Get Up
Mark 5:21-43

June 29, 2003

This entangled, interwoven, wrapped around narrative in the Gospel of Mark may be the best story in the Gospels. Stories here are not told because they are good stories; they are recited to inform us who and what and why this person Jesus lived and taught and died among us. Today we are dragged along in an urgent errand by a fully human Jesus who is so full of God that it rubs off on us. We are not supposed to just listen, but to take part and become part, and in as much as it is possible for you and me, to become what Jesus is.

Mark, as the first Gospel written, got to set the agenda and structure of this new genre. What he did was make the Gospel a long tortuous journey, an exercise in geography. Jesus is always going somewhere and his most popular destination was getting to the other side of the lake. One Biblical student drew a map with lines showing the path of Jesus’ trips in Mark, and there is a web of lines crisscrossing the Sea of Galilee, back and forth, forth and back.

He sets out again across the lake, with pretty good reason this time. Jesus had just finished exorcising the demons out of the man called Legion in a village in the country of the Gerasenes, inserting them into a large herd of pigs who then stampeded over a cliff to their demise. The owners were not amused and Jesus was strongly encouraged to leave town even before the next train. Back across the lake made immediate sense.

Yet his reputation is proceeding him, as a large crowd barely let him get his feet on dry land. Everybody wants to hear him, everybody wants Jesus to hear their tale of woe, everybody wants a piece of Jesus.

Especially a synagogue leader named Jairus. He is desperate, in fact, for his daughter is very ill, at the point of death. Jairus who is a man of local power falls down at Jesus’ feet. Groveling is the term we would use. Repeatedly he asks Jesus to come and lay hands on her and heal her. So, the evangelist writes, Jesus went with him.

A funny thing happened on the way to Jairus’ house. You need first of all to get the picture of how this is happening. Jesus is not scurrying along alone with Jairus. That madding crowd pressing around him is moving en masse with Jesus to Jairus’ house. They all want to see what happens, for how could they have not heard and seen the lengths Jairus had taken to get Jesus’ attention. This is a large cluster of people, one brick shy of a mob. A lot of body contact on the road.

Unrelated to Jairus and his daughter, a nameless woman edged in closer to Jesus in the moving crowd. She had been ill for 12 years with hemorrhages and had tried all kinds of doctors and spent all kinds of money, and now had neither better health nor any money. Perhaps she had dealt with Jairus, been refused help from him, and certainly been refused reentry into the religious life of the community, for she was ritually and physically unclean. She didn’t care one way or the other about Jairus’ daughter; she only wanted to meet Jesus, to touch him. Neither Jairus nor this woman were bothered by the concerns of the crowd of other people. All they wanted was the touch of Jesus.

She did get close enough, she did touch him, and immediately she felt something inside heal. Immediately as well, Jesus felt power leave him. You can feel at times the presence of an unseen person; Jesus took it one step further. Her touch was not a bump: it was a touch that had feeling in it.

Who touched me? sounded ridiculous, but Jesus was talking about a mere contact of bodies. Moreover, a rabbi is not to be touched by a woman. She came forward with great courage, fell down at his feet just as Jairus had done. With kindness, Jesus responds personally to her, “Your faith has made you well.”

We the readers know something that she didn’t. Jesus is God and she touched God, and it was all right. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Thomas would have been able to touch the wounds in his hands and side, and so we are able to touch his clothes and body and be healed.

The crowd must have been well entertained by these two touchers, but can you imagine how Jairus was responding now, Jesus talking on and on with this woman and Jairus feeling time slip away for his daughter. Before they could move on, messengers from the house arrived with the dreaded news that the worst had happened. The girl had died, they whispered to Jairus, why bother the rabbi anymore?

Jesus overheard the grave hushed tones and understood the situation even before the words became clear. He looked Jairus straight in the eye, “Do not fear, only believe.”

What should Jairus believe? For the moment, not anything in particular, but through your fear and assuming the worst, don’t decide by yourself how everything is going to turn out. “Believe” here means trusting that God is the source of how things will turn out, not human beings.

Enough of the mob, Jesus selects only three disciples to come with him and Jairus, for sure enough there is another kind of crowd waiting around Jairus’ door. A commotion is the description: weeping and loud wailing. We’ve seen it on TV in the Near East in recent years. In part genuine sorrow, and part the traditional cultural ritual of mourning.

Jesus challenges their fearful assumptions, why are you doing this. The girl is only sleeping. We’ve never been able to adequately comprehend the response of the commotioned mourners - they laughed at Jesus, derisively, scornfully. Who is this idiot?

Enough of the mourners, professional and genuine, as Jesus pushed them all outside and took just the father and mother and his three disciples into the room where the girl was. He took her by the hand, touched her no more intimately than had the woman touched his coat.

The Gospels and the New Testament were all written in Greek, but there are a few times when everyone remembers the very words, “Talitha, qum!” The Aramaic words are no abracadabra; simply, “Little girl, get up!”

That favorite word of Mark - immediately - she gets up and walks about. “Overcome with amazement” Their minds and emotions were blown. Don’t tell anybody else about this, Jesus commanded, and give the girl something to eat. She was fed, but obviously they told the world.

Was this a resurrection from the dead? Not if she were truly asleep, perhaps in a coma. The circumstances meant to be ambiguous for we are here on the boundary between the human and the divine. What Jesus did was almost human, and clearly almost divine and godly. How else are you and I as Christians expected to live and act, except almost divine and clearly almost human. You cannot live that way if you are full of fear and have decided in your heart, soul, and mind that the forces of this world have complete control of you. Maybe it’s health, definitely it’s poverty and injustice, clearly it’s the always twisted logic for war and the appropriation of the property of others. You add to the list.

Jesus did not come in order to be the magic God who wrinkles his nose and taps his finger and heals all things. If Jesus were just God, his career would do us no good at all, for he is no longer here to zap evil, and you and I at last count are not gods. Jesus demonstrated how a human being can live a powerfully godly life, and how being godly we can reach our fullness as human beings. Only believe: live every moment as a human being knowing that it is God who is making you get up

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan