A New Testament professor in seminary teaches her students
to read the Gospels between the lines and behind the words. There's so much
meaning there, she would say, in the text, right before your eyes and yet we
quite often miss it entirely. For example, last week’s reading, the crossings
over the sea: if we focused more on the small picture, what was happening to
people, right then, when Jesus arrived at his destination. There was always
plenty to concentrate on, but the bigger picture might escape your attention.
Last week we spoke of the sea being that liminal space,
dangerous, full of fear and the unknown.
It was a place of boundaries, so what does it mean that one side of the
sea was Jewish territory, and the other Gentile? Stepping into the unknown there is tension and
a risk, maybe even danger. Jesus and the disciples are going somewhere less
hospitable, less comfortable, less safe. If you were a first-century Jewish
Christian, you probably would not have needed anyone to set the scene for you?
In the hearing of this Gospel you would have felt the
tension as you listened to the story. “Think of border crossings into North
Korea or Syria or Iran today: the danger they hold and the international crises
they provoke. And what about the border crossings on our minds every day,
during this most recent immigration crisis?
The storms and the risks are something we understand
metaphorically as we face the challenges in our life as the church, taking the
risk of opening ourselves up and reaching out to the other. It wasn't an easy
crossing for the disciples, either.
“This tension runs underneath the narrative in many of the
stories in the Gospel of Mark. After spending time on Jesus' preaching with
words, Mark turns to the way Jesus preached with his actions, in a sense,
showing, not just telling people what the reign of God looks like. Jesus goes
back and forth across the sea, doing many works of wonder and yet not always
receiving a warm reception. Another theme that runs throughout these stories is
really a way of describing that reception: faith, or no faith. Faith, or
fearfulness. Faith, or confusion or hard-headedness or maybe even
hard-heartedness.”[1]
The Gospel this week sits on that point between faith and
fear, faith and despair and even faith beyond hope. There are two stories in
one here, both of them taking place on "this" side of the sea, the
familiar side of the sea, you might say Jesus is with his people for he has
just returned from Gadarene from Gentile territory where he met and healed the
madman. In kind the villagers, perhaps politely but definitely with fear, asked
Jesus and his followers to leave. “Fear, not rejoicing, was the response of the
people who witnessed the spectacular and very public healing of a man who had
unclean spirits; surprisingly, they didn't flock to Jesus in hope of more
miracles.”[2]
This week's passage contains two stories. “Both stories
involve women in crisis--in fact, we don't know them by their names but by
their needs--both "daughters" of Abraham, not outsiders to begin with
but now both subject to the taboos around the mysterious power of life (blood)
and the even more mysterious (and seemingly unconquerable) power of death.
There were those who believed that bleeding women and dead girls should be
avoided, at the risk of conveying their uncleanness to others.”[3]
“The number twelve is significant in Jewish thought (for
example, the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles), so it's no coincidence
that the woman has been bleeding (and therefore cut off from life) for twelve
years. Richard Swanson says that blood is "the place that God's first
breath is understood to inhabit a human being, the place also from which we
give life back." He finds it intriguing that the word "flow" could
also be translated as "river," as "this woman's life is swept
along by a condition that persists for far too many years" (Provoking the
Gospel of Mark).”[4]
In "Faith and the Vulnerability of Children",
Brooks Berndt points out that “The theme running throughout this narrative is
that of faith: faith in God despite the circumstances. Scholars have suggested
that the repeated use of the number twelve for the age of the girl and the
duration of the woman's hemorrhaging suggests that this story is ultimately a
metaphor for the faith of Israel with its twelve tribes.”[5]
So, we have Jesus landing on the shore, he is mobbed, then
Jairus a leader of the synagogue pleads with Jesus to heal his daughter, and
then Jesus is on the move form point A, the shore, to point B, Jairus house. It
is here in this in between space that Jesus’ cloak is touched. Not even his physical body but his
cloak. Jesus doesn't permit this touch
to go unnoticed, he does not let it remain in an in between space, anonymous,
something that just happens in passing.
He stops he scans the crowd and asks, “who touched my clothes?”
Jesus “lets himself
be sidetracked from hurrying to the synagogue leader's home long enough to find
the person who has reached out to him with a touch that's more specific, more
intentional, than merely jostling him in the crowd. Perhaps the crowd wanted to
get near a celebrity, but this woman was reaching for her life. Jesus felt both
her weariness and her deep hope. How could he simply walk away?”[6]
Life has been renewed, a miracle has happened and again it
happened in that in between space, that liminal space between here and
there. What’s the saying…something about
its not the destination but the journey? This liminal space has become a destination,
a place of learning, a space of healing, a space of faith beyond hope. It is
for that very reason that we need to stop, breathe and take notice. Mark is telling us where we least expect
it…in our rush from point A to point B…miracles happen.
The next nameless woman has just reached adulthood at twelve
years old (that means the older woman has been bleeding during this girl's
entire lifetime). However, an unknown illness has struck her down. This leads
her father, who in the best of ancient fashion does get a name, to seek out
Jesus in his desperate search for help.
We know this man is "an important person," a
religious leader in the synagogue. “Since first-century synagogues were local
communal institutions, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for a
centralized group that determined what took place inside of them. Although
scholars used to assume that the Pharisees (the likely precursors to the
rabbis) were in charge of synagogues, most first-century sources identify
elders, priests, and archisynagogoi (Greek for “heads of synagogues”) as the
leaders of synagogues (Philo, Hypothetica 7.12-3, Theodotus Inscription, Mark
5:22-23). Rabbinic leadership of synagogues (which is what we are familiar with
today) was limited in the first few centuries C.E. and didn’t crystallize until
the medieval period.”[7]
So here we have a leader of basically a slightly organized
study group. Since there was no central
control over the synagogues Israel often kept an eye on them and tried to keep
them in control. Knowing he may have been being watched didn’t matter at this
point. “His precious child's illness has reduced him to falling to the ground
in front of a traveling folk healer in a last-ditch effort to prevent the worst
from happening. This man's name is known to us: Jairus. Megan McKenna tells us
that his name (onomati 'Iairos) in Greek is "a clue to what is going to
happen": it means "he who will be awakened, or he is
enlightened" (On Your Mark: Reading Mark in the Shadow of the Cross).”[8]
This man in-spite of risk of being seen as encouraging
Jesus’ ministry, in-spite of knowing that anything could take a person’s life
and most likely at any given moment something would. This was before Science
was able to intervene if oyu got sick more likely than not you died. John Pilch
observes that in Jesus' time "60 percent of live births usually died by
their mid-teens" (The Cultural World of Jesus Year B) This was just a
fact. Many adults did not want to get
too attached ot their children for this very reason and for a man to seem to
care so greatly for a daughter in this time is truly amazing.
“The gift of a child must have seemed too precarious to
invest in wholeheartedly, yet this man couldn't bear to lose his little girl
even, Charles Campbell writes, "at a time when daughters were not valued
as much as sons" (The Lectionary Commentary: The Gospels). By going to
this itinerant preacher-healer who was already in trouble with the authorities
(authorities like him, in fact, his colleagues and perhaps even his friends),
he risks being ridiculed, and he also risks missing the last few precious
moments in his daughter's life.”[9]
This man was on life’s journey from point A to Point B. He knew what was important. He knew what was
right and what was wrong. He knew the
law. He knew that this Jesus was a trouble maker. He knew the talk against him. But then in the
middle of his planned-out life his daughter becomes ill. In this in between
time this unplanned time arises fear, arises desperation, arises re-evaluation.
This Jesus who was more a trouble make and a nuisance has now become his
refuge, his only hope. Then to make it more poignant as they are on their way
from the shore to his house even his hop dies. His servants come to tell him
don’t bother the master for your daughter has died. “when the news arrives of
his daughter's death. Jesus, Barbara Brown Taylor observes, then preaches the
"shortest sermon of his career: 'Do not fear,' he says to the
grief-besotted man, 'only believe.'"[10]
Now there is a sermon; “do not fear, only believe!” In the
midst of unbelievable odds, in the liminal place where fear and confusion
reign, do not fear just believe. What ever troubles your soul be it small or be
it huge, do not fear, only believe. When
life catches you off guard, when you are just trying to get from point A to
point B move forward without fear step boldly in belief.
I do not believe I can add any more to Jesus words here…If
you never remember anything I said or anything I said …that is great as long as
you do what Jesus has taught us here Do not fear only Believe. And when it is
all over, when we have gotten through whatever we need to get through remember
the last part of the gospel get up, walk and have something to eat! Yes, that’s
all remember top get up, walk have something to eat and do not fear only believe…If
you can do that you can do anything…amen!
[1] http://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds_july_1_2018
[2]
Ditto
[3] http://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds_july_1_2018
[4]
Ditto
[5] http://www.ucc.org/faith_and_the_vulnerability_of_children
[6] http://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds_july_1_2018
[7] https://www.bibleodyssey.org/places/related-articles/first-century-synagogues
[8] http://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds_july_1_2018#mark
[9]
Ditto
[10]
ditto
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