Luke 8:49-50
He was asked to come and do something about an urgently sick girl. On the way, he was detained by a woman who had a long-term, though not life-threatening physical problem. Actually, to be honest, the woman didn’t detain him – he himself had chosen to do some follow through on her situation. The result for the original urgent need? The girl died.
In this passage in Luke, Jesus was available to help – and he could do something about the situation. He could heal the girl, if only he made it there in time. But Jesus also knew that there was little difference between God’s power to heal a sick girl and God’s power to bring that same girl back to life if she died, though there are far more cases of the former than of the latter, simply because immortality is not a part of our present human condition.
Jairus, the girl’s father, however, did not know any of that. He did not know that Jesus could just as easily bring the girl back to life as heal her. He did not know that Jesus was actually willing to do both in this very case. Even if he had heard stories of Jesus bringing the dead back to life, I’m not sure this synagogue ruler, religiously devout as he was, would have connected that understanding of Jesus with the plight of his own daughter.
As Luke paints the story, just as Jesus is sending the healed woman off in peace, someone from Jairus’ household comes with the news that the girl has died. No sense bothering Jesus anymore, the messenger says. Strange that Jesus would have allowed himself to be delayed, but such is the workings of a Master who has absolute trust in his own Father and that Father’s timing.
We are not given Jairus’ reaction to the news of his daughter’s death, and perhaps it is because Jesus doesn’t allow time for Jairus to react. Anguish, fear, grief, self-doubt – if only I had gone to Jesus faster, if only I had hurried him along more quickly. Jesus does not allow Jairus to go there. Instead, Jesus tells him, “Don’t be afraid.” He doesn’t chastise Jairus for lacking faith, though he does encourage Jairus to exercise what faith he has. He doesn’t even rebuke Jairus for being afraid. He just calms him with a “Don’t go there.”
In fact, if this father had not been welling up with anguish, fear, grief and self-doubt at the news of his daughter’s death, there would be serious questions to raise about the man’s love for his daughter or his own ability to feel God-given emotions. These are emotions that, barring some unusual divine intervention, allow us to cope with inevitable loss, allow us to process human events and experiences as the humans we were created to be. We were all designed to express feelings and emotions that are common to all people and natural for all of life and that bring healing in their own way to the deepest of human pain.
However, Jesus, who participated in creating these very emotions, knows that what will come immediately into that earthly father’s being will be an overload of those same emotions and, more than likely, Jairus will go into some form of shock to shield him from unbearable pain. So Jesus is quick to pull this father back from that emotional brink.
Jesus calms the man with, “Don’t be afraid,” not because those emotions are wrong, but because Jesus knows what is going to happen next and he wants that father engaged for what will surely be the happiest moment of his life. This is not Jesus testing Jairus’ faith to see if he has enough to help Jesus raise the girl to life. This is Jesus bringing calm to an earthly father’s heart so that this man can be drawn into what Jesus is about to do for him.
What happens next leads me to understand that Jesus was going to heal that girl no matter what. The girl’s healing was because of Jesus’ love, regardless of the reactions and responses of those around her. Certainly the girl herself had nothing to contribute to the imminent miracle. She was dead. But Jesus wanted Jairus to know that, while emotions are healthy if expressed as God intended, he did not need to go there, not yet. For the story wasn’t over and Jesus wasn’t finished.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Exorcising Shame
Luke 8:43-48
The woman with the “issue of blood” was standard Sunday School fare when I was a kid, a basic story about some older person who had “women issues”. We kids came away with the impression of an old hag who couldn’t stop bleeding, and because of the nature of the bleeding, we couldn’t ask any more questions. Whether or not it was right to call her a “hag”, we did somehow get that she was as repulsive to that crowd as the derogatory term “hag” implies.
If her hemorrhage was indeed uterine in nature, she was, according to Mosaic law, untouchable. She’d lived a hard life and Mark adds that she’d spent all her money to find a cure that could not be found, getting worse in the process. Her incurable sickness and resulting poverty left her filled with so much shame that even after she was healed, she was reticent to reveal her identity.
But she was brave enough, or at least desperate enough, to make the effort to touch the edge of Jesus’ robe or cloak. People were jammed together, bodies pressed against each other as the crowd moved through the narrow passageways between buildings. It was ludicrous to those around that Jesus was trying to find out who touched him – it could have been one of who knows how many.
And yet this was a significant touch. Jesus knew that power had gone out of him. Most people pressed around Jesus were only concerned with getting through the alleyway. People may have tried to touch Jesus because he was famous or important, much the way people do of superstars today. But such close encounters lacked what this touch definitely had – a release of healing power.
And so she was healed – immediately. No doubt about it. Why then was it important for Jesus to single her out? Surely it would only add to her shame. Let her go in peace – isn’t it enough that she is well?
Apparently, though, there was more to her healing. She realized she could not escape the glare of notice, so she came forward, as Luke notes, trembling and falling “at his feet.” Fear as well as sickness had gripped her for a dozen years. And though she was now physically well, that fear still had its hold. So full of shame she was that she could not dare tell anyone she had been healed, especially not before so many people.
When Jesus asked for her, she realized she had no choice but to come clean. The crowd that had been impenetrable suddenly gave way and a space opened for her. How agonizing that must have been. In her desperation to be healed, she would have done anything. Now, healed, it took even more effort to come forward. As she did so, suddenly all those years of agonizing shame spilled out and she told her whole story. In the presence of everyone.
As she did so, she discovered that the only way to exorcise shame is to let it out – but only with someone who will validate her personhood. Any other time, any other place, and she would have been pushed away, shunned. People (religiously zealous men especially) would have drawn up their cloaks and shrunk back from her in horror, lest they too be contaminated, unable to worship properly. The only thing stopping them from adding to her shame now was the commanding presence of Jesus.
In that presence, all such reactions were repressed. Jesus healed her personhood as well as her physical malady – he accepted her, affirmed her, and emotionally embraced her. “Daughter,” he called her – such a warm affectionate term. He esteemed her, acknowledging that it was her faith that had healed her. And he sent her off with a firm blessing, “Go in peace.” She was affirmed before everyone, the shame was no longer hers to bear.
In processing her healing with her this way, Jesus also clearly identifies for the woman and all witnesses that this healing was not mere superstition – “if I can only touch this holy man’s tassels.” Jesus clarifies that it is faith in God that has healed her, that it is the power of God which has gone out from Jesus to her. No room for superstition about talismans here.
Jesus immediately refocuses on the dying girl, his original mission. Note the contrast in healings. Whereas Jesus heals the girl in private, far away from the prying masses, he makes effort to bring the woman’s healing to light before everyone. Each person’s needs are unique. The masses would have detracted the little girl’s attention away from Jesus, while the public confession was part of the woman’s healing process. Holistic healing was a concept Jesus understood long before its present vogue.
The woman with the “issue of blood” was standard Sunday School fare when I was a kid, a basic story about some older person who had “women issues”. We kids came away with the impression of an old hag who couldn’t stop bleeding, and because of the nature of the bleeding, we couldn’t ask any more questions. Whether or not it was right to call her a “hag”, we did somehow get that she was as repulsive to that crowd as the derogatory term “hag” implies.
If her hemorrhage was indeed uterine in nature, she was, according to Mosaic law, untouchable. She’d lived a hard life and Mark adds that she’d spent all her money to find a cure that could not be found, getting worse in the process. Her incurable sickness and resulting poverty left her filled with so much shame that even after she was healed, she was reticent to reveal her identity.
But she was brave enough, or at least desperate enough, to make the effort to touch the edge of Jesus’ robe or cloak. People were jammed together, bodies pressed against each other as the crowd moved through the narrow passageways between buildings. It was ludicrous to those around that Jesus was trying to find out who touched him – it could have been one of who knows how many.
And yet this was a significant touch. Jesus knew that power had gone out of him. Most people pressed around Jesus were only concerned with getting through the alleyway. People may have tried to touch Jesus because he was famous or important, much the way people do of superstars today. But such close encounters lacked what this touch definitely had – a release of healing power.
And so she was healed – immediately. No doubt about it. Why then was it important for Jesus to single her out? Surely it would only add to her shame. Let her go in peace – isn’t it enough that she is well?
Apparently, though, there was more to her healing. She realized she could not escape the glare of notice, so she came forward, as Luke notes, trembling and falling “at his feet.” Fear as well as sickness had gripped her for a dozen years. And though she was now physically well, that fear still had its hold. So full of shame she was that she could not dare tell anyone she had been healed, especially not before so many people.
When Jesus asked for her, she realized she had no choice but to come clean. The crowd that had been impenetrable suddenly gave way and a space opened for her. How agonizing that must have been. In her desperation to be healed, she would have done anything. Now, healed, it took even more effort to come forward. As she did so, suddenly all those years of agonizing shame spilled out and she told her whole story. In the presence of everyone.
As she did so, she discovered that the only way to exorcise shame is to let it out – but only with someone who will validate her personhood. Any other time, any other place, and she would have been pushed away, shunned. People (religiously zealous men especially) would have drawn up their cloaks and shrunk back from her in horror, lest they too be contaminated, unable to worship properly. The only thing stopping them from adding to her shame now was the commanding presence of Jesus.
In that presence, all such reactions were repressed. Jesus healed her personhood as well as her physical malady – he accepted her, affirmed her, and emotionally embraced her. “Daughter,” he called her – such a warm affectionate term. He esteemed her, acknowledging that it was her faith that had healed her. And he sent her off with a firm blessing, “Go in peace.” She was affirmed before everyone, the shame was no longer hers to bear.
In processing her healing with her this way, Jesus also clearly identifies for the woman and all witnesses that this healing was not mere superstition – “if I can only touch this holy man’s tassels.” Jesus clarifies that it is faith in God that has healed her, that it is the power of God which has gone out from Jesus to her. No room for superstition about talismans here.
Jesus immediately refocuses on the dying girl, his original mission. Note the contrast in healings. Whereas Jesus heals the girl in private, far away from the prying masses, he makes effort to bring the woman’s healing to light before everyone. Each person’s needs are unique. The masses would have detracted the little girl’s attention away from Jesus, while the public confession was part of the woman’s healing process. Holistic healing was a concept Jesus understood long before its present vogue.
Monday, May 10, 2010
A Momentary Interruption
Luke 8:42b-43
You read along and you come to the verse changes, but when the text is in paragraph form as it is in most present-day Bible translations, you don’t even notice the verse markers. This time, however, your thoughts are arrested. You pause at verse 43.
The Gospel writers tend to take Jesus one story or one teaching at a time. Here is a case where all three who preserve these two particular stories do so in combo – Matthew, Mark and Luke all have the anecdote of this very sick woman tucked in the middle of the narrative concerning Jairus and his dying daughter. Specific details may differ, but they all three pass on intact the idea that the needs of this unnamed woman came as an interruption in the events surrounding the drama of the house of one Jairus, ruler of the local synagogue.
It is a story built for visual effect – the press of the crowd (a fire emergency in a packed night club comes to mind) almost crushes Jesus as he makes his way to Jairus’ house. While he is not running, he is determined and outwardly focused to get to his destination without delay.
I say “outwardly” because even with the apparent concentration of effort, Jesus is ever attuned to what is going on around him. So much so that he senses that someone is touching him. When he mentions the thought, his friends are incredulous.
I’ve been in such crowds. Generally in the USA we don’t experience crushes of humanity. Our interpersonal spaces are not as legendary as the British, but we could not possibly contain the population that China does in a similar geographical configuration – millions would long ago have been pushed out to sea. Go to Asia, though, and you will better understand this story.
Riding on a bus once in China I realized a pickpocket was trying to get at some loose change in my pants – the crowd was so crushing I couldn’t even reach my own pocket to push his hand away. My stop was coming up. In my best Mandarin I yelled “Thief!” and amazingly the crowd parted just enough for me to slip through and get out the doors. Once off the bus, I realized the thief had slit my pants – which were worth more than the few coins I had lost. I was mad about the pants and less than grateful for the gratuitous lesson in sociological dynamics.
When Luke writes that “the crowds almost crushed him,” I understand what he means. People were packed into that narrow alley like proverbial sardines – bodies tight together, people moving in the same direction whether they wanted to or not.
And in all this, Jesus is focused on getting to his destination – a girl who is about to die unless he reaches her first. When later his friend Lazarus is sick, Jesus takes his time. He knows that a greater story than a “mere” healing is in the making. In this case, Jesus does not hesitate. He makes his way most deliberately.
And yet he allows himself to be interrupted, not because he doesn’t care about the plight of a twelve year old girl or her grieving father, but because he is able to multitask about human need. Nothing communicates care like someone who, in concentrating on a more urgent or more important need, is able to break from such focus and deal with a less pressing, more chronic concern. Well, one thing does communicate care even more forcefully – when this “secondary” need, presented by someone far less connected in life, far more anonymous, is as readily attended to.
Jesus notices a woman who is invisible to all the crush of humanity around her, whose needs have gone unmet for years, who is not taken seriously because she is both a woman and an unclean woman at that. Jesus not only pays attention to her faint touch, he stops his urgent mission and the pushing crowd around him to seek her out. Here is a man both confident in what he is doing that he can break from a life-threatening emergency to deal with a non-life-threatening problem and compassionate enough that the social status of the person in need is not weighed.
When Jesus pauses, the whole world pauses with him – clueless as to his ability to meet more than one need at a time. Here, I sense, is a person who has time for me.
You read along and you come to the verse changes, but when the text is in paragraph form as it is in most present-day Bible translations, you don’t even notice the verse markers. This time, however, your thoughts are arrested. You pause at verse 43.
The Gospel writers tend to take Jesus one story or one teaching at a time. Here is a case where all three who preserve these two particular stories do so in combo – Matthew, Mark and Luke all have the anecdote of this very sick woman tucked in the middle of the narrative concerning Jairus and his dying daughter. Specific details may differ, but they all three pass on intact the idea that the needs of this unnamed woman came as an interruption in the events surrounding the drama of the house of one Jairus, ruler of the local synagogue.
It is a story built for visual effect – the press of the crowd (a fire emergency in a packed night club comes to mind) almost crushes Jesus as he makes his way to Jairus’ house. While he is not running, he is determined and outwardly focused to get to his destination without delay.
I say “outwardly” because even with the apparent concentration of effort, Jesus is ever attuned to what is going on around him. So much so that he senses that someone is touching him. When he mentions the thought, his friends are incredulous.
I’ve been in such crowds. Generally in the USA we don’t experience crushes of humanity. Our interpersonal spaces are not as legendary as the British, but we could not possibly contain the population that China does in a similar geographical configuration – millions would long ago have been pushed out to sea. Go to Asia, though, and you will better understand this story.
Riding on a bus once in China I realized a pickpocket was trying to get at some loose change in my pants – the crowd was so crushing I couldn’t even reach my own pocket to push his hand away. My stop was coming up. In my best Mandarin I yelled “Thief!” and amazingly the crowd parted just enough for me to slip through and get out the doors. Once off the bus, I realized the thief had slit my pants – which were worth more than the few coins I had lost. I was mad about the pants and less than grateful for the gratuitous lesson in sociological dynamics.
When Luke writes that “the crowds almost crushed him,” I understand what he means. People were packed into that narrow alley like proverbial sardines – bodies tight together, people moving in the same direction whether they wanted to or not.
And in all this, Jesus is focused on getting to his destination – a girl who is about to die unless he reaches her first. When later his friend Lazarus is sick, Jesus takes his time. He knows that a greater story than a “mere” healing is in the making. In this case, Jesus does not hesitate. He makes his way most deliberately.
And yet he allows himself to be interrupted, not because he doesn’t care about the plight of a twelve year old girl or her grieving father, but because he is able to multitask about human need. Nothing communicates care like someone who, in concentrating on a more urgent or more important need, is able to break from such focus and deal with a less pressing, more chronic concern. Well, one thing does communicate care even more forcefully – when this “secondary” need, presented by someone far less connected in life, far more anonymous, is as readily attended to.
Jesus notices a woman who is invisible to all the crush of humanity around her, whose needs have gone unmet for years, who is not taken seriously because she is both a woman and an unclean woman at that. Jesus not only pays attention to her faint touch, he stops his urgent mission and the pushing crowd around him to seek her out. Here is a man both confident in what he is doing that he can break from a life-threatening emergency to deal with a non-life-threatening problem and compassionate enough that the social status of the person in need is not weighed.
When Jesus pauses, the whole world pauses with him – clueless as to his ability to meet more than one need at a time. Here, I sense, is a person who has time for me.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Jairus Unlabeled
Luke 8:40-42
It is easy to stereotype. We see what appears to be a disheveled person on the street and in an instant we categorize him or her as “homeless.” Just as quickly, our minds attach all sorts of meaning to that category, mostly negative. We may be willing to help them, but we have a difficult time doing so without editorializing about them and their situation.
Whether our reaction is negative or positive, we also make instant assumptions concerning people who live in really fancy houses. This weekend I started doing field work for my U.S. Census Bureau job as “Enumerator” – someone who goes around counting people. I was working a census block that included some very exclusive estates – huge houses perched on steep slopes and hidden by exquisite landscaping with driveway gates, closed and far below.
For the most part, it felt as if these people were stereotyping me – drives an ’89 Chevy pickup (poor or at least working class), is doing this job (unemployed), is middle-aged and doing this job (loser). Who knows what they were really thinking? After a few encounters with heads of said households, I found myself starting to peg these people, too, so much so that I was amazed when one of them was friendly, gracious, didn’t make me wait fifteen minutes while they took care of other more important business, and treated me as an equal.
Jesus had an uncanny ability to meet all kinds of people on their level. Jairus, a ruler of the local synagogue, was no exception. Jesus had already met enough rude and arrogant religious leaders that he could have assumed the same for this one. True, Jairus did approach Jesus with what appeared to be great humility, falling as he did at Jesus’ feet. But his only daughter was dying, after all. Children, infants especially, were dying all the time in that day. This one had already reached the marriageable age of twelve and so had come to mean very much to him. He would do anything for her, even plead for Jesus’ help.
We really don’t know much about Jarius’ personal persuasions or attitudes, other than that he held an influential position in the local house of worship. And that is the point made by Luke. Jesus simply takes the man at face value and heads out through the crush of people to go heal this girl. Death could come quickly; there was no time to waste.
Jesus was, as the KJV so quaintly says elsewhere, “no respecter of persons,” meaning he treated people as individuals, not as categories or labels. He took them as they came. We are naturally inclined to want to help innocent children before helping adults with position and status. I don’t think, however, that Jesus moved more rapidly to respond to Jairus’ plea because a child was involved. Jesus did have a special place for children, which set him apart from most. But Jesus had already established a track record of willingly blessing everyone who came to him.
That was Jesus’ defining distinction. He ministered to all who came to him, who were willing to open their lives to him. Nothing else mattered – Jew or Gentile, religious or not, rich or poor, male or female, old or young. He served them all – as long as they came willingly. And, as other stories point out, he was even ready to go the second mile in reaching out to those who were initially unwilling.
We are more naturally drawn to responsive people. Jesus is unnaturally (from our vantage point, anyway) also drawn to those who refuse him. It wasn’t so much that he refused to help those who wouldn’t accept his help. He was just blocked, is all. And the same in this case. He didn’t rush to help Jairus because of his status or because he was more open. Jesus didn’t use people (status) and he didn’t categorize people. His rule of thumb was that he helped whoever would allow him to.
I am so drawn to Jesus. He who takes me as I am. He who accepts me not for what I have to offer, but only for what he has to offer. Regardless of what my need is. No wonder Jairus did not hesitate to come to Jesus when life was so desperate and his emotional pain was beyond bearing. Deep inside he sensed that here was someone who would not label him.
It is easy to stereotype. We see what appears to be a disheveled person on the street and in an instant we categorize him or her as “homeless.” Just as quickly, our minds attach all sorts of meaning to that category, mostly negative. We may be willing to help them, but we have a difficult time doing so without editorializing about them and their situation.
Whether our reaction is negative or positive, we also make instant assumptions concerning people who live in really fancy houses. This weekend I started doing field work for my U.S. Census Bureau job as “Enumerator” – someone who goes around counting people. I was working a census block that included some very exclusive estates – huge houses perched on steep slopes and hidden by exquisite landscaping with driveway gates, closed and far below.
For the most part, it felt as if these people were stereotyping me – drives an ’89 Chevy pickup (poor or at least working class), is doing this job (unemployed), is middle-aged and doing this job (loser). Who knows what they were really thinking? After a few encounters with heads of said households, I found myself starting to peg these people, too, so much so that I was amazed when one of them was friendly, gracious, didn’t make me wait fifteen minutes while they took care of other more important business, and treated me as an equal.
Jesus had an uncanny ability to meet all kinds of people on their level. Jairus, a ruler of the local synagogue, was no exception. Jesus had already met enough rude and arrogant religious leaders that he could have assumed the same for this one. True, Jairus did approach Jesus with what appeared to be great humility, falling as he did at Jesus’ feet. But his only daughter was dying, after all. Children, infants especially, were dying all the time in that day. This one had already reached the marriageable age of twelve and so had come to mean very much to him. He would do anything for her, even plead for Jesus’ help.
We really don’t know much about Jarius’ personal persuasions or attitudes, other than that he held an influential position in the local house of worship. And that is the point made by Luke. Jesus simply takes the man at face value and heads out through the crush of people to go heal this girl. Death could come quickly; there was no time to waste.
Jesus was, as the KJV so quaintly says elsewhere, “no respecter of persons,” meaning he treated people as individuals, not as categories or labels. He took them as they came. We are naturally inclined to want to help innocent children before helping adults with position and status. I don’t think, however, that Jesus moved more rapidly to respond to Jairus’ plea because a child was involved. Jesus did have a special place for children, which set him apart from most. But Jesus had already established a track record of willingly blessing everyone who came to him.
That was Jesus’ defining distinction. He ministered to all who came to him, who were willing to open their lives to him. Nothing else mattered – Jew or Gentile, religious or not, rich or poor, male or female, old or young. He served them all – as long as they came willingly. And, as other stories point out, he was even ready to go the second mile in reaching out to those who were initially unwilling.
We are more naturally drawn to responsive people. Jesus is unnaturally (from our vantage point, anyway) also drawn to those who refuse him. It wasn’t so much that he refused to help those who wouldn’t accept his help. He was just blocked, is all. And the same in this case. He didn’t rush to help Jairus because of his status or because he was more open. Jesus didn’t use people (status) and he didn’t categorize people. His rule of thumb was that he helped whoever would allow him to.
I am so drawn to Jesus. He who takes me as I am. He who accepts me not for what I have to offer, but only for what he has to offer. Regardless of what my need is. No wonder Jairus did not hesitate to come to Jesus when life was so desperate and his emotional pain was beyond bearing. Deep inside he sensed that here was someone who would not label him.
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