Could it be that we’ve already taken Jesus more seriously than that? That we’ve spent 2000 years trying to bring the Kingdom closer? And could it also be that we are far from being done? That there are many among us who need to be restored, both to this community and within this congregation? Could it be that there are those in this room who still don’t feel whole and restored? And some who still laugh and disbelieve? And many who feel both at the same time?
The power and the faith of restoration
Proper 8B | Mark 5:21-43
The hero’s arrival
Over the last few weeks, we’ve had the chance to follow in the gospel story a profound image of transformation as we don’t normally see it. We talk about Jesus in these different identities and circumstances: here a healer, there a teacher. And always for us, the Christ. But if we see in this sequence, that goes back to chapter 1 of this story we attribute to Mark, we can see a story of constant revealing.
Last week, I brought us up to speed from the calling of the disciples to the healings and the anointing of these disciples as apostles: to do Jesus’s work in the world. But these healings and exorcisms are a huge part of this opening story: but just as important is the way the disciples, followers, crowds, and individuals handle these healings and exorcisms.
We remember one crowd, back at home, thought Jesus was possessed by a demon because of his command over demons. Jesus has more power than a normal, run-of-the-mill faith healer, apparently. Of course their minds go to the negative, thinking the worst about him. He must be possessed. It can’t be an act of GOD!
Jesus is really freaking people out Share on X
These healings then set up the storm and Jesus’s power to command the storm to stop. Now we’re not just talking about healing and we aren’t just talking command of demonic spirits. We’re talking the elements. We’re talking wind and water. This truly does seem like a superhero Jesus. Like one of the X-Men.
But this isn’t the end or the point.
The other side
When they cross the sea, now sans storm, they are met by a man possessed by many demons, and the demons speak to Jesus, calling themselves Legion. This is right before today’s story. So Jesus draws the demons out of this dude, and puts them into 2,000 pigs, who race off a cliff. It is a strange story – no wonder we’ve skipped it. But its ending is essential for our story. The people run off to tell others what they witnessed. Then it reads:
They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it.Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. But Jesus refused, and said to him, ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.’ And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.
So Jesus is really freaking people out. He freaks out the disciples in the boat by calming the storm. Then he freaks them out by taking care of a whole legion, a whole army of demons. And brought this man, who was essentially sleeping in a graveyard, with the dead (remember how the Jewish people feel about touching dead bodies) and Jesus has restored this man! This is definitely not an ordinary healer.
So they cross back over and the crowds are really starting to gather. Jesus is freaking out some people, but bringing all of these new followers, who are actually starting to see who Jesus really is and what Jesus is about. And if we aren’t sure yet, this is where we see it for real, the real purpose of Jesus is shown in this story about the two daughters: the woman and the girl. One is sick and dying, the other is bleeding, hemorrhaging. Both ritually impure. Both in real trouble. A father, a temple leader, Jairus comes to Jesus for help (notice the man is named, perhaps that clues us in to what he will become after the event). Then a woman brings herself to Jesus for help, grabbing his clothes, if only she could touch him…
There is so much to this story of the two daughters that we could talk about, but let’s instead see what the story is showing.
It introduces these two people who are outside the system, hurting, dying even. And Jesus doesn’t simply heal them, but he brings them back. In the girl’s case, literally back from the dead. Jesus restores them. Brings them back in. This isn’t about their health, exactly, but about their status, about what happens to us when we exclude and drive others away. What happens when even the innocent die. In Jesus, they are restored. Restored to community. Not to existence as a living, breathing person only, but to society, community, the people gathered. To the place in which we are loved and cared for.
Dividing ourselves
We divide ourselves easily along political lines. We exclude. And we self-exclude. One of my own pet-peeves is the grown-up version of “stop hitting yourself”. You know when the bully takes your hand and hits you with it, then claims innocence: “It’s not my hand” and “you should’ve stopped me.”
Whatever it is that divides us, Jesus seeks, instead to restore us. To heal, not only our bodies and our souls, but our relationships and our community. Jesus doesn’t just care about you and only you. Jesus cares about us, together. About our health and our relationship to GOD. About how we best manifest GOD’s kingdom come.
And, despite how we might want to think about that, Jesus’s ministry has been focused on the sick, the possessed, the oppressed, the outsider, and insiders who believe and so restores them. The first 5 chapters have revealed that about Jesus. And, at the same time, Jesus has commissioned his followers (read us) to do that same work of restoring to health (physical, emotional, psychological) and to community. To bring these people back in.
Now, here’s the wrinkle; the hiccup. Check out what it says at the end of our reading, when Jesus goes to restore the girl. He tells the people
‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’
How do they respond?
And they laughed at him.
So what does Jesus do?
Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.
Jesus doesn’t have time for the disbelief and the mockery. We have to get busy with the restoring of this girl. So he brings in the family “and those who were with him”.
This girl, like the woman who touches Jesus in the crowd, is healed and restored because of belief, because of faith. Like the disciples in the boat: have you still no faith? We see Jesus’s great power to restore in tandem with the people’s faith.
Believe like a girl
It seems like this is the hard thing for us: to see this as Jesus’s real work and our real work. To see the restoring of people to community. Of the building up, not just of ourselves and of one another, but of all of creation. That this is the hallmark of Jesus’s power and the part we are called to play as apostles.
It strikes me that the people laughing at Jesus aren’t atheists. They aren’t people who refuse to believe in the almighty, in a singular, powerful GOD. This isn’t people come to mock or obstruct Jesus’s ministry. These are people who have seen signs and come to follow him. These are people who have heard him and found him. And yet they laugh at Jesus for saying the girl isn’t really dead: she’s just sleeping.
What if this is us? Are we laughing at Jesus? At Jesus come among us? Are we these crowds sent away in disbelief? Do we reject this brazen reconstruction of the created order, this reordering of society that dead girls and menstruating women are able to live among us as equals? Next thing you know, they’ll want equal pay! We better do something about that. Wait, there aren’t only men in the room? What are all these women doing here?
Could it be that we’ve already taken Jesus more seriously than that? That we’ve spent 2000 years trying to bring the Kingdom closer? And could it also be that we are far from being done? That there are many among us who need to be restored, both to this community and within this congregation? Could it be that there are those in this room who still don’t feel whole and restored? And some who still laugh and disbelieve? And many who feel both at the same time?
This is the power of Jesus’s healing, restoring. This is the faith of the people seeking healing and restoring. This is the witness of the Apostles who will be responsible to keep healing and restoring.
Which means this is our work. To follow Jesus, not with a static belief that Jesus lives, but full of Jesus’s restoring power. To be fools for faith. To risk the mockery and the ridicule of those who don’t get it. Those who want to get it, but aren’t there yet. Those who don’t have eyes to see and ears to hear it. They don’t get to join Jesus in that room to witness the restoring to life of this little girl.
Don’t you want to be in that room? Isn’t that what we really want? Not the cool detachment of a popular reflection of faith, the cynic laughing on the other side of the door, but the ridiculous manifestation of a transformative and restorative faith! That’s what I want! That’s what St. Stephen was martyred for. That’s what our forebears proclaimed in the midst of the Civil War and our people preach right now to the homeless and side-by-side with the Salvation Army. Let’s get in that room!
May GOD provoke us to even deeper faith, more prophetic speaking to our world, and grant us the very power to restore this community to truly epic wholeness. Amen.
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