On the Edge

On the Edge

Mark 5:21-43

So, we’ve talked for a while now about how the Sea of Galilee and the crowd are two of the ongoing characters in the Gospels.  The Sea is where the first disciples are called.  It is where Jesus walks on water and calms a storm.  Ultimately, it is where the risen Jesus will find the disciples one last time.  In the middle of the story, though, the Sea and all the times it is crossed are meant to show us one thing:  Jesus going out of his way to reach out to the Gentiles.  If he just stayed on the Jewish side of the Sea then it would be easier to make the case that Jesus was just a Jewish guy doing his best to reform Judaism.  Instead, he spends just as much time preaching and teaching and healing Gentiles as he does Jews.

At the beginning of our chapter, Jesus is on the Gentile side of the Sea.  He has an extraordinary experience.  He goes to the most unclean of places in the part of the world that was already considered unclean by the folks on the other side.  He goes into a cemetery and meets the local crazy guy.  It turns out that the local folks have done everything to restrain this man—bound him in chains and tied him up—but nothing could hold him.  The man comes running to meet Jesus, at once worshiping him and cursing him.  Jesus commands the spirts to come out of the man.  Then, Jesus asks him his name.  In our translation, the man answers, “My name is Mob.  I am a rioting mob.”  The spirits plead with Jesus to be allowed to possess a nearby herd of pigs.  When they do, the man who had been out of his mind is suddenly fine.  The pigs, though, go running off a cliff.  They can’t handle the pain the man had been in for years. The crowd, though, barely notices the changed man.  Instead, they grieve the lost pigs and scream at Jesus to leave. 

Jesus and the disciples get in the boat and head back to the Jewish side.  Having heard the story of a man possessed by a “mob,” Jesus is met by a huge crowd of people who are about to turn into a mob.  They all want something from Jesus. They press in on him.  They jostle him.  The force of the Greek word used to describe the crowd’s actions is that they are “smothering” Jesus. 

 I remember a night a few years ago when I was coming out of Wrigley Field after a concert.  Everyone left the stadium at the same time which seemed to create this giant snake of human beings.  I thought, “Well, this will be fine once we reach the street.”  However, it seemed that almost everyone in the crowd was taking the “El” home.  We snaked out of the stadium and the snake turned left toward the station.  The doors constricted the snake and delayed everyone.  People began to get irritated.  Only so many people could get on a train.  Only so many people could wait on the platform.  (“Did they make this platform to hold this many people?”). 

The only thing worse than being in that crowd would have been to be the person the crowd was seeking.  That was Jesus’ plight.  Having had such a strange experience with a mob of demons, having crossed the sea with his disciples, probably wanting nothing more than to rest, this mob had other plans.  The human part of Jesus had to be completely overwhelmed with the needs of the crowd and with its relentless energy.   Any of us would have turned and said, “Ease up!  Give me some room!”  Any of us would have been thinking, “Just get me out of here!”

Instead, Jesus is approached by a particular man.  We should pause and recognize that this is what Jesus keeps doing, over and over again—turning a sea of humanity into a particular human being.  This literally might be one of the central features of Jesus’ way of being in the world.  While everyone is seeing everyone else simply as examples of one type of human being or another and then dismissing them, Jesus meets people one person at a time.  Jesus stands his ground and meets Jairus, an official from the local synagogue.  In an instant, Jesus saw that Jairus was suffering.

This, of course, is precisely why so many of us choose to treat each other as examples of one thing or another who can then be dismissed.  We distance ourselves—emotionally and cognitively—because if we don’t then sooner or later (usually sooner) we’re going to learn what that other person’s source of pain is and we’re going to end up “feeling” for them.  If we get close, we end up responding with compassion to a fellow human being.  We end up realizing that the crazy guy who lives in the cemetery by himself was just a mentally ill person who had been altogether rejected by the community.  If we get too close, it’s going to cost someone “a few pigs” and all you’re left with is a formerly possessed guy who can’t stop talking about Jesus and what he did for him.

The most obvious difference between Jairus and the crazy guy is that Jairus would have commanded the people’s respect.  This was a “man of the cloth.”  He spoke and people listened or, at least, they acted like they were listening.  In fact, what makes Jairus interesting is that he’s the kind of guy whose words would have likely condemned Jesus.  That’s not today’s concern, though.  Instead, Jairus falls to his knees and begs Jesus to come and heal his daughter.  She’s horribly sick.  He’s desperate.  He believes with all his heart that if Jesus would just lay his hands on her then she will be made well.  Jesus leaves with Jairus.  The whole time, the crowd keeps smothering Jesus, keeps pushing and shoving, keeps jostling Jesus and the disciples.

This may be a particularly good year to pause a moment more to think of this crowd.  A lot of people right now are pretty tired of Covid.  They’re just done with it, whether or not COVID is done with us.  If you think about your own experience, though, before there was a vaccine available, back when we were still wiping down our groceries, you can remember how uncomfortable it was to be in a crowd, right?  The bigger the crowd was, the more likely it was that someone in here is sick.  It was really uncomfortable.  I kind of wonder whether I will ever feel as at ease in a crowd again.

In Jesus day, the whole spiritual project was to stay “clean.”  You went to the temple for purification rituals.  You learned the rules about who was unclean and how you could avoid being “soiled.”  This covered everything from what foods you could eat, to who you could talk to, to who you should just plain avoid like the plague.  Jesus associating with Gentiles at the outset of this chapter would have been a big, “no-no.”  Jesus going to the cemetery and spending time with that “lunatic” who lived there?  There was no doubt, Jesus was contaminated.  

Here’s the thing.  As fellow parents, we might see Jairus’s distress over his daughter’s illness and feel great compassion for him.  After all, what could be worse than to have a young daughter who is that sick?  Still, that was not likely the most powerful reaction in the crowd.  In a world where people thought that bad things happened to people because they did something to deserve those bad things, the crowd would have been treating Jairus as a suspect:  “Maybe we were wrong!  Maybe he’s not such a good guy after all!”  Such thoughts would have flowed through the murmuring crowd.  Maybe folks even cleared a little room around Jairus, just to keep a “safe distance” in case his misfortunes were “catching.” Jesus isn’t having any of that.  He just goes with Jairus.

Well, he goes for a little while, at least.  In my mind’s eye, I imagine the disciples acting as Jesus’ body guards, keeping the mob a step or two back, trying to buy Jesus a little room to breathe.  Then, despite their best efforts, it happens.  Jesus draws up short and stops.  His eyes dart among the people in the crowd.  Then, Jesus speaks, to no one and to everyone:  “Who touched my robe?”  Mark tells us that Jesus felt the energy drain from him.  Is he curious?  Is he angry?  We don’t know.  What we do know is that the disciples give him a pretty “snarky” response:  “What are you talking about?  We’re all getting banged around here—pushed and shoved dozens of times and you want to know who touched you?” The disciples are describing a mob.  Jesus is looking for a person.

We know who he is looking for because Mark has already identified her.  She is a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years straight.  In this world, a woman who was bleeding was just about the most unclean thing around except for a dead body.  Most women would have only been “unclean” once a month.  Twelve years is a long time to be isolated.  She’d been to all the “doctors” who had managed only to “bleed” her bank account.  She is completely desperate.  She’s convinced that her only hope is to lay her hands on Jesus—just a touch of his robe.  Now, she suspects that she is in serious trouble—which is exactly what she, as an “unclean woman,” would have been in had she touched anyone else.

With fear and trembling, she steps forward.  She kneels before Jesus.  She tells him her whole story—a story which, presumably, the crowd was hearing, too.  I wonder, was there a moment of conscience for any in that mob, maybe just a whiff of remorse for how cruel the world had been to her?  Jesus said to her, “Daughter, you took a risk of faith, and now you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed! Be healed of your plague.”

 Three totally different people—a gentile who lives in a graveyard, a man of the cloth with a dying daughter, and a woman who has been bleeding non-stop—are united in their despair.  They are each trapped in their personal hell and their only hope rests in Jesus.  The crazy man with the fractured self is made whole.  (The crowd is angry.) The bleeding woman is healed.  (The crowd, I imagine, is thinking, “If she touched him, she might have touched me, too!) And the despairing father…wait…what about the girl?

That’s the thing.  When you wade into the ocean of human needs, sometimes you get diverted.  Can you imagine the father’s heart being crushed as he watches Jesus pause and care for the woman:  “Jesus…my daughter is dying over here!  Come on!”  If you have ever been overwhelmed with the needs of the “mob” around you, you’ve “been there and done that.” Then, word is passed to Jairus that his daughter is dead.  Jesus is too late.  All hope is lost.  That’s when Jesus says, “Don’t listen to them…Trust me.”

All the way to the house, the crowd murmurs:  “If only he’d been there…” As Jesus and James and John and Peter and Jairus drew close, they would here the ritual wailing that had begun.  If they listened really carefully, they would also hear the gossip that was quietly buzzing in the room: “I wouldn’t have done this…I would have done that” and the like.  When Jesus tells the “wailers” that the girl is not dead but just sleeping, the wailers aren’t happy.  After all, they signed up for a good cry! Jesus chases them away and takes his disciples and the child’s mother and father alone with him into her room.  Finally, Jesus speaks to her:  “Little girl, get up.  And in an instant, a room filled with despair is now flooded with joy.  

 There are a thousand different ways to arrive at the edge of despair.  In that desperate moment, we can join in the cynicism and sarcasm of the crowd around us or we can do the one faithful thing left to do:  drop to our knees and pray to live; ask for help when we never do; just reach out and grab the hem of a robe.  Ignore the mob.  Look for the hand that’s reaching out to you. Listen for the voice that is calling you back to life.