comes to being a human being created in the image of God who is steadfastly loving and faithful in all he does towards us.  True wheat will look at the weed and humbly admit, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”  Wheat doesn’t strive to be a good and successful person; rather wheat tries to make reparation for the hurt it’s caused and strives to be gracious and healing in all its ways.

With this parable Jesus has stated the truth that it is God's business to rid the creation of evil, not humanity's.  Jesus says, “Let them both grow together.”  The word for “let” in the Greek language of the New Testament just happens to be the same word for “forgive” and our English translations really do not capture the depth of the meaning of that Greek word.  Simple permission, simply letting evil to grow in our midst is not what we are to glean from this parable.  In the very least the word in Greek means tolerate, tolerate the evil in our midst.  Toleration requires active participation from us not just permission to be.  Toleration in the very least requires that we be able to recognize what is evil in this world and in ourselves.  Toleration means we struggle and suffer to learn how to live with something in our lives that we don't want there and can't get rid of. 

If we pull in the Old Testament Hebrew word and idea for forgiveness our understanding will ripen.  The Hebrew word we translate as forgive, nasah, means to lift up and carry.   We do forgiveness in this world of wheat and weeds just like the four friends who lifted up and carried their paralytic friend to Jesus who could heal him pushing through the mob and busting through the roof of a house to get him there.  Jesus looked at them and then said to the man, “Son, your sins are forgiven. Take up your mat and go home.” And he did. 

The way we, the slaves of Jesus who share his vantage point on the field of wheat and tares, go about letting the two grow together is by living as Jesus did in our midst - by getting compassionately, graciously, and non-judgementally into the nitty-gritty of the lives of the people around us lifting up and carrying with them their joys and sorrows, their brokenness; listening and hearing their hurts and regrets and offering God’s forgiveness.  Being the truest of friends to everyone in our lives no matter who they are or what they’ve done.  Looking like Jesus so that they will know him when he makes himself known to them as the One who is compassionate, gracious, and non-judgemental towards them and the One who has always been with them in the nitty-gritty of their lives and the One who will now give them His very life.

So, let’s not get caught up in the weediness of other people.  Let Jesus deal with our own weeds and the gracious and life-giving bluntly honest way he is with us, let us be that way with everybody we meet.  Amen.  

The End of Shame

Text: Mark 5:21-43

When I lived in West Virginia, my friend Doug and I were on a road trip one morning and passed one of those gentleman's clubs off the side of the Interstate.  I remarked on how interesting the layout was to the place.  It was hidden behind a high fence on the outskirts of a town like a leper colony.  There were no windows.  The entrances were hidden.  The proprietors had obviously gone to great lengths to protect the identity of their patrons.  Doug and I began to discuss why anyone would ever become a regular patron at a strip joint.  It is such a degrading and often abusive business so why support it.  One of the answers we came up with was that this was a way for a person to acknowledge and express a deep-seated sense of shame.  Why is it that people do things they know the majority of people consider shameful?  It’s not that they’re rebels.  It’s that they feel deeply ashamed of themselves and it’s just coming out.  Shame is a very powerful force in our lives.

So what is shame?  Shame is much different than guilt.  Guilt comes from knowing we’ve done something wrong and we relieve guilt by making reparation for that wrong.  Shame, on the other hand, is the sense that there is something wrong with us to the extent of making us feel that we are unacceptable, unlovable.  Shame often accompanies guilt but doesn't go away by simply righting the wrong.  It is only relieved by touch, physical signs of inclusion - eye contact, a smile, a handshake, or a hug.  Shame does not always arise because of something we’ve done.  Too, often it is incurred from what others have done to us.  The shame of having been victimized is often more debilitating than the financial or physical effects of the crime itself.  Shame makes us feel cut off from the love and comfort of human society and is at the heart of why humans in general feel cut off from God. 

Looking at ourselves, shame even affects us good, church-going people.  We like to boldly proclaim the idea that God is love and God loves everybody.  Yet, too often it is the case that we, the churchgoers, deep down just like everybody else feel shame.  It hasn’t really settled in on us that God really does love us too.  We tend to gravitate towards our faith being simply believing there is a God and doing good and…we have our principles.  Yet, when it comes to experiencing, to feeling the love of God we tend to keep all that at a distance saying, "That God’s love stuff is for strippers and people out there to know, but I’m a good person and God doesn’t really need to bother with me.”  Occasionally, God’s love breaks through but it doesn’t take long for us to return to thinking that we’re good enough as it is and don’t need God to waste his time on making us feel loved.  This problem is even more compounded if you are a Christian man.

Well, looking at these two healing stories in Mark’s Gospel we find that they are all about shame and how in Jesus Christ through the touch of the Holy Spirit we’re healed of it.  Let me start with Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue.  Jairus coming to Jesus begging him to heal his daughter was a desperate for a man who loved his daughter.  But back in Jesus day there was more to it than that.  Jairus was a leader of the synagogue.  Things like a child dying were not supposed to happen to such as him.  They exemplified the faithful and God blessed and protected the faithful.  For his daughter to die meant that there must have been a secret sin he or his family was hiding and therefore God was judging him and cutting him off from the blessing. The death of a child just wasn’t supposed to happen to the "good" ruler of the "good" synagogue.  For this, Jairus and his family would suffer public shaming.  They would be deemed unclean and could not be associated with nor could he go to the synagogue.

Jairus coming to Jesus for a healing was a bit outside the box for a synagogue leader back then.  Most of the religious authorities thought Jesus was walking blasphemy.  Yet, Jairus recognized Jesus’ divine authority to forgive sins and restore a person’s life and believed Jesus could do the same for him and his family.  Jairus not only acknowledged Jesus’ divine authority he took it to the extreme of begging Jesus not just to heal his daughter, but rather the Greek indicates he was begging Jesus to give her salvation so that she may truly live a new life.  Then, Jairus does the unimaginable.  Jairus the good synagogue leader who knew better asked Jesus to break religious law and come and touch his dying daughter.  Her sickness and eventually her death meant that she was unclean, not allowed in the presence of God.  Anyone who touched her would become unclean with death as well.  Jairus was asking Jesus to take into his own person the uncleanness of his daughter indeed his whole family.  He was inviting Jesus to join him in their shame.

Jesus very tenderly responds to Jairus.  He goes with Jairus to his home.  Comforts him along the way when they hear his daughter has died.  When he gets to the house he tries to convince everyone that she’s just sleeping.  Incidentally, sleeping is the euphemism used in the early church for the death of those who had died believing in the Lord and were awaiting the resurrection.  Jesus also refuses to make a public spectacle out of the miracle, taking only Jairus, his wife, and three of the disciples into the room.  Then, he takes her by the hand, taking the uncleanness upon himself and with the words “Little girl, get up!” Jesus takes away her death.  She rises to a new life.  The old is gone.  The new has begun.

Sandwiched in the midst of this story is another concerning a woman who has had a menstrual hemorrhage for 12 years.  No doubt, the people of her day would have shunned her.  This malady made her unclean for it seemed her life was perpetually spilling forth from her and being wasted.  She could not go to the temple even to present a sacrifice to ask for forgiveness.  No one could touch her for they too would become unclean for a period of time.  She would have had to live amidst the shame of everyone thinking she was vile, that she had done something terribly bad and was hiding it. 

Mark portrays the woman as being desperate.  She had tried everything medically to be cured and only wound up broke and suffering much due to medicine in those days.  So, she came to Jesus having no idea who he was.  She had only heard about his ability to heal.  She was desperate enough even to commit the unforgivable crime of knowingly touching him and making him unclean.  She played that down in her mind by resolving only to touch his cloak.  This woman, like Jairus for his daughter, wasn’t just looking for healing but more so for salvation, to be restored to a honourable life rather than a shame-filled life.  The Greek word for “to heal” is the same for “to save”.

The woman touches Jesus’ cloak and is healed.  Jesus, realizing that saving power had gone forth from him, starts searching for who had touched him.  Realizing what had happened to her she comes and falls at his feet and Jesus speaks to her as if God the Father was speaking to her and very tenderly says, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.  Go in peace and know that you have been saved/healed.”  By this bold pronouncement in the presence of that great crowd he took her shame away and restored her to a full place in her community…and healed her too.  Her old life was now gone.  A new one had begun.

These stories tell us something about Jesus that we need to hear.  As he is God the Son in human flesh he is our only link to the Father who desires that we be saved, made well, rescued from shame.  God does not want us believing that we are unlovable and have no value, or that he is angry and wants to get us.  God the Father sent God the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit and he became one of us in every way even feeling shame in order to fix the predicament that all of humanity has gotten itself into as a result of sin.  Sin isn’t a list of wrongs.  It is an innate narcissistic sense of the self that is so pervasive that it makes us oblivious to God’s love for us.  God created us to know and desire his love and companionship.  But, because of sin and its bedfellow shame we choose to act like we are gods in our own lives and blindly grope for ways to fix ourselves that so often make us feel worse brokenness. 

But, Jesus heals us.  He is the once and for all union between God and us.   When Jesus walked the earth his physical body was so alive with the presence of God that sin, shame, and even death though he felt and experienced them could have no effect on him.  Rather, by his God-life and human faithfulness coming to bear on humanity in his very self he puts an end to sin, shame, and death.  He has sent the Holy Spirit, the person and power of God’s grace, to come and touch each of us to remove our shame.  He heals our sin, our narcissistic sense of self, with making us to really know God and to truly desire to love our neighbours and ourselves.  The Holy Spirit comes to live in each of us and restores us to communion with God by bonding us to Jesus and making us share in his new resurrected humanity.  There is no reason for us who are in Christ to hold on to our shame and let it be a barrier between us and God and one another.  The Father has given each of us faith to know that he loves us, faith to make us well with salvation, faith that removes shame.  So, trust this all who are in Christ are new creation.  The old life with its brokenness, guilt, and shame is gone and a new life has begun.  Amen.