Reading: Mark 5-6, Psalm 97
You ever have a favorite word? I remember having several over the course of my life. When I was still a political science major at Portland State, I got feedback from a professor once that I must love the word “aspect” more than most things. But really, the word aspect has so many aspects, how could I not use it? When I was too very young I, like many children, must have found great comfort in asking, “Why?” As a manager at a Target store many years later I found that once again “Why” became a favorite word.
Today we continue Mark’s dash through the story of Jesus, the Son of God. One of Mark’s favorite words is immediately. If you haven’t noticed it yet, try reading the a few chapters of Mark out loud. You will hear yourself saw immediately more than you have in the months all in one sitting. I’m not sure of all the reasons for Mark’s extensive use of immediately, but as least some of it has got to do with expressing the pace of Jesus’ life. Mark wants his readers to know that Jesus is in motion. He is decisive. He takes action. He makes up his mind and then he acts. He’s not here to dink around and chat, but to usher in the Kingdom of God.
Except there is this one story where he stops in the middle of what he is doing. We have read how Jesus healed sick, paralyzed, demon-possessed, and leprous people. We have heard him tell stories about how the coming Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, leaven in dough, and tiny grains- it is almost impossible to see, and its growth comes from no human action, but from God. It is when the Kingdom has arrived that humans get to participate in what is going on. That is a bit of an aside, but Mark has Jesus act and speak at a furious pace. He is going, going, going. He’s on his way to another town to heal a dying girl, the daughter of Jairus, who was apparently well known enough to merit being named in the book, when he stops.
He stops. He looks around. He’s surrounded by people, pressing on his from all quarters, and he asks Who touched me? Imagine for a moment that you are one of the disciples, or worst of all Jairus. What is this fast moving, decisive, and certain miracle worker doing? All this time he’s been going on like there is no time to lose, and now he stops in the middle of a crowd to ask a nonsense question.
We, of course, know the answer. Someone has touched Jesus. Someone whose condition mandates they be wholly separate from society until healed. Someone who is, in ancient categories, a complete outsider. Let’s recall for a moment where Jesus has been. He just returned from the other side of the Sea of Galilee, where he really impressed some Gentiles. This is a theme we saw in the book of Matthew- Jesus goes first to his own people, but then to the Gentiles and shows that he is the Messiah for them too. Here Mark has already set up the challenge that Jesus is the Son of God, a title claimed by the Caesars. Now he is healing demon possessed Gentiles. When he returns to the Jewish side of the Sea, we get this story about how a leader of the Jewish Synagogue begs for Jesus’ help, but is interrupted by an outsider of a different category. This woman is unclean. She is, through no fault of her own, impure in the eyes of the Law. It is worth remembering that impurity wasn’t exactly the same as sin in the books of Moses. It was not disobedience, it was an imperfection that prevented one from interacting with the God of Israel. Impurity could not live in the presence of God, so for their own protection, impure people were excluded from the community until they could be purified. Except this woman’s impurity was perpetual. It went on for years. While impurity was a daily reality for the people of Israel, for this woman it was a perpetual reality, cutting her off from her people, a shameful reality.
Until she sees Jesus, and decides to act. It’s not like she hadn’t tried before. Mark tells us she did everything she knew to do, but nothing worked. Now she is willing to risk reaching out and touching this guy who seems to be the Messiah, despite her impurity. And it works! One can imagine that she intends now to simple slink away, no one the wiser that she has violated his purity by touching him, and simply go on with life in gratitude. But Jesus, fast moving Jesus, won’t let that happen. He stops. He looks. He asks Who touched me? It is fess up time. Now healed, the woman comes forward in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. The whole truth. Nothing left out of her shameful story. And he accepts her. Calls her daughter. Says she is healed of her disease.
What has happened here? The fast moving, high powered King of Kings has just stopped, looked at, and conversed with someone who was impure. Then he calls her daughter and takes the time to tell her she will be well. This is so odd for the book of Mark that he must have wanted his readers to notice it. Jesus is not exactly who you think he is. He is the powerful King, yes. But he is also the Good Shepherd. Mark doesn’t use the term here, but the story begs for the comparison. He takes time away from the powerful to focus on the outcast. Now, we need to be careful to remember that he does not abandon the powerful either- Jairus’ daughter is healed in even more dramatic fashion than anyone expects when Jesus raises her from death. That Jesus took the time to notice the outcast does not mean he ignored the plight of the insider. Mark is painting a picture of Jesus as the Lord of everyone- the Jew and the Gentile, the pure and the impure, the whole and the sick, the living and the dead.