Mark 5:21-43 Why Jesus Doesn’t Fear Our Illness. The Personal, Pervasive, & Powerful Gospel of Jesus Christ

Introduction

A few years ago popular news outlets captured a beautiful image of Pope Francis embracing a disfigured man during one of the Pope’s papal visits. CNN actually did an article on the man and they told his story this way:

"When [Pope Francis] came close to us," she said, "I thought he would give me his hand. Instead he went straight to Vinicio (that’s the disfigured man) and embraced him tightly. I thought he wouldn't give him back to me he held him so tightly. We didn't speak. We said nothing but he looked at me as if he was digging deep inside, a beautiful look that I would never have expected." Vinicio, accustomed to stares of shock and fear, was initially confused by the pontiff's lack of hesitation. "He didn't have any fear of my illness," he said. "He embraced me without speaking … I shook. I felt a great warmth.” http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/26/world/europe/pope-francis-disfigured-man/

It may seem like a strange question to ask about the Son of God…but why doesn’t Jesus fear our illnesses as humans? Isn’t this what we expect? This is what Vinicio’s friend, standing beside him, expected to receive from Pope Francis. And I think you know, because of your own vulnerabilities- of body or soul, in relationships or work- you know the reaction you EXPECT to get from those around you. Why doesn’t Jesus respond to our illnesses this way? He’s different. Jesus was and is different…

It’s this kind startling response we should have as we read Mark’s gospel account today. We’re given TWO miracle stories and Mark gives them to us in the strangest of ways. He’s uses a literary device that Scholars have called… I’m going to use their technical term here… a “Markan Sandwich.” No, seriously. That’s what they call it.

It’s not complicated but it might help you to remember Mark’s presentation of this biblical truth…if you can think of today’s reading this way:

A1. Jairus’ Need

B1. Woman’s Need

B2. Woman’s Need Answered By Jesus

A2. Jairus’ Need Answered By Jesus

So here’s what I want you to see today from Mark’s Gospel. Three reasons Jesus isn’t afraid of our illnesses as human beings. They all come from the nature of the gospel…

Personal

Pervasive

Powerful

I. The Personal Nature of the Gospel

Why doesn’t Jesus fear the illnesses of the human person? The personal nature of the gospel means that the good news of Jesus Christ is not just a good idea, it cannot be relegated to the realm of the abstract- to academic discussions in ivory towers, nor to the prayer closets of religious professionals. No! the gospel of Jesus Christ is for PEOPLE. And through the every-day lives of every-day people, this Gospel is proclaimed throughout the world so that it transforms the systems and structures of civilization. Where do we see this in the text? Notice how the reality of human sadness breaks the abstraction of human systems in this story..

A. First we have Jairus.

A while back I was putting the girls to bed and THIS was our story that we turned to in the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Loyd Jones. Having grown up in church, I had heard this story and read and studied it even, for years. But when I read it THAT night, beside my littler girls’ beds, with their eyes already half-closed, it was as if I was reading it for the first time. I could feel Jairus’ desperation. I could feel his fear- that he’d never hold his daughter, alive, again. And it shook me. Jairus’ need was great. And so is ours…

Jairus is a synagogue leader. He’s also a man and thus powerful because of his gender in 1st Century.

But notice that Jesus is not hurried by Jairus’ status nor hindered by Jairus’ antagonism (which is assumed and implied by the fact that he’s a synagogue leader and elsewhere in Mark synagogue leaders and Jesus do NOT get along).

And notice that the system of power that Jairus is a part of… as a male in society, and as a ruler in the synagogue… does not amount to anything when compared to Jairus’ personal sadness over his daughter’s death- a sadness common to every human being.

And it’s this PERSONAL, HUMAN SADNESS, of a Father grieving his daughter, that presents an opportunity for the healing touch of Jesus, for the power of the gospel to be proclaimed.

B. Second, we have a similar story with the lady in verses 25 and following.

notice how the societal AND religious systems would render her, a Woman, as not important, as less than, because the societal structures of the 1st Century say so!

And, in comparison with Jairus with whom she’s juxtaposed by Mark, she would not only seem to be less powerful as a woman and NOT a religious leader, but she’s also interrupting Jairus’ request! You can imagine Jairus and all those with him thinking: “Hey lady, get in line! My daughter is dying!”

Also, notice how the religious system around her, that of Judaism and the Mosaic Law, would render her as unclean due to her illness of blood. We know this from Lev 15. In fact, both systems here, society’s and Judaism’s, would both disallow Jesus from touching her: as a male and so as not to become unclean himself. She wasn’t even supposed to be IN that crowd.

But none of these systems stop the proclamation of the gospel and the healing touch of Jesus. Jesus is not hindered by her perceived societal status as less-than, or her religious status as unclean, or the difficulty of her circumstance (an illness that no doctor could fix).

Friends, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is PERSONAL and reaches beyond all structures and systems into our personal, human experiences.

C. Third, we must mention the little girl.

Again, she’s a female. And Mark wants us to note this gender connection between the women whom Jesus heals not only by placing their stories next to one another, but also by assigning the number 12 to the woman’s illness and then to the girl’s age.

And again, Jesus’ tender healing touch breaks the rules of the religious system because no one is to touch a corpse in Jewish law according to Numbers 19.

But Jesus is not hindered even by death! No sickness. No sadness. No systems and structures of man. Nothing, not even death, is more powerful than Jesus and the Good News he has come to proclaim to you and me.

It is in Mark’s gospel, above all, that we get a picture of a Jesus who shared emotions and passions with us. The sheer humanity of Jesus in Mark’s picture brings him very near to us.

William Barclay (New Testament Scholar)

Apply: Friends, the application of this truth for us is essential because

In a world where people are reduced to labels and those labels make us afraid of them- labels like rich or poor, this color or race or that color or race, liberal or conservative, gay or straight, republican or democrat… it’s into this reductionistic label-filled world our God sends Jesus who is not afraid to see humanity differently, to see us beyond our labels, and to teach the church to do the same! Why is Jesus not a afraid of our illnesses? Because he sees us NOT in reductionistic ways but in REDEMPTIVE ways… jesus sees us, every-person, as bearing the eternal image of his Father and yet marred by sickness and thus in need of his healing touch.

Restate Point: Why isJesus unafraid of our human illnesses, sin, and vulnerabilities? Because he loves PEOPLE and his gospel is personal - for you and me in the nitty gritty of our lives.

II. The Pervasive Nature of the Gospel

Second, I want you to see how pervasive the gospel of Jesus is. Jesus isn’t afraid of our illness because there’s no kind of human illness and no depth of human illness that his Gospel doesn’t seek to remedy. What do I mean by this? I mean, to use the words I learned as a child in Sunday school, the gospel of Jesus Christ is DEEP and WIDE.

A. Its width we’ve already touched on in that it pervades every aspect of society, every kind and sort of person: Jairus the powerful, the Woman who is unclean, and even the little girl, a seeming victim of death itself.

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’ ”

Abraham Kuyper

B. It’s also DEEP. This depth reaches the ENTIRETY of the human person: Body and Soul.

In other words friends, what Mark’s gospel invites us to today is a recovery of the fullness of the Christian message: That God is going to make ALL THINGS NEW… not just SOME THINGS…SOME SPIRITUAL THINGS.

We see this EVERYWHERE in Mark’s gospel, which is action packed with Jesus’ miraculous DEEDS, and we certainly see it today with the healing of two bodies. Listen to Anthony Hoekema speak to the pervasiveness of the gospel:

According to the Scriptures, the body is not less real than the soul; God created man in his totality, as both body and soul. Nor is the body inferior to the soul, or nonessential to man’s true existence; if this were not so, the Second Person of the Trinity could never have assumed a genuine human nature with a genuine human body. In biblical thought the body is not a tomb for the soul but a temple of the Holy Spirit; man is not complete apart from the body. Therefore the future blessedness of the believer is not merely the continued existence of his soul, but includes as its richest aspect the resurrection of this body. That resurrection will be for believers a transition to glory, in which our bodies shall become like the glorious body of Christ (Philippians 3:21).1157

Anthony Hoekema, The Bible and the Future

Anthony A. Hoekema

The Gospel PERVADES Spiritual Sickness and Physical Sickness, Societal relationships, family relationships, Personal illness and Public injustice!

This pervasive gospel is not just preached in word only but in deed! It does not just cleanse the human heart it feeds the human mouth and clothes the human body.

Without the miracles we should have a teacher; with the miracles we have a Saviour.

John Gresham Machen (American Presbyterian Apologist)

Jesus doesn’t want to just fill human minds with data about God, nor does he want to stop at the level of human hearts or emotions… Jesus wants to place his hands upon every human being in a holy way, so that every part of us- body and soul- might be made well.

RESTATE: This is the PERVASIVENESS of the GOSPEL.

III. The Powerful Nature of the Gospel

Here’s the final thing I want you to see from Mark’s story: The Power of the Gospel. Jesus’ isn’t afraid to come close and touch us with the Gospel because there is no power that compares with it.

Text: The illness becomes Ill.

One of the interesting things about this story is the role of POWER. Jairus’ is more powerful than the woman that interrupts his daughter’s healing. The crowd and the synagogue rules are more powerful than the woman who is unclean. And the woman’s doctors- they can’t fix her. Where is there power? And then the little girl- her age, her gender, her death- she lacks power in virtually every regard. In the end, then, in terms of HUMAN POWER, the sadness of death and the sickness that precedes it, has won. Right?

It’s the sickness and sadness of death that brings Jairus to his knees, that makes the lady unclean, and that renders the little girl NO MORE.

But what happens when the powerful force of this sickness and death runs into Jesus?

Jesus is more powerful.

It’s almost humorous that the lady’s sickness makes it so that, according to law, anyone who touches her would be, seemingly, attached buy her uncleanness and thus rendered sick, as well.

But the lady isn’t worried about Jesus getting sick or becoming unclean, is she! When the sickness touches people, it harms them. When it touches Jesus, IT GETS HARMED!

Apply: So let’s summarize: If the Gospel’s Personal and Pervasive Nature invite us to see people differently and to see salvation differently, the Gospel’s Power invites us to see God differently… to confront own skepticism about the nature of reality and the way God is involved in God’s world.

RESTATE: Today Mark invites you to open yourself up to Jesus as he comes toward you with the healing power of God, as he seeks to intervene in God’s world and your life. With a gospel this powerful, why would Jesus fear our illnesses?

Close Sermon

I want to close today by clarifying just how it is, we believe, you and I experience this personal, pervasive, and powerful good news of Jesus Christ… because it really does begin right here, right now.

In short, we just relive Mark 5 every Sunday. Scholar James Edwards points out in Mark’s story that:

[All the] characters…transfer their uncleanness to Jesus, and to each Jesus bestows the cleansing wholeness of God.

Friends, do we not do the same thing every Sunday? That is, we reenact the moment Jesus touches the unclean woman and touches the lifeless body of Jairus’ little girl.

The tree of the cross being cast into the waters of affliction hath rendered them wholesome and medicinal.

John Owen (Puritan Divine and Statesman)

Every Sunday we bring our illness and uncleanness to Jesus: our desperation, our disappointment with all the human systems that have let us down: societal systems, religious systems, medical systems, family systems… and then Jesus touches us with his very body and his very blood, and we are made well.

In the Eucharist…we discover a unique medicine. [Church Father, St. Ignatius, calls it “the medicine of immortality]. While the other sacraments convey the physician’s healing power, the Eucharist contains the physician himself. The Eucharist is “the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father by his goodness raised up” (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6.2). In the Eucharist, Christ is both physician and medicine…

Damian Day, O.P.

Church of the Incarnation, draw near to Jesus now. He has no fear of your illness. He wants to make you well with his healing touch. Amen.