A Faith Crisis

Mark 5 Sermon Mark 3 Good-morning everybody; our text today is Mark 5;21-42, but we will be starting on verses 21-36. Just to recap where we’ve been before we begin, in Mark, Israel has long awaited their salvation from foreign oppression. John came preaching the arrival of the messiah, but isn’t him; somebody was coming who was greater than he was. Jesus arrived on the scene, was baptized by John, and God himself reveals Jesus as his son. Jesus was then whisked away to the wilderness where he was tempted. John was put in prison, and Jesus returned from the desert preaching “The time has come, The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” This is the thesis of Mark’s book. After that Jesus ran around healing the ill, casting out demons, and arguing with Pharisees. Most notably, Jesus told the Pharisees that “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus is here for sinners. Jesus continues on, teaching against the Pharisees and their legalism; he develops quite the following. His following grows so large that his mother and brothers can’t even reach him to stop his teaching that “Those who do the will of God are my brother and my mother.” Next, Jesus returns to the lake and teaches us that God hides himself from people in order to be found only by those who care to seek him. Our setting today is by the Lake of Galilee, where Jesus has just recently calmed a storm and exorcised a demoniac. Jesus is showing himself for who he is; not merely a man or a prophet, but rather God in the flesh; king over creation and unseen things. It’s this unbelievable capacity to change our lives and our world from which he will say, “Don’t be afraid, just believe.” despite there being legions of reasons not to. Let’s pray and read our text for the day; Father, we believe that you still speak today. We come in many different ways to the same altar, To the same Word Hungry, conscious or not, for you to nourish us, Speak to us, Fill us with life. We ask that our act of of showing up in faith would not be in vain. We showed up today, Lord, and so we ask that you would too. Not only in your gentle ever-presence, But that your words would manifest in our hearts and actions. Amen. 21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. 30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” 31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” 32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. THE SEA, is a dangerous thing. Even today, the sea seems to be a place of wild adventure and unimaginable dangers, albeit our imaginations have been pacified by our scientific materialism. The fact remains that the high sea is a deadly place to be, and that it represents, in our stories and imaginations, a place of conflict. This is perhaps why Jesus is located by the sea in Mark’s gospel, over and over. It could be that Peter, as he discipled the author of this Gospel, shared a healthy respect for the sea that had been worn into him through generations of fishermen in his family. It could also be that having done his fair share of travel on the sea, Mark found it to be a place of conflict as well. Either way, the state of the sea in Mark’s gospel is clearly a place of deep conflict harboring the fears and anxieties of the people. This is the context in which Jesus teaches as he reveals who he is and what it means to follow him; not merely next to this fear-inducing mass, but through it, just as Israel had thousands of years earlier. God’s people are now called to navigate the chaos of life by faith, as we will see through the following stories of a nameless woman and Jairus, the synagogue leader. At first glance, neither of these characters ought to have room for even a vague hope let alone faith in a particular person. Jairus was a local leader, and not even his proximity to God could ward off death from touching his family; his daughter’s life hung by a thread, and he was faced with the chaotic judgment of illness and death. The nameless woman was also in dire straits. She had suffered under many doctors who failed to see her well, but were in the end faithful with billing her. She had not only lost her ritual purity as she continually bled, she also lost any money she had; her fortress from worldly chaos had been seized and taken captive. The woman’s pursuit of Jesus is marked with desperation from the outset. She pushes through the crowd in order to find him. She knows that she’s ritually unclean, but she can’t help but try and reach out to him for healing. She pushes her way through the crowd and towards to mob around Jesus. Jesus is unmoved by the tossling of the crowd. Unmoved, until the woman touches him. It’s at this moment that something happens. Something erupts. Jesus freezes dead in his tracks, and the whole procession is brought to a halt. “Who touched me?” Jesus asks. The disciples almost mock him. Everybody was touching him. I can only imagine how the woman felt in this instance. She had been healed! Her bleeding had stopped. Something was different…. But the way she had sought change seems to have been wrong? Socially unacceptable for certain. She had touched a Rabbi and she was unclean. Jesus would have to ritually cleanse himself and be banished from the community, like she was supposed to be. In fact, it’s likely that the only reason she was included in this ordeal was because Jesus was outside of an urban center. Defiled Jews were often banished from the community. Jesus was surely furious, but she could not deny what had been done. She fesses up, and receives the consequences of this major social faux pas. Whatever it was seems to have been worth it. Besides, this guy just healed her; she wasn’t going anywhere. I think we can all agree that whatever this woman was, she was brave. It takes courage not to flee such a scene. But Jesus’ response is not what one would expect from a defiled Rabbi. He is not angry- perhaps the urgency in his voice had been mistaken for anger, but he wasn’t mad at all. He was desperate to find the one who had touched him. Perhaps just as desperate as she had been to touch his robe in the first place. Judging by the fact that Jesus embraces the woman by calling her daughter, it isn’t a stretch to imagine that Jesus was feeling the same fear of a mother who had just lost her child in a crowded supermarket. She has put her faith in him, and so she is set apart from the swarming masses around her. She is known by the God-man. She is family now. The woman’s faith has done far more than heal her body; it’s reconnected her to the divine. She’s reconciled with God, and permanently (note the connotations of the word daughter) reconnected to the source of life. hat neatly summarizes our problems too, doesn’t it? We’ve been disconnected from the source of life. It might be small things- a lack of self control. An addiction. A broken relationship with our father or mother. A frustrating person that we frequently come into contact with- none of these things really speak “life,” do they? It also might be as simple as our work and vocation. Do we really feel called when we sleepily slip in and out of traffic on the commute to work, or does that pilgrimage feel more like a ritual that kills us? I actually used to fall asleep while driving on the way to work at a factory every morning. The root of the problem was that I hated that job with my whole heart. Not just because the work was demeaning (a robot could easily do what I did and I was told so regularly), the people were really mean to me. They belittled me just as much as the work. So I filled my after-work hours with as much ‘life’ as I could; going to the gym, church events, Muay Thai, watching T.V. with family… as loudly as that Job shouted death, I fought back and shouted life louder… and I did it all in my own strength. As a result, I nearly died several times as I passed out in exhaustion on the commute to work. I often wonder if I might have lived out that season differently if I had worked in faith rather than fear? What if Jesus had put me there not only to preach life, but to enjoy it to the fullest among my coworkers? What if I could have been content, even in the midst of all that toxic discontent? Jesus wants to reconnect our lives to the source of life here and now, so that God’s kingdom can come right here, right now, not just in the future when we’re all resurrected and Jesus comes back. Jarius is faced with the already/not yet tension of God’s kingdom even more than the sick woman, however. Jarius finds Jesus along the coast. It would seem that his household assumes that Jesus is merely a traveling teacher, so that may well be who Jarius expects to find. However, something about Jesus tips Jarius off, and he launches into worship; the very first thing Jarius does when he sees Jesus is drop to his knees. This is not a light act in the Hebrew mind- this is an act of worship, and an act of blasphemy if the object of worship is anyone but God. Jairus is wise though; his name means ‘enlightened by Yahweh.’ Jairus’ name is not happenstance; he is the one to whom God reveals himself. Jairus is watching the woman’s healing play out before him, much like we are. He is faced with the chaos of life too. He recognizes his own incapacity to deal with it, and reaches out to Jesus, having understood that any privilege which comes from being the rough equivalent to a church elder today does him little good, just like the woman’s wealth did little for her. However, once Jairus has seen Jesus heal this woman, he’s confronted with what seems to be God’s failure; his daughter has died. Jesus’ miracle with the woman seems to be contradicted by what one commentator calls the mourners; “The hard-core realists of every age who decide when empirical realities have foreclosed on divine possibilities.” She’s dead, Jairus, don’t be stupid. Stop hoping, you’re only hurting yourself. Accept things as they are. Jarius is thrown into a faith crisis. Jesus has shown that he is faithful, but now the choice rests on him; will he trust God to conquer death? Will he throw in his lot with the old regime or the rightful king? Particularly the rightful king who seems to have failed him already… fear must have been evident in Jairus’ face, because Jesus says “Do not be afraid, just believe.” Jairus is in a circumstance where logic dictates he do one thing, but faith another. Let’s just be clear that by all rational standards, Jesus has lost. The battle is over; death has won, and the life of Jairus’ daughter is the loot. Jesus appears unworthy of trust, yet that’s his call. He says “I know this doesn’t make sense, and that I’m calling you to obey me and follow me in a situation where, realistically, you’d run, or at the very least circle the wagons. But just trust me, okay? I’ve got this.” Then the impossible happens; Jairus trusts Jesus. This is the real miracle. Even among the crowd of zombie-like orbiters, Jairus is tethered to Christ more intentionally than they… Jairus hears Jesus’ call, much like the woman, and responds in faith, to follow Christ. I understand how this might feel like a cheap resolution to the faith crisis. After all, we do not experience our own crises the same way. I know in my own experience, when I am confronted by a situation where who I know Jesus to be seems to be contradicted by the circumstances, it is not an easy impulse to follow him. One example, only not my own, was when I was in a car crash while I was driving down a gravel road a few days before my senior year of High-school started. My father had been having nightmares about me dying in a car accident, and when I got in one he seriously questioned how God could be good; not whether or not God existed, but rather whether or not he was who he said he was when he threatened to take away his only son. Ultimately, God showed my father that he had placed me above Him, but asking whether or not God was good- and that’s a real faith crisis; that’s a real human reaction to tragedy, and I know I would react the exact same way if we had traded places... But there would be no faith without crisis. I imagine Jairus felt the exact same way my father did in that moment. In that moment between the report that his daughter had died and Jesus’ call to believe, I can see Jairus turning to Jesus with a profound sense of sorrow, betrayal, and rage. I can see Jairus’ eyes narrowing in on God incarnate and thinking How dare you. How dare you God. How dare you heal this woman instead of my daughter. How dare you waste time on this trivial matter while my daughter waited for you to save her. It’s no wonder that it’s in the midst of these faith crises that so many people become atheists, not because they don’t believe God exists, but rather they stop believing God is good, and atheism is a fitting vengeance to wreak on him. It’s a fitting response to turn your face away from God when he calls you, “Don’t be afraid. Just believe,” like a trite truism in the face of your agony. This is a supreme test of faith in God’s character, Jairus follows Jesus because he believes that even though the circumstances contradict God’s character, the story isn’t over. The author hasn’t put his pen down, and this is what Jairus clings to when Jesus says “ Just believe.” Jesus knows what things look like, but he also knows where they’re going, and that’s why we need to trust God as humans locked in the present moment of time. We are subjective points moving along a tapestry of history as God weaves it, and the full picture is not ours yet; we could fight the weaver, or we could have faith in his skill. By denying God we eject ourselves from the picture. The other way, we not only get to see the tapestry he’s weaving, but we get to become a part of it. Jairus chooses faith. He understands that Jesus is calling him beyond the agony of the present moment, and brings Jesus to see his daughter. When Jesus arrives at Jarius’ home, he is confronted with a commotion. Mourning the death of Jairus’ daughter had launched into full forward motion. Jesus expresses his incredulity that people have failed to trust him despite the fact that the household would only have heard of Jesus as a teacher. In asking this, Jesus compels the mourners to have faith like Jairus and see past the present moment to what God is doing, but they laugh at him instead. Laughing didn’t mean the same thing in Jesus’ day as it does today. Laughing was more like a violent mockery than an expression of joy or entertainment. The mourners denied Jesus in that moment, but thankfully the girl’s life was never in their hands to begin with. Jesus has everybody removed from the house except for the girl’s parents and his inner ring of disciples. Jesus holds the girl’s hand and says “Little girl, get up!” Just like the woman in the crowd who Jesus names ‘Daughter,’ Jairus’ daughter comes into contact with Jesus and life flows into her veins. Can you imagine if Jairus had succumbed to the feelings in that moment where Jesus called him to just believe? He never would have seen his daughter healed. He would have went home and buried her along with his faith in God. Now, two disclaimers; this story isn’t meant to tell us that we can expect to avoid pain if we have faith in God. The woman who bled relentlessly did so for 12 years before she was healed. The fact is, some of our wounds will only be fully reconciled when Jesus returns and his kingdom is brought in its fullness… but the fact is, it will come, and he will heal us. The second disclaimer is that faith does not let us control God, just like trust doesn’t let us control other people. This isn’t like where parents leave a teenager at home for a weekend and leave him the keys saying “We trust you!” in order to make him feel guilty if he throws a party. We cannot manipulate God in order to make him behave for us. God is not our pet, he is God, and it is a terrifying thing to trust him because he’s dangerous. He will change you life, and he will take you down the same paths Jesus had to walk, including the Via dolorosa. If you follow Jesus, you will die. But if you follow Jesus, you will also be given new life. It takes faith, or trust, to step out and follow God down that path. This text is meant to both teach us how to navigate a faith crisis, as well as to create one within us. Do we trust God? Do you trust God? Yes you, not the person to your left or your right. If you do, how are you following him in faith? Where are you relying on him? I know a temptation for myself is to say “ I trust Jesus as my Lord and Saviour, that he’ll give me new life in Heaven.” NO. The Faith Crisis happens alongside a call to action, always, not as just a call for simple mental assent to an idea. I, the reader, am compelled to follow Jesus. The Holy Spirit is practically reaching out of scripture and smacking us at this point, saying ‘hey you! Make a choice! Follow Jesus with your actions.” But here’s the rub; that Spirit that’s grabbing our attention as we read this is not only calling us to action, but giving us the eyes to see past our present circumstances. We don’t drum up faith in order to see God’s work; we see God’s work because the Spirit has already planted the seeds of faith in us. Okay, one last thing; we, too, face the chaotic sea as we address doctrinal uncertainty today. After our service you’ve all been invited to work your way downstairs and participate in an information session on a doctrinal problem our church has been addressing for some time now. As we do that, I want to ask what it looks like to live out faithfulness according to Mark 5? On one hand, we could try to surf these tumultuous waves on our own. “I know, what I believe,” we might say. “ I know what the scriptures say,” we might say. “ I have a degree in church,” or “ I have been reading the scriptures for 60 years,” we might say. Are these faith responses? Yes. They are faith in ourselves. I think our story invites us into a new kind of faith; a faith that unifies us, just like Paul talks about in Ephesians. Jesus invites us into a faith that’s God-given. When we approach the waves of uncertain doctrine today, we can choose between faith in ourselves, which will put us to sleep and divide us, OR, we can have faith that the Spirit lives and works among all of us as a church. Faith that doctrinal disagreements over the same scripture we all hold to be true and holy might be a chance to come together and listen in faith. Faith in ourselves will tell us that we are right, and that we don’t need to listen because we already know the truth as we’ve defined it. Today, we are called to Faith that one author has inspired bible, and that the same author can clarify what it means. As a friend of mine used to say; what unites us will decide us. When we disagree on scripture, we had better hope to God that the Spirit is in all of us uniting us, or we will divide. Today, we can step out in faith, and pray about what the bible says, asking God to make it clear to us individually, too... Most importantly, we can face this issue from the same side of the table, rather than as opponents who sit at opposite ends. The book of Ephesians, which the young-adults recently worked through, concludes that “The glory of God is the unity of his church body.” Do you have faith that God’s spirit is at work among this body? That he can unify us as we listen to each-other and hear one another out? If not, hear my gentle invitation not to participate. If we can’t step out in faith that God is working among his people, it’s worth prayerfully asking God to heal that cynicism before you participate in the potentially destructive way the mourners spoke to Jairus, saying “Your daughter is dead. Why bother the Teacher any more?” When we approach scripture without faith that God is speaking to his people through it, we might as well say like the mourners, “Your Body is dead God. Let me bury it. I’ll throw it in the ground.” I don’t care what side of this you think you’re on, Complementarian or Egalitarian; in God’s kingdom, there is no Egalitarian or Complementarian, only faith-filled or faithless. Crowds or Followers. If you walk into this conversation set against your brothers and sisters and without faith in God’s capacity to speak to and through them, again, hear my invitation not to participate. I’m not saying that only one side of this is correct; I’m saying that the church is a unified body addressing an doctrinal issue today, and that we can face this with arms linked in faith, rather than with teeth bared in mistrust. I’d like to close our sermon today with prayer, and invite the worship team back up. Afterwards, Josh will give the benediction and we can move downstairs for fellowship and discussion. Arise, oh church, Lift up your head. Attend to your king, Sovereign victor over even death. Arise, oh church Lift up your voice. Sing songs of faith, Celebrate eternity breaking into the world. Arise, oh church, Lift up your hands. Steady one another As you follow Jesus to the cross with joy. Moderation Notes Hello everyone; before we begin I’d like to just lay our a few boundaries about what it means to have this conversation in good faith; 1. This is not a clear matter. We are gathering as a Body to listen to God’s spirit as he speaks through his Word to us; there will be disagreements in what each text means, and our faith-response is to listen to others. 2. Because we are Christians who seek to follow Christ, we will speak to one another with respect and dignity. We will not condescend in tone, language, or posture, but rather speak with fear and trembling as we acknowledge in faith that God is present in his Body, that he will speak here today, and that we can listen for him. 3. We will invite you to not participate in the conversation if you disagree with these boundaries. If you try to break these boundaries, and resist our moderation you will be invited to leave. If you resist further, the conversation will be closed and church discipline will be considered. The unity of God’s body is grave matter will not be trifled with. 4. Further, we understand that this conversation is likely to be followed up with a lot of table talk. We would like to remind you that Christ is just as present there as he is here, and that political games, gossip, character attacks, or slander are all acts of bad faith, and we encourage you to listen to one another as deeply outside this building as you do inside of it. 5. Having said all of this, I want to reaffirm that the purpose of this conversation is to build one another up with faith, cooperation, and attention to God’s word as he speaks to us through it. This is a serious work that demands attention, so let’s approach it with joyful, reverent hearts.