02.07.06 Steve Jairus and the bleeding woman
Mark 5:21-43
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For reasons I can't really remember now, our Fay once attended an interview for a bursary place at a very posh girls school - and while we were taking tea with the headmistress was giving us her line about a good education with a strong Christian ethos could change the world - 'we like to think our girls are putting a little yeast into the world'.
At our Confimation Group this week, we were trying to grapple with the idea that following Christ as the pattern for our lives, might mean that the world is changed by our lives (our wee world, and the wider world) - and we remembered that Jesus talked about being like yeast that leavens the bread.
This is an unusual gospel story - one story inside another, and within them both, great patterns for living.....I've given them a theme - distracted by love. Are you easily distracted? I'm aware that it's increasingly easy to be distracted - is it old age, or is it an increasingly cacophonous world?....
First story - Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, falls at Jesus' feet, desparate because his daughter is dying. An important man - one of the most respected in the community. Think of someone rather senior and on another planet.... a high court judge.... a life peer... chairman of a plc.... a bishop. But anyone at all is faced with exactly the same challenges in the face of illness or death - especially the death of a child.... and this important man is distracted by love - distracted from his usual pattern, his usual aplomb, his usual confidence. So what kind of things happen when someone is distracted by love?
He forgets his prejudices - Jesus was a dangerous outsider, a threat to orthodoxy. The distraction of love enabled him to be freed of the pre-judging of someone before examining the evidence (where prejudices come from).
He forgets his importance - Distracted by love, he, the ruler of the synagogue, came and threw himself at the feet of Jesus, the wandering teacher.
He forgets his pride - It must have been humiliating for Jairus to come and ask Jesus for help. We find it hard to be indebted to others - Scottish people perhaps more than most?.. a matter of the mortification of the flesh.... forgive us our debts...and yet, the very first step in the Christian journey is to realise that we cannot be anything other than indebted to God.
He forgets his peers - it's strange that this official came himself and didn't just send a messenger - and odd that he would leave his dying daughter. Maybe he had no one else to help him (later in the story his household are suspiciously quick to tell him not to trouble Jesus any more). It seems possible that Jairus must have had to defy the good opinion of his friends and family. As Barclay says, when writing about this story, many a man is wisest when his worldy-wise friends think he is acting like a fool.
He forgets his prejudices - He forgets his importance - He forgets his pride - He forgets his peers - Here is someone who forgot everything, except that he wanted the help of Jesus; and, precisely because he forgot those things, he would remember for ever the love of Christ.
Later in the story - Vs 36 - Jesus 'overhears' (is distracted by) the message that comes to say the girls is dead. That means Jesus was doing something else (he was still speaking about the bleeding woman) - but is distracted by love by what he hears - distracted enough to change course. When he reaches Jairus' house - he's met by a commotion - people would have been rending their garments - and as the text says, weeping and wailing. This chaotic distress and despair (the chaotic despair which fills our world), is contrasted in the story with the calmness and serenity of Jesus and his mesage of hope. He took the girl by the hand and said 'Talitha cum'. Why this Aramaic word in the midst of the Greek text - because Mark got his information from Peter - one of the chosen few who were present. He'll have remembered the beauty of it - and will have been distracted by the love of it, so that it wouldn't have seemed right to translate it when writing the text - the caress of it lingering with him forever, because he could only remember it in Jesus' voice - the very words that Jesus spoke.
And earlier on, when Jesus is first speaking with Jairus, the woman with the untreatable bleeding comes forward and touches the hem of Jesus' cloak, and she knows instantly that she is healed, and in the midst of this great commotion of people, Jesus is profoundly distracted, 'turns about in the crowd', and says, 'who touched my clothes'. This must have been one of those cinematic moments - you can imagine the camera zooming in on Jesus' distracted face - the woman shrinking away afraid of being exposed - the crowd going quiet when Jesus asks the impossible question - the listening as she confesses - the power and the beauty of his healing words. No condemnation for her covert action.
Distracted by love - we see that when Jesus healed someone, it took something out of him.... one of the great life-patterns for us to remember... we will only offer authentic Christian love if we are prepared to put something of ourselves, of our very life, of our very soul into it. Witness the cost of a great musical performance (you don't want to pay big money to go to a gig and hear the performer trot out the songs without them communicating the passion and the joy or the pain of the music). What is it about an actor's performance that makes it great? - it's not that every line and gesture is executed perfectly, but that the feelings are real feelings - the tears are real tears - that something of the actor's real self has been spent in the performance.
Jesus appeals to us, day after day, year after year, because he was prepared to pay the price of loving others - which concluded in the cost of his life. We only follow in his steps when we are prepared to be distracted from the 'form' of Christian service, to the investment of our sould and strength for others.