Being Rickulous

The Serendipity Bible asks a great question of this passage.  What is the relationship between faith and crisis in your life?  Ouch.  Jairus was in the middle of maybe life’s harshest crisis, the illness and then the death of a child.  So I would have been okay with the man appearing way more desperate that Mark’s gospel portrays him.  The rules change when it’s your kid.  So Jairus sought Jesus out for intervention in their crisis, and it got worse (due perhaps to the woman delaying them), but then it got incredibly and miraculously better.  Crisis over!  Jesus expects us to seek Him out when circumstances are desperate.  But I suspect we sadden Jesus when we only seek Him out during those times.  We’re treating God like a divine airbag.  Jesus longs for relationship with us, a relationship that pulsates whether or not we are in crisis mode.  And there is ample Biblical evidence to support the notion that people who cultivate ongoing relationship with Jesus are better equipped to weather crisis.

Have you ever come across this guy?  He’s out of control, beyond all restraint, strengthened by unnatural forces.  We sometimes say, “You know, I’m just not myself today.”  That is the minor leagues.  This is the major leagues. Years ago, while working in the inner city, a woman high on crystal meth entered our building.  She was a petite woman, south of 100 pounds.  It became necessary to call the police.  It further became necessary to subdue her until the police arrived.  At the time I was at least 40 pounds heavier than I am now, and joining me in the task was a large woman who in a previous life had been a mud wrestler.  We both knew what we were doing, but it took everything we had to keep this little squirt on the floor until the police arrived.  It was obvious to me that we were dealing with more than the woman.  We were dealing with what was inside the woman. And Jesus was dealing with what was inside this man.  A legion of demons.  And He successfully transformed the man into a respectable, even clothed, citizen.  At the same time Jesus singlehandedly collapsed the bacon and sausage market. 

How might we diagnose this man today?  What would be the treatment strategy?  I for one do not know where demonization ends and sickness begins, or visa versa.  Are we supposed to delineate between the two?  I am not sure.  I am more confident in offering suggestions about how to be better.  If you find you are not in charge of yourself, the clinical plan would be…go to a doctor!  The spiritual plan would be…run to Jesus, fall on your knees in His presence, and let Him worry about the details.  

This was an “All hands on deck” crisis.  There were veteran fishermen on board who had never experienced a storm of this intensity.  This was the kind of storm George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg experienced in “The Perfect Storm,” but the movie featured special effects.  On the Sea of Galilee that day, there were no special effects.  When the disciples frantically woke Jesus up in the boat, what do you suppose they wanted from Jesus?  I can’t prove it, except through common sense, but I believe they wanted Him to grab a bucket and bail water.  And Jesus woke up, rubbed the sleep from His eyes, and calmed the storm.  How often am I seeking relief from Jesus when Jesus wants to do so much more?     

The parable of the Mustard Seed is an incredibly encouraging parable for me, because I have a front row seat when it comes to the size and the growth of my own faith.  I was converted to faith in Jesus at age seven.  The preacher thundered about hell, and he convinced me I wanted nothing to do with it, so when they extended the invitation, down I went.  I was baptized the following Sunday.  So my faith started when I got the hell scared out of me.  It was a miniscule beginning, but more than enough for Jesus.  43 years later, my faith is much bigger, though not all grown up as of yet.  What fascinates me is how, event by event or issue by issue, it’s as if my faith starts all over again.  I can and do transfer previous experiences with Christ to that event or issue, and that transfer gives my faith a boost.  But sometimes the faith is still so tiny!  And yet, from my front row seat I watch Jesus affirm the seed and nurture the seed.  It grows.  I grow.

A few years ago I made a hospital visit to a woman who was having surgery that day.  Her husband was there.  During the conversation I learned that he is a mechanic.  The wife mentioned how gifted he is, and I said, "You must be one of those people who can just look at something and know how it works."  He glanced at me thoughtfully, paused, and said, "No.  I listen."  When asked to expound, he said that, when he gives his full attention to an engine, he can usually hear what doesn't sound right, which tells him where to look for the problem.  A little later, the rest of us were talking about how computers have made it so much harder for people to work on their own cars.  He said, "Plugging a car into a computer is actually the hard way.  Listening is easier." His statements made an impact on me, in part because I can listen to an automobile and not know whether it is running or not.  But there was nothing boastful in what he said or how he said it.  He has spent so many years listening to engines that he knows what to listen for.  It’s a fact of his life, like his height or how long he has been married. In this parable we are soil onto which seeds are being tossed.  For me, the key words in the passage are “ate,” “scorched,” “choked,” and “grew.”  Birds ate, or the sun scorched, or thorns choked.  Only in the last scenario did the seeds grow into productive crops.  This soil heard, accepted, and as a result produced. Perhaps the mechanic can teach us.  He gives his full attention to the engine.  From experience he knows what to listen for.  Consequently, he can hear what the novice cannot hear, like how I can hear a song and most of the time know what the chords are. Jesus is inviting us to develop a history with Him, a history where we give our full attention to the Good News, we take it in like soft, wet soil, and we grow. How?  One of our college students just facebooked me some song lyrics he wrote today.  The lyrics say, among other things, “tune out all the noise.”  He and I agreed…easier said than done.  You know how you can be locked into a TV program and be unaware of all the other sights and sounds in the room?  That proves we can do this!  If we can tune IN the Good News of Jesus, that activity itself can tune out the forces what will eat or scorch or choke.

Because we do Vacation Bible School in the evenings, during the week of VBS we suspend normal Wednesday night activities so we can concentrate on the kids.  This year I did a lousy job of announcing that, and so a few adults showed up for prayer and Bible study.  They were all very gracious.  One of the adults had been out of town and off the radar because her dad was dying.  I apologized to her, and then I said, “But you know what?  I’m really glad you are here tonight, because you need your church family, and this gives us a chance to love on you some.”  Over the next hour, that is precisely what happened.  As most of the rest of us led the children (by following them around), I noticed her in dialogue with some of our most nurturing sisters and brothers.  She was able to process some of her significant family pain and grief with…family. When Jesus’ family showed up and sent a liaison through the crowd to notify Him of their arrival, Jesus said, “Who is my mother?  Who are my brothers?  Look, these are my mother and brothers.  Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”  Jesus was not heralding the end of all biological family relationships.  He was, however, telling us that God was, and is, creating something new and revolutionary.   Loyalty and obedience to God’s will attaches us to each other in a bond that exceeds biological family ties.  It’s family.  And it’s family with all of the connotations.  Church families are stabilizing and nutty and gratifying and perplexing and warm and eccentric.  But they have something extraordinary going for them.  Jesus is the heart of the church.  Church families that get that are worth the investment.

“They’re coming to take me away – ha-ha!”  Those are lyrics to a 1966 song that reached number 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Pop Single’s chart, even though it was controversial because of its apparent mockery of mental illness.  But in Mark 3:20-21 we see Jesus’ family coming to take Him away because they had decided He was out of His mind, or He had lost His senses.

While it seems alarming that anybody would accuse Jesus of being out of His mind, we need to take a closer look.  When we say somebody is crazy, what we mean in part is that the person in question has deviated from what most of us agree is normal.  But Jesus functions in a different reality than “normal” humans do.  In fact, Jesus came and gave His life to rescue us all from what we consider to be “normal.”  By definition this makes Jesus and all of His followers abnormal.  Or maybe trans-normal, because the way of Jesus creates a new and higher category for “normal.”