| Sermon for Sunday, August 14, 2005
GOING ACROSS TO THE OTHER SIDE
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Scripture: Mark 5 1 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. 3 He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; 4 for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. 6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; 7 and he shouted at the top of his voice, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me." 8 For he had said to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!" 9 Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion; for we are many." 10 He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; 12 and the unclean spirits begged him, "Send us into the swine; let us enter them." 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea. 14 The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. 16 Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. 17 Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 But Jesus refused, and said to him, "Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you." 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed. 21 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. 22 Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23 and begged him repeatedly, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live." 24 So he went with him.with amazement. 43 He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. 25 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. 26 She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." 29 Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" 31 And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, "Who touched me?' " 32 He looked all around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." 35 While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, "Do not fear, only believe." 37 He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. 38 When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 When he had entered, he said to them, "Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping." 40 And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha cum," which means, "Little girl, get up!" 42 And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome The first thing to say about these stories from Mark is that Jesus knew what it means to be a teenager. The little girl was twelve and she slept a lot and when he wakes her up he tells people to give her something to eat! Twelve year olds need to sleep a lot and eat a lot! It was true in Jesus’ time and true in our time. We will come back to the story of the daughter of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue in Capernaum in a moment. We said last week that most of Jesus’ three years of ministry was spent around the north shore of the sea of Galilee but the first thing he does in chapter five is to cross the Sea of Galilee to the “other side”. If you were here last week you heard why that is so unusual. Who is that lives on the other side? It’s the Gentiles. They were pagans, atheists, infidels. Jews were not to have anything to do with them. Jesus goes to be with them. In our last trip to Israel with people from St Andrew—incidentally, we now have 29 people who have registered for next February’s pilgrimage already! In our last trip, we were in the boat on the Sea of Galilee and we read this story and talked about what it would mean for you and me to do what Jesus did—to go to be with people who, we think, are so radically different from us. What would that look like for you to do that? To sit down with people who you might think are infidels, enemies. We need to be able to get through those barriers that we have put up and engage each other and see our common humanity. We particularly need to do that in this time in American history when some people see a bitter and intense partisan divide that lacks the civil discourse that must be the basis for our democracy. Last fall we pulled together about 60 people who were willing to meet together once a month for three months and read a book each month written by someone whose politics might be very different from our own and talk about that courteously and honestly. It was a great example of what I think needs to happen more often and it was modeled after Jesus sitting down with people from “the other side” and seeing what we do have in common. I want you to see how scandalous this act was Jesus engaged in. Not only was he breaking the laws by going to Gentile territory, but when he got there he was with a man who was a triple threat alien! The man was “unclean” by religious standards. He was mentally ill. He was apparently naked. And where did he live? In a cemetery among the dead. By Jewish law he was a triple outcast! Even more, there were, nearby some pigs that were unclean animals. Remember the shame of the prodigal son who not only wound up broke but feeding the pigs. All of those negatives do not bother Jesus who has told us two chapters earlier that he has come not for the virtuous and healthy but for the outcasts and sinners. He makes the man whole and when the townspeople come back, they find him clothed and in his right mind—and they find a few pigs missing! How do they react to seeing a changed life, a transformed human being, a person who used to be crazy and is now sitting with them conversing rationally? Do you remember what they do? THEY ASK JESUS TO LEAVE AS SOON AS HE CAN!! Let’s come back to this. In my hometown in north Texas there was a fellow in my childhood neighborhood who was mentally ill and lived at home with is parents. I don’t know what his illness or disability was but when I was nine years old we called him crazy. We were very unkind of course as children. His name was Joe and he was about thirty-five years old. Occasionally when he could get out and away from parental supervision he would be found in the middle of an intersection with a police whistle directing traffic. That seemed to be his thing. He had some weird behaviors. My son Todd has some weird behaviors. About half the time when Todd and I get into an elevator he will introduce himself to the people in the elevator, and sometimes he introduces me to them also. We have tried to educate Todd about that but he is unfailingly gregarious and thinks that everyone should be his friend. Maybe the folks in the Gerasene territory had just gotten used to the weird behaviors of the fellow who lived in the graveyard in the way that folks in my Texas childhood neighborhood had gotten used to the weird behaviors of Joe our mutual neighbor. I was trying to think what it would be like for Joe to have been healed and changed and transformed, to become whole—what it would be like for us in the neighborhood to see that, and what we would have felt like. I don’t think we would have reacted like the Gerasene folks did. They saw what Jesus did and they wanted him to get the heck out of their town on the next boat! Why? Well, there was this matter of the demon-possessed pigs that ran into the ocean. I think it was scarier. They saw that Jesus was a threat to the way things had always been. Maybe they thought if he stayed around he would start messing with some of THEIR craziness, start exorcising some of their demons and they were happy with their craziness just the way they are! Jesus was and is a danger to people who wanted to keep things under control and maintain the status quo and keep life all orderly and be confident about who is pure and who is impure and who is godly and who is a pagan. Jesus keeps ignoring those categories and saying that the people we thought were less than us really are part of God’s family also. And in fact, he says, it is the humble and repentant sinners who may be more pleasing to God than us self-righteous arrogant church folk. That’s scary and disturbing and we may not want that fellow around after all–after we see what his agenda is. This is why Biblical scholar Raymond Brown said that if Jesus came back and did the same things and raised the same questions and began to include the same people, the first thing we would do is to kill him again Jesus lived the message that God accepts us right where we are and loves us too much to leave us where we are. Following Jesus meant some changes and some getting some ideas turned upside down. It meant and it means rearranging our lives and that can be scary so, even after the Gearasenes saw the miracle he had done, they asked him to leave and go back where he had come from. He did, but before he left he talked with the man he had healed and told him to go and tell others what God had done for him. Go and tell your friends. And he became the first missionary to the gentiles—even before the apostle Paul took on that title. Jesus request is for us also. Go and tell your friends what God has done in your life, what God is doing in your life. Go and do what Andrew did—invite people to come and take a look at this Jesus fellow for themselves and make up their own mind. Have you done that? Who do you need to offer that invitation to? Think with me for a moment. Jesus and his disciples go back to Capernaum and he is immediately met by Jairus, one of the leaders of the Jewish synagogue who falls at Jesus feet and begs Jesus to come and heal his twelve year old daughter who is about to die. Can you identify with Jairus? Have you ever had a really sick child whom you were very concerned about, perhaps even concerned that the child might not survive? So many of us can identify with that and with the desperate feelings this father must have had. This is a very human story and Jesus, compassionate as he is, sets out immediately with Jairus for the house and on the way he is followed by a woman who has had menstrual bleeding continuously for twelve years. Mark tells us she had “endured much under many physicians” and had spent all of her money and had gotten worse. She knew that Jesus could help her if she could only touch the hem of his cloak. She did and she got better. Jesus knew some power had gone out of him and asked a silly question in a crowd— “Who touched me?” She fearfully came forward and he says something to her that we have heard before and will hear again in this gospel—“Your faith has made you well.” We hear the reverse of this next week in chapter 6 when Jesus goes back to his childhood town of Nazareth and he is not able to help very many people. Why not? Because they all know him! They remembered when he and his brothers used to throw rocks at the goats to scare them or used their slingshots to kill the birds. “Isn’t he the son of the carpenter, the handy man?” And because they had no faith in him, he could not help them much. This is really controversial stuff. Faith is important in our getting better and getting well. We need to have faith in our doctors and nurses and therapists. And healing is still a mystery to us. We said two weeks ago that in clinical trials, some people get better on placeboes, sugar pills. Why is that? There is still mystery here. And we know that even when we have faith something is going to kill each of us in the end. We had three funerals here this week! The people were people of faith. But they had become ill and while their faith helped them deal with the illness in a positive and courageous fashion, the illness finally took their life in this world. The risk of talking about the relationship between healing and faith is when some people say, “Your family member died because you did not have enough faith.” Not true—but it gets said by some churches. We feel all kinds of questions when we read these stories in Mark about people being healed by Christ. I don’t have answers when people ask why some people get better and others don’t. I do believe there is a difference between being healed and being cured. I believe people’s attitude and faith in God can make a difference. I know that there is tremendous pain and suffering in our world and I have talked with my friend who is a pediatric oncologist who deals with very sick children who have cancer and have told her that she is a healing instrument of God’s healing and that I wish life were fairer than it is especially when we talk about sick children and dying children. These are all still mysteries to me and yet I also believe that Christ was and is a source of healing and wellness for all of us and when our ministers go to the hospital the morning of surgery to be with one of our members and we pray together there in the pre op area—sometimes praying with a nurse or surgeon on the team—we always pray for God to be at work in this operation and for God to bring the best possible outcome. Let’s go back to the woman who touches Jesus. This is another story of the divisions religious folks made in Jesus time between “clean and unclean”. These were religious categories and had to do with who was OK in God’s sight and who was inferior. Gentiles were unclean. Pigs were unclean along with other animals. Jesus gets criticized because his friends do not follow the washing rituals properly and are thus unclean. Bodily discharges made people unclean, it was thought. Blood was unclean and women after their menstrual cycle were considered unholy for seven days and had to purify themselves in a prescribed way. The point is that this woman who had an ongoing hemorrhage was considered impure, untouchable, and Jesus welcomed her, praised her faith and said she was now well. Here is Jesus again breaking the religious rules and laws and upsetting the spiritual leaders. After he has praised the woman who touched him for her faith, someone comes to Jairus. He tells Jairus to stop bothering Jesus—except he uses a term for Jesus here that is important. Did you hear it? Leave the teacher alone. Mark is calling Jesus a teacher. In the next chapter Jesus compares himself to a prophet— a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown. Leave the teacher alone. Your daughter is dead. Jesus does not accept that verdict and goes into the house taking only his closest disciples—who were they? Peter, James and John. He goes to the house and the people around it laugh at him when he arrives! He takes only the girls parents in with him. He tells the little girl in Aramaic, get up little one. And she is resuscitated. This is one of three stories in the gospels about Jesus resuscitating someone who has died. We do not know how this happened. There were other people in the first century whose followers claimed they healed people and resuscitated people. I believe that Jesus had healing powers and still does. I cannot explain this logically. I also believe that the living Christ still can bring something miraculous and unexpected when we may have given up hope. I do not think this is a suspension of natural law but some part of natural law that we have not yet understood. If we were looking at the gospel of John instead of Mark, we would have already talked about the wedding where Jesus is the guest and the wine runs out. His mother asks him to help. He tells the servants to get the big water jars whose purpose is the ritual washing according to Jewish law and when they look in the jars, the purification water is no longer there but they are filled with 120 gallons of the finest wine. I cannot explain that but I know that the people who told that story saw that Jesus was replacing the flat water of ritualism with the wine of joyful life. And I believe Jesus still does some things that we might call miraculous and that he brings life where it looks like death and hopelessness. In a youth group in another church the 8th graders were talking about the water into wine story in John. One girl was there whose family had just joined the church a year ago. Her father was an alcoholic and his life was being changed by his involvement in an AA group and his recent decision to follow Christ. The family had been impoverished by his alcohol addiction but now with his transformation there was money available for some basic things that had been lacking. At the end of the group discussion the leader asked what the 8th graders thought about the miracle story of water into wine. The child of the former alcoholic spoke. She said, “I don’t know about Jesus turning water into wine a long time ago, but I do know that just this year in our family Jesus has turned beer into furniture.” Do miracles still happen? Is the living Christ still at work in our world and our lives? Is he still involved in raising the dead? Please God, may it be so. |
