Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Blessings Beyond the Boundaries"

Text: Mark 5:21-43

Every once in a while,

I get really disturbed at how much we have

domesticated the gospel.

I don’t mean just "we" here in this sanctuary,

or "we" Presbyterians …

I mean, "we," followers of Jesus Christ.

We take radical stories like this one from Mark’s gospel

and turn them into sweet scenes from a biography

of a nice man who went around doing nice things for people.

Jesus was not a nice man …

at least, not often,

and not by conventional definitions of the term "nice."

Do we really think for one moment

that the Romans crucified him for being nice?

Did the Jewish leaders take offense at Jesus

because he wandered about the countryside acting nice

and telling everyone else to be nice to their neighbors?

Hardly.

And yet, that’s the way many of us

choose to read and understand the gospels,

now and throughout most of the church’s history.

Jesus taught the crowds.

How nice.

He healed people whom no one else had been able to heal.

What a swell guy.

He interrupted what he was doing

to care for a bereaved family.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were all so caring?

Well, yes, it probably would …

but I don’t think that’s what this story is all about.

This scene from Jesus’ life –

familiar to many of us from childhood –

is not just about Jesus’ power to heal.

It’s about who he chooses to heal,

and what their circumstances are,

and the risks he takes in doing what he does.

But in order to see that,

we have to set aside the "nice" Jesus

that we summon up all too often,

and remind ourselves about the Jesus who

did things that were unconventional, and unexpected,

and sometimes downright offensive to the people around him.

The first thing we have to remember

in order to reclaim the undomesticated Jesus,

is that he was a Jew.

He was never anything but a Jew.

He knew the Torah, the law,

better than many of its alleged teachers and scholars.

He knew the stories and the teachings of the prophets.

He understood what expectations people had

of those who claimed to be teachers of the law.

He knew them, and then he set them aside

whenever the situation demanded it.

He refused to live within the boundaries

determined by people’s expectations of him

and their understandings of what God requires.

How does that tie in with this morning’s reading?

Remember, of course, that what Mark has given us

is a story within a story.

We begin with the leader of the synagogue and his sick daughter,

and we also end with them.

So we’ll look at them in just a minute.

But that story gets interrupted by

the scene where Jesus is making his way through the crowd,

senses that power has gone forth from him,

and turns to find out who has touched him.

It’s not just the crowd pressing in on him,

but it’s a woman.

A specific woman,

one who has been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years,

and has spent everything she has on physicians,

but has only gotten worse.

Now, according to the Jewish law,

which Jesus knows like the proverbial back of his hand,

a woman with a flow of blood is unclean.

And not only that,

but anyone who touches such a woman –

or is touched by her –

becomes unclean as well.

Of course this law was meant to apply to women

approximately one week out of every month,

but there were no exceptions granted

for someone with an ongoing health problem.

Imagine, being at least semi-isolated from your family for twelve years.

Imagine being unable to attend services and rituals in the Temple

for more than twelve years.

Imagine people shying away from you, unwilling to touch you at all,

for twelve long years.

The woman in our story

was an outcast.

If she had pushed through a crowd

to touch a scribe, or a priest, or a Pharisee,

she would have gotten a far different reaction.

"You idiot woman! Why don’t you be more careful?

I’m going to have to waste hours getting purified

before I can continue my duties!

Get away from us, you unclean old hag!"

But not only does Jesus not seem to mind that she has touched him …

he also doesn’t bother with the whole purification ritual stuff.

After he sends her on her way, healed and whole,

he doesn’t stop off at the baths,

or send the disciples off for a jar of water so he can wash.

It doesn’t matter to him.

For Jesus, there is no such thing

as an unclean person.

The society he lives in may try to push such people

out beyond the boundaries,

but Jesus observes no such boundaries.

Time and again,

he welcomes people back inside the circle

who have been cast out …

or he takes himself outside the boundary

to meet them where they are.

The other story, the one about Jairus and his daughter,

is actually quite similar.

At one level, it, too, is a story about a miraculous healing.

But it’s also about boundaries as well.

By the time Jesus arrives at the family’s home,

after that little adventure among the crowd,

the girl is dead.

Too late.

The best healers in the known world

couldn’t do anything about it once life was gone.

Besides which,

you could hardly ask an esteemed teacher

to deal with a dead body.

Dead bodies are unclean.

Touch a dead body,

you become unclean.

Sound familiar?

Part of the reason that it was usually women who handled and cared for the dead

was that, number one,

women were considered more unclean anyway;

and number two,

women didn’t have responsibilities for Temple attendance

in the same way that men had,

so it didn’t matter so much if they were unclean

at any given moment.

At any rate,

Jesus reaches the home of the synagogue leader,

and, even though he’s been told that the girl is already dead,

he takes the father and mother with him,

sends everyone else outside,

then goes in, takes the girl by the hand,

and tells her to get up.

Which she does,

and she begins to walk around the room.

But Jesus touched her.

She was dead, and he touched her.

A priest who did such a thing

would have understood himself to be unclean

for perhaps as long as thirty days.

So, of course, he would never have done such a thing!

Jesus simply touches the dead girl.

And by his willingness to cross over that boundary to where she is,

he is able to bring her back with him.

For Jesus, there is no such thing

as an unclean person.

So, what does that suggest

to those of us who claim to be,

who desire to be, his followers?

I confess I am greatly puzzled by Christian people

who believe that part of their task

is to keep themselves pure and separate from the world …

because that is so completely not what Jesus did.

I don’t understand Christians

who feel compelled to draw boundaries

between themselves and others,

or who believe that they must enforce the boundaries

that their society draws.

That’s the opposite of how Jesus lived.

In fact, Jesus did some of his best work

with and on exactly those people

whom his society deemed as beyond the boundaries:

lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors …

women, the poor, the dead.

So where does that leave us?

What boundaries should we be trespassing, or ignoring, or breaking down?

Maybe one way to get at the seriousness of that question

is to ask ourselves, who makes us uncomfortable?

Because anyone who makes us uncomfortable

is probably a person who is outside of

some boundary that we have either drawn or accepted.

For some of us,

people who speak a different language make us uncomfortable.

Some of us may be uncomfortable with people

who are a lot older, or a lot younger, than we are.

Some of us find it very difficult

to draw boundaries wide enough to include

people with mental illnesses.

Some of us would like to place outside the boundary

a few folks who drive gas-guzzling SUVs for no apparent reason.

Some of us are uncomfortable with homeless persons,

especially if they don’t smell too good.

Some of us are unsure about whether we should include

people of other faiths within the boundaries.

We all have our own list

of those who are a challenge to our faith …

that is, those people or groups of people about whom we think,

how could Jesus love that person, those people?

And even if he could,

why do we have to?

Well … because the gospels make it pretty clear

that beyond the boundaries

is where the blessings take place.

Beyond what is comfortable

is where we learn, and grow …

and it is where we encounter God.

Beyond the margins

are people who can teach us about God,

things we never knew.

To be sure, sometimes we need a temporary retreat

to what is familiar,

in order to get ourselves charged back up.

But beyond the boundaries is where ministry takes place.

Beyond the boundaries is where we receive God’s blessings …

and where we can be a blessing to those

who do not know that God’s love is even for them.

May we never rest content within our walls,

but push beyond them into the excitement and confusion and pain of the world

where God’s real work is done.

Amen.