Deuteronomy 15.7-11
2 Corinthians 8.1-9, 13-15
Psalm 112
Mark 5.22-24, 35-43
The theme of generosity and giving runs through today’s lessons. In Deuteronomy we heard an admonition to lend without being concerned that someone might find a loophole to avoid paying us back. In the psalm, we heard the praises of those who deal generously with the poor, and in second Corinthians we hear St. Paul speak highly of the willingness of the Macedonian churches to share what little they had. And in the story from Mark’s gospel Jesus gives the gift of life to a young girl. However, the circumstances of this act of generosity on Jesus’ part are a bit strange. Jesus is a secretive and perhaps even reluctant giver.
First, we should slow down Mark’s rapid-fire narrative of Jesus’ ministry and dwell on the Jesus we meet there. He’s very different from Jesus as he is often imagined and portrayed. He’s strikingly different than the Jesus we see, e.g., in movies. There, at least before passion week, he’s always in control; he’s the serene holy man calmly dispensing his spiritual wisdom to the respectfully attentive crowds. I find that Jesus pretty eerie and not particularly human or lovable. The real, historical Jesus who all but jumps out at us from the pages of Mark’s gospel is radically different from that sentimental paragon of pastoral religiosity. There’s nothing serene about his situation: conflict, chaos and confusion follow him wherever he goes. Just in the several chapters that lead up to today’s story his cousin and mentor John the Baptizer has been thrown into prison by the authorities, Jesus has been misunderstood by everyone, even his own family and closest friends, he’s been accused of being both crazy and demon possessed, and he’s had some harrowing encounters with those who really were possessed by demons. The religious powers have already taken note of him, decided he’s a threat to them, and started to plot against him. The crowds from the towns of north Galilee and the surrounding countryside at least are wildly enthusiastic about him, or at least about his power to heal the sick. Excited mobs pursue him, but for the most part Jesus tries to avoid them. Jesus and his disciples are harassed and harried. Getting away to eat or pray or simply to get one’s bearings becomes a major concern. These tumultuous crowds are scary; on occasion there’s a real danger of being crushed and they have to escape for their physical safety. Maybe the image to have is of the well-meaning American tourist who walks through Calcutta handing out dollar bills to beggars; almost instantly a surging crowd gathers and he’s engulfed by a swelling mass of desperate people. Or one of those horrific scenes of a rock concert or soccer match where people are trampled by the hysterical crowd.
It’s not entirely clear what it was, but after Jesus is baptized by John, he had a plan: he sets out with a specific message to preach: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” Part of his agenda seems to have been provoking certain highly symbolic confrontations with the religious authorities, and these sometimes involved healings. However, the healings, as such, seem to be incidental to his mission as he originally conceived it. Typically, he does them not because of his understanding of his task of preaching the kingdom of God, but despite it. In part, I think, this is because the people’s frenzied response to them threatens to derail Jesus’ prophetic mission. Jesus does not want the masses to proclaim him Messiah and thus bring down the wrath of Rome. Also, there were in first century Palestine well-established categories of faith healer or miracle worker and Jesus refuses to be understood in terms of them. He has come to understand himself and his role as absolutely unique.
But there’s a world of need around him. The hapless, helpless people want to get to Jesus. As we know from Mark, again and again Jesus is moved by pity and helps. Jesus gives, Jesus heals, even when it is against his better judgment to do so; even when doing so promises to exacerbate an already bad situation and put his mission in jeopardy. Right there we see who Jesus is: God being there for us in the mess of unruly human need.
Things move to a new level in today’s story, though with little fanfare. It looks like one more interruption, one more frightened individual pleading for help. This time it’s Jairus, identified by Mark as a leader of the synagogue; he wants Jesus to come heal his daughter. Once again, Jesus does not seem inclined to do it; our text reports that Jairus “begged him repeatedly,” and he agrees to go. Not surprisingly, even his interruptions have interruptions. On his way to Jairus’ house Jesus is accosted by a hemorrhaging woman, and he heals her. Meanwhile, the little girl dies and messengers bearing the news arrive; Jesus need not bother to come. He goes anyway, contending that the child is only asleep, not really dead.
There have been various takes on this: the child was actually
comatose and the people mistakenly thought she was dead. Or she really
was dead but Jesus refers to death as “sleep” to teach that, for those
who have faith in him, it is a temporary and not ultimately fearful matter.
Neither of these interpretations are at all plausible. The only reading
that makes sense to me in the context of Mark’s gospel is that the child
is dead, Jesus knows it, and knows he is going to bring her back, but also
knows that if people find out he’s done this his mission will be at even
greater risk, the crowds will, he fears, go entirely berserk if they figure
out that he can raise the dead.
We might have thought that Jesus had a great opportunity here and missed it. To retrieve from death itself the child of a religious leader might have significantly advanced Jesus’ ministry, but he has no use for even this demonstration of his authority. Thus he orders the child’s parents not to tell people what he’s done, but instead to promote the fiction that the child hadn’t been dead. We get the idea that Jesus feels he probably shouldn’t have done it, but that he can’t help himself when faced with these people’s need and loss.
Mark’s story reminds me of a story from the Pali Canon of Tibetan Buddhism: Kisa Gotami was a woman who had lost her first-born son. Grief-stricken and carrying his dead body, she roamed the streets looking for medicine or an antidote that could restore him to life. Finally, she took the body to the Buddha. The Buddha listened to her pleas with compassion and said, "Go enter the city, make the rounds of the entire city, beginning at the beginning, and in whatever home no one has ever died, from that house fetch tiny grains of mustard seed." Kisa Gotami went from house to house to find a mustard seed from a household untouched by death. She soon realized that the task the Buddha had set was impossible, and she brought the body of her son to the cremation grounds. Gotami returned to the Buddha for instruction on the truth. The Buddha taught her that there is only one unchangeable law in the universe: All things are impermanent. His aim was to free the grieving mother from her attachment to this particular, ephemeral life and bring her into the peace, the wise detachment, that accepts the inevitability of death and loss.
How starkly the compassion of Jesus differs from that of the compassionate Buddha. The Buddha is at peace. He’s not plunged into the sea of human need and suffering; he calmly floats above it. He’s portrayed as having found the way out of it and his compassion lies in his willingness to show that way to others. Jesus has no way out. He sees the suffering of those around him, the poor, the sick, the possessed, the dying, and his only response is to make it his own. He descends into it; he's undone; he dies. Whatever his initial self-understanding, whatever his timetable for revealing the will of his Father to the house of Israel, Jesus’ love for us draws him deeper and deeper into the overwhelming need of sinful humanity. He is pursued and pressed upon by our need and finally broken for us. His is not a peaceful way of acceptance and escape, but the way that bears the pain of relentless commitment to weak and sinful human beings. In him we see the very righteousness of God: steadfast faithfulness and implacable love for lost creatures.
Jesus the man of sorrows is the reality in this world of flesh
and blood of what God always is: self-giving love. The God who was in Christ,
reconciling the world to himself, is the God who does not stick to the
plan, nor follow the rules, nor in the end permit anything to get in the
way of his coming to us, being for us and with us, bringing our lives out
of death and giving us himself.
Amen.