Being Rickulous

“How many times do I have to tell you!”  On occasions kids do not get it, which is one reason why parents and teachers and coaches wear out that exclamation.  On other occasions kids do not want to get it, which is the other reason why the same adults wear out that exclamation.  In this passage you can almost hear Jesus using those words.  The difference between the disciples and the Pharisees is the difference between “We don’t get it” and “We don’t want to get it.”  The disciples wanted to understand, but their sensory overload kept interfering.  The Pharisees did not want to understand; they wanted to win.  What is the difference between a soft head and a hard heart?  It’s okay if as followers of Christ we sometimes have soft heads, as long as we also have soft hearts.  We will not always get it.  The problem comes when we don’t want to get it.  Hardening of the spiritual arteries is a crippling but reversible condition.

During a physical examination, a doctor becomes unnervingly familiar with a patient’s body.  Eyes look where we would just as soon eyes don’t, and fingers go where we KNOW we wish they wouldn’t.  This miracle plays out like a physical examination.  Well, except for the spit.  What is Jesus up to now?  I have two thoughts.  First, Jesus knew His way into this man, and that knowledge cued Him to meet him at the precise point of his need.  Going behind a rock where nobody could see, touching and spitting and sighing.  Jesus knows His way into us, and knows how we need what we need.  Second, Jesus defies mass production.  Maybe He healed this man like He did because He knew people were already pressing Him into a mold.  When the church begins cookie cutting Jesus according to standardized specifications, Jesus is liable to spit and change things up dramatically.  In other words, every time you are certain you have God’s ways figured out….

The Greek language tells us the disciples were tortured in rowing.  I know how that works.  I have vast experience wearing myself to a nub while rowing against life.  Sometimes it’s unavoidable, as storms do pop up.  But sometimes it’s exceedingly avoidable.  Jesus faithfully comes to us while we are expending every ounce of energy we have.  In this passage He did something about the external storm.  That’s more the exception than the rule; external storms tend to run their course.  It’s the internal storms that concern me, and Jesus specializes in those.  May you and I learn to take our raw hands off the oars, let Jesus climb into our rocking vessel, and do what only He can do.

I have this thing about crowds.  They can unnerve me.  If it’s a phobia, it’s an intermittent one.  And it’s not the most convenient problem for a pastor to have.  So as I watch this passage unfold I sympathize with the disciples and Jesus.  They try to get away but they cannot.  It looks like the crowd runs around the Sea of Galilee to intercept them, which is impressive but annoying.  Now we see one of the many ways Jesus is different from us.  The disciples and I view the crowd as an intrusion.  We want Jesus to send them away.  Jesus views the crowd as an opportunity.  His heart goes out to them.  He teaches them.  He feeds them with resources the disciples gather.  The next time I experience what I interpret to be an intrusion, I want the Spirit of God to remind me of this passage.  How about you?

I asked our church family, “Who would you rather be…Herod or John?”  As we weigh our answer, we need to factor in how often we take advantage of the truth that our head is attached to the rest of our body.  Because John lost his.  I was startled at the answer by one of our people.  “John lost his head, but Herod lost his soul.”  When you compare and contrast these two figures, the blurriness diminishes.  Herod was cluttered by his internal conflicts and his egocentric choices.  John was as uncluttered as it gets.  He knew who he was, he knew who God is, and he knew where he stood.  How ironic that John lost far less than Herod? 

When our daughter was a little girl, she and I loved to wrestle.  We devised a way to manage the size and strength inequity.  Whenever she wanted to, Amanda could push my nose.  And whenever she did that I would immediately collapse into a faint and she would celebrate her victory over the giant.  She recently revealed that, even at age seven, she believed it actually worked. Mark 6:1-6 is among the most frightening passages in the Bible.  Jesus traveled back to His hometown.  The people around whom He grew up totally shut Him down.  They neutralized Him.  They pushed in his nose. We can do that to God?  Yes.  Regardless of our age, we can neutralize the potency of Christ in our lives.  It’s not because we are so powerful.  It’s because we are so willful, and God has chosen to not supersede our free will.  It’s good news, really, because it means in our freedom we can choose companionship with Christ.  It also means we can render Christ impotent in our lives. How about this?  “And because of their faith, He could do anything he wanted among them.  And He was amazed at the willingness to trust Him.” I hope you and I can work on rewriting how this story plays out in our lives.

Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you.  Go in peace, and be freed from your suffering.”  That’s Mark 5:34.  “Daughter” means Jesus changed her identity.  To a woman who had been systematically disconnected from relationship for years and years, He said “daughter.”  He said, “You and I belong to each other.”  He restored her to community. “Your faith has healed you” means Jesus gave her credit.  This is like exclaiming, “You did it!”  When was the last time she had done anything that had worked?  When we trust Jesus, He likes to congratulate us. “Your faith has healed you” means Jesus made her whole.  When she snuck up behind Him she was thinking, “If I can just touch the back edge of His robe, I will be healed.  The word Mark used for “healed” is sodzo.  It’s the Greek word for salvation.  It can be translated as “whole.”  When she touched Jesus and her bleeding stopped, the word sodzo was not used.  When she was healed from her disease, she was not made whole.  She was physically repaired, but she was still a very sick person, which was why Jesus looked around and pursued her.  He had more for her, but it required that they be face to face.  And in that face to face interaction, Jesus made her whole.    “Go in peace, and be freed from your suffering” means Jesus called her to live differently, to go in the momentum of her wholeness.  No longer would she have to avoid people.  No longer would she have to experience the corrosion of shame.  She could live as the person Jesus had re-created. Good thing she allowed Jesus to call her out.  Otherwise, she would have been fixed still broken.  Jesus always has more for us than we are currently experiencing.