July 3, 2012
If you’ve ever been in a car with me, you know I don’t have a great sense of direction. When I lived in Chicago, I was often guided by the principle that if something was near the lake, it was east, and if not, it was west. But then I moved to Berkeley, where the vast San Francisco Bay marked what was West, and going east meant going AWAY from the water. Now I live on an isthmus, with water in both directions, so I never know where I am! I find consolation in the fact that the writer of Mark’s Gospel is equally confused about direction.
You remember that in last week’s Gospel reading, the disciples were with JC in the boat heading “to the other side”–that is, to Gentile territory–and they were afraid. The lectionary skips over the story about Jesus casting demons out of a man everyone around him thought was crazy, to today’ story about Jesus and the disciples coming BACK from “the other side.” Mark’s Gospel has numerous such crossings, but his descriptions of locations and journeys don’t always match up with a map of the area. I find that consoling.
But I wonder if Mark isn’t deliberately messing with geography to make a larger point–Jesus was no respecter of boundaries that humans want to erect. In his story, Mark shows Jesus crossing and criss-crossing over all kinds of divisions and borders, not to show us that Jesus was a traveling man, but to show us that Jesus did not find his place in the 1st century Judaic honor system. Instead, he went out of his way to eradicate the entire structure.
In that social system, a person’s place on the honor scale determined who a person could interact with and how. The boundaries around one’s place with things like power, wealth, sexual status, and place on the social ladder. You know, not so different from now. It was an elaborate web of factors, and I don’t know all the rules but here are a few that are pertinent to today’s reading.
1) Females and children (and particularly female children) were at the bottom of the social ladder.
2) Females could not approach or talk to or touch males to whom they were not related in public.
3) When women were going through menstruation, they had to segregate themselves from the rest of society because they were considered unclean.
4) Touching a dead body made a person unclean.
Trespassing over any of these boundaries made a person “unclean” and required an elaborate series of purifying rituals to be restored to one’s place on the honor scale again. That’s why Jesus often concludes a healing by telling the person he’s cured “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Being made well involved not only a physical improvement, but a restoration to one’s place in society. All of this explains why what happens in today’s Gospel reading is one giant example of Jesus rapidly and dramatically crossing “over to the other side” again and again until, frankly, you can no longer follow where “this side” ends and “that side” begins.
Jesus is surrounded by a crowd as he disembarks from the boat on his return from “the other side.” And though there is a huge crowd gathered, it parts way for an important religious leader named Jairus who has come seeking Jesus. Jairus shows his respect for Jesus by kneeling at his feet as he begs Jesus to come and heal his daughter who is so sick she’s about to “cross over to the other side.” And Jesus, of course, goes with him.
But on the way, he encounters a person so far off the social ladder that she may not even be on the bottom rung. In society’s terms’ she is always on “the other side” from regular, Temple-going, Bible-believing good people. She’s been bleeding for twelve years. Now 12 is a symbolic number, meaning “enough time.” This anonymous woman has been wrestling with a chronic illness that seems to be getting worse, she’s broke, because she’s spent all the money she had on healthcare, and she’s bleeding. In every way she could be impure by that day’s standards, she’s impure. She shouldn’t have been in the crowd at all, much less touching Jesus! She should have been eternally segregated from society. But after 12 years, she’s had enough. She’s on the very edge of hope, about to fall over into despair. As she sees it, she’s got nothing left to lose. So she reaches out across all the boundaries, journeys through illegal territory, and touches the healer who’s on the other side.
And then everything happens at once. She feels an immediate relief of her symptoms, even as Jesus feels power go out from him. Jesus is not made unclean by the woman’s touch, but she is made clean by his. But that is not the whole story of the healing. As is so often the case, she is not made completely well until she is able to tell her story to Jesus. She violates more social rules by publicly speaking to this man. But Jesus’ conduct literally explodes the whole map. He doesn’t reprimand the woman for touching him. Instead, he calls her “daughter,” immediately conveying upon her family membership, which would have made their interaction safe. And then he tells her that her faith has made her well–higher praise than he has ever given any of his male disciples. (Remember, just last week, we heard Jesus refer to those same disciples as men of “little faith”?) Jesus restores this no-longer-exiled woman to her community, makes her clean again without any rituals. He crosses over the other side and brings her with him, from sickness into health, from shame into honor, from being outside the human family to be inside the very family of God.
But all of this boundary-crossing has interrupted Jesus‘ intended mission–going to Jairus’ house to heal his daughter. While Jesus is still speaking to the unnamed woman, a servant arrives to tell Jairus that his daughter has crossed over to “the other side.” Don’t trouble the teacher any further. But Jesus turns to Jairus and tells him, “Do not fear! Only believe!” And Jairus, who had just witnessed first-hand what believing in Jesus could do, apparently does, because the journey to his home continues.
When they get there, the mourners in the home of Jairus also think that the family’s situation is beyond hope, and they laugh at Jesus when he says the girl is only sleeping. But Jesus crosses over to the other side, bringing his dearest disciples and the girls’ parents with him. When he sees the dead girl–who is 12 years old, you notice, just at the fullness of her time–he crosses over to the other side again. Ignoring the rules that say a person is contaminated by touching a dead person, Jesus reaches out and takes her hand: “Talitha, cum. Little Girl, get up.” And once again, the flow of the natural order of things is reversed. Jesus is not made unclean by touching a dead body. Instead, the little girl is made alive again. And Jesus celebrates her restoration to the family by asking her parents to get her something to eat.
When the scoffing mourners in Jairus’s house saw the girl they were sure was dead up and walking, they must have marveled: “We were so certain she was beyond hope! Maybe we’re not so good at telling the difference between a life with possibilities and a hopeless case.” And, who knows? Maybe some of them crossed over to Jesus’ side.
Perhaps you are here today on the edge. Maybe you have been living with sickness or loneliness or grief or hopelessness about something or someone and you have been struggling for a long time, but they seem to have beaten you and there doesn’t seem to be any more that you can do. But you have heard that Jesus heals. Maybe you reached the fullness of time, the edge of your expectations, but you are here, hoping to grab onto Jesus’ robe. You are here, hoping against hope that there is still a possibility for new life.
And the Good News is, Jesus is here in the crowd, ready to meet you. He is ready to hear your story, which is the beginning of healing both for Jairus and the unknown woman in the Gospel today. Let me point out where you’ll find Jesus, so you know where to grab. He is there in the Bibles and hymnals in the pews, he’s in the water in the baptismal font, he’s in the bread and wine, and he’s here in the people around you. Jesus is all around you, not shrinking from your touch, but waiting for it, reaching for you as you reach for him.
Jesus has crossed over every dividing line that separates us from him. He has given up all securities in order to be where we are. As Paul says in the reading from 2 Corinthians, “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” The fullness of time has indeed come. Jesus, our Emmanuel, has crossed every boundary, broken every rule—even the rule that the dead should stay dead–to bring healing to those who need it. Cross over all your fears and doubts, and reach out and grab onto him. No GPS required.
~ Pastor Susan Schneider
Trinity Lutheran Church 