Her Day - A Sermon on Mark 5:21-43

Days are funny things. When we’re kids or teenagers they seem to either drag on forever or disappear in a flash. Just think about those painful, excruciating last days of school before summer break. Surely the principal did something to make the clocks in the school move slower. Or what about those long cross country road trips with your family to see your Aunt Bertha and your Uncle George. Who among us hasn’t cried out in despair from the back seat of a stuffy station wagon or mini van - “Are we there yet?” Those days seem to last an eternity. But our trip to the amusement park or our summer vacation or our very first date seems to end just as quickly as it began.

As adults, days quickly turn into weeks; weeks into months, and months into years. And before we know it we are shuffling around saying to anyone who will listen, “I can’t believe its 2009 already. It seems like it was 1989 just yesterday?”

Whether we are kids, teenagers, or adults we all know that days can be funny things. They can be boring, exciting, painful, and full of the unexpected. Mark 5:21-43 is the story of an unusual day when desperation, suffering, and death met with the unexpected.

The woman woke early on this day. A glint of sun-light tinged the purple horizon. For twelve years she had fought the sickness that plagued her body. She had nothing left to give. No more money, no more time, no more energy, no more self-respect. The end was coming soon. She could feel it in the shortness of her breathe. She could see it in the face of passing strangers – their stares lasting longer than they should. Today was it; either the end or the beginning. It all depended on him. Could he help? Would he help? She had heard stories about him; amazing and miraculous stories. Some folks said he had cured a man with a deformed, mangled hand. Others said his voice alone could free the soul of evil, cleanse the skin of lepers, and heal the legs of the lame. She wondered if he could heal the shame and the isolation her disease had caused her.

She attempted to eat a few chunks of stale bread. Her sunken cheeks and rust colored teeth strained against the breads rocky surface. She dipped the bread into a small clay mug filled with wine. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes as she took a bite, closed her eyes, and swallowed. She would need her energy if she were going to reach him. The crowds that had begun to gather around him were becoming as large as the rumors they were producing. She would rest, build up her strength until he arrived. The din of the crowd would let her know.

Sometime in the afternoon, she began to hear her neighbors rustling about, calling out to one another. Their voices punctuated with anticipation and excitement, “He’s down by the lake. Come quickly. He’s down by the lake.”

She slowly rose to her feet. She took a few steps towards the door and leaned against the side of the opening. With a dry rasp, she simply said, “Please God. Please. Just one touch. Just one touch.”

The walk to the lake was slow and plodding, but otherwise uneventful with the whole village at the lakeshore. From a distance, she saw a throng of people ebbing and flowing with the movement of the man named Jesus. Without realizing it, her pace had quickened and her heart was thumping in her ears. She approached the outer edge of the crowd and reached out with both arms trying to pry open the wall of human flesh. The layers began to part more easily as more people recognized her. No One, No One wanted to be touched by a woman like her. Not with her disease. With a final reach and side-ways squeeze, she lurched beyond the crowd into the small empty space that had formed around him.

As she gathered herself, a man crying out fell at the feet of Jesus. The pain and desperation in his voice pierced the air, silencing the crowd in a single breath. “My daughter is dying. At any moment she will be lost forever. Please, Please, come and place your hands on her. I have seen how you’ve healed people in the synagogue. I know you can do it. I know you can do it. Please we can’t wait another second.”

She watched as Jesus took the man by the arm drew him to his feet and set out towards his house. The space around Jesus quickly closed. No one was going to miss the synagogue leader’s daughter being healed. That he of all people had fallen at the feet of Jesus. The crowd was in a frenzy. She stumbled forward crashing into jostling bodies. This was her only chance. With all of the people crushed against him, Jesus would never know that a person of her status and condition had touched him. With one final surge, all of the despair, disappointment, and isolation of the past twelve years drove her within reach of Jesus.

Her right hand found the tassels of his cloak, and she squeezed her hand until she could feel the woolen threads burning her palm. The tide of the crowd suddenly shifted and her grip was broken. As she rode the wave away from Jesus, her hand throbbed and her palm tingled with the memory of his tassels. Twelve years of suffering and torment healed in a single moment.

Lost in her shock, the woman hadn’t noticed that the crowd had stopped pressing forward. Silence began to sweep over the crowd as the voice of Jesus repeatedly asked, “Who touched me? Who touched me?” A space around Jesus began to form as he turned looking long into the faces of those nearest him. Concerned for the synagogue leader, the close followers of Jesus grew impatient. One of them barked out with thick sarcasm, “Who touched you? The crowd touched you.” Ignoring the comment, Jesus watched as the woman stepped into the space before him. She trembled unable to meet his gaze. Before a word was spoken, she dropped to her knees and began to sob. Her body heaved up and down. Her tears cascaded drop by drop onto the feet of Jesus. A worn hand marked with old scars and split nails tenderly, lightly took her below her chin and raised her face until her eyes met his. The touch of his hand and the look in his eyes seized her. In a rush of words, she told Jesus about her twelve-year struggle and how she the filthy outcast had believed that his touch alone could heal her. At this, Jesus bent down placed his hands on her cheeks and said with a catch in his voice, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

At the same instant a commotion erupted among the crowd immediately behind Jesus. Jairus’ daughter had died. Messengers had come to break the news to Jairus and to tell Jesus don’t bother. But Jesus ignored them. Still cupping the woman’s face in his hands, he looked at Jairus back down at the woman. And again raising his head towards Jairus, Jesus said with gentle confidence, “Don’t be afraid, just believe. Don’t be afraid, just believe.”

The same faith kneeling at Jesus’ feet was the same faith that would raise Jairus’ twelve year old daughter from the dead. Days can be funny things.
Maybe today is the day that your life will change forever. Maybe today Jesus wants you to grab onto the tassels of his cloak and be healed. Maybe today Jesus wants to bring life out of death. “Don’t be afraid, just believe.”

Stop Frontin

The website UrbanDictionary.com defines the word "front" as "to put on a fake or false personality; not keeping it real." A few weeks ago my wife and I were getting ready for bed when I told her that I felt like I was playing around with Christianity. I felt like my commitment to Christ was something determined by my mood-at-the-moment or when it was convenient. My wife responded, "Sometimes I wonder if I am only a Christian because you are one." I am a pastor, but it's hard not putting up a Christian front when you have everything you could ever need and your vocation is to be "religious." I live a life of comfort, ease, and often excess that millions around the globe can scarcely imagine. Just last week our church hosted its annual week long revival/pot-luck fest, and every evening I left physically bloated and spiritually conflicted. In his mercy, God was present throughout our daily worship services, but my mind and my heart repeatedly wondered if I would be so readily "spiritual" or "religious" were the revival held in a refugee camp in Darfur with men, women, and children starving to death all around me. I want to claim that I long to come to the end of "American" or "Western" religiosity and that I long to know and to be know by Christ with stark, unpretentious authenticity. But there is one problem; I'm not sure I'm ready to meet, follow, and serve God on his terms. What if God is not how the American Church has defined him? What if he really is calling me to lose my life in order to save it?

War and Violence in the Old Testament

It is essential to begin the discussion of war and violence in the Old Testament with a central premise in mind. God is the creator and possessor of the universe and all that is within it. In a real sense it is his prerogative to do with his creation as he sees fit. With that said, the one true God spoke the universe into existence and put humanity at its center in an act of self-giving, other embracing love. Moreover, humanity was invited by God to be his people living in his presence and in his place as long as they live as he had intended. Tragically, humanity chose to live by its own rules, a decision that prevented them from being God’s people living in his presence and in his place. As soon as humanity was separated from him, God initiated a rescue mission to return humanity to his presence and place, but that meant meeting humanity in their violence, corruption and brokenness. God began to form a people who would eventually bless all of humanity, but the formation process required God to literally reclaim a physical place and a spiritual place in the people’s lives. For hundreds of years, the people who would become the people of Israel had been enslaved in Egypt worshipping many gods. They needed a king who could lead them, protect them, and teach them. The God whose very words set the foundation of the world and the expanse of the sky would be that king. He would take back the land and the people that were rightfully his so that they could live in his presence.

God commands the people of Israel to annihilate the specific peoples occupying the Promise Land because they were physically and spiritually threatening and polluting God's once good creation. Deuteronomy 20:16-18 states in no uncertain terms, "But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them-- the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites-- just as the LORD your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the LORD your God." God commanded, allowed, and supported grave and unspeakable acts of violence as a means to protect, form, and nurture a people whom God would use to bless all of the nations. God had begun a rescue mission to reclaim and restore his people in his place and in his presence. But he would need his people to embody and reflect his character and nature. The people of Israel were incapable of fulfilling such a calling while they were held captive by the social, religious, and cultural practices of the prevailing tribes, nations, and people groups in the land of Canaan.

This is vital - God meets people where they are in order to reveal, rebuke, and redeem. Thus, God met the people of Israel through the social, religious, and cultural practices of their day and time so that he could reveal his character and purposes. Furthermore, as God revealed more of his character and purposes he revealed a higher social, religious, and cultural standard that did not simply critique or rebuke former practices but ultimately sought to redeem them. It therefore follows that God would utilize the tribal practices of warfare in the Ancient Near East to stake a physical and spiritual claim for the people he would eventually command to "love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). Peter Craigie provides helpful insight when he writes:

If God is to meet man in history and act on his behalf, it must be in the world as it is. But the world which is, is a world which is sinful, for God has given to man a certain freedom. Therefore, if God is to work on behalf of man in the world, He must give the appearance to man of using sinful means - He must seem to be unethical in his behavior...War cannot be looked at apart from man...To say that God uses war is to say in effect that God uses sinful man in His purposes. In the Old Testament, if we were to expect to see God working in what we might call an absolutely 'ethical' manner, we would in effect be denying the possibility of seeing His work at all."

The story of God in the Old Testament is not a flat script with no depth or growing edges; rather, the narrative of God is shaped upon the revelation of God, a revelation whose sole concern is to restore God's people to his place and in his presence. The New Testament captures the climax of God's story in its portrayal of Jesus the one who is "the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being" (Hebrews 1:3). The apostle Paul writes in Colossians 1:19 that in Jesus the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. In the person of Jesus, God revealed with living, breathing clarity the extent of his love, the depth of his character, and the breadth of his conviction. In Christ, we see the fullest revelation of God's essence, his heart, and his intentions for humanity and all of creation. It is Christ who provides the means for God to gather his people in his place and in his presence. Through our faith (i.e. trust, obedience, and belief) in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus we become in the present moment God's people who are filled with his Spirit/presence, but our faith also draws back the veil of the future allowing us a glimpse of our eternal home. "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away" (Revelation 21:1-4). The presence of war and violence in the Old Testament does not impugn the nature and character of God; it impugns the human heart void of obedience to God. For it was God in the person of Jesus who took upon himself - upon his own body - the evil, the brutality, and the corruption of human history in order that we could be who God always intended, where God always intended, and with whom God always intended.