One of the Crowd?
One of the Crowd?
June 28, 2009
by The Reverend Alan Neale
Mark 5:31 His disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’”. Or, as the Message Translation reads: His disciples said, “What are you talking about? With this crowd pushing and jostling you, you’re asking, ‘Who touched me?’ Dozens have touched you!”.
Goodness! The way the disciples sometimes talked to Jesus… but, at least, they talked to Him but that’s definitely a theme for another sermon!
One commentator writes, “This is one of the several reproaches aimed at Jesus by the disciples… they are all very suggestive. The whole list is well worth study and thought” but, as I said, another time!
Today it’s not so much the unfortunate, regrettable tone with which the disciples spoke to Jesus but rather the content of their complaining and somewhat impertinent, saucy, sassy question that interests me. “Look… there’s a crowd… pressing upon you… and you say someone touched you… dozens have touched you.”
I would want to expand, enlarge their question (though of course without the impertinence, rudeness, sauciness and definitely without the sassy tone) – “Lord, with all the crowd pressing upon you… why only one healed?”.
Would it not be unfortunate (to say the least) and very poignant if all the people who worshipped here today… only one touched the Lord and was made whole, healed, rescued, restored by the Lord Jesus Christ?!
I believe profoundly and deeply that whenever I, like the woman, reach out to touch “even the hem of his robe” I am, in turn, touched and changed (transformed) by the power and presence of God… definitively, unreservedly, inevitably! I read this morning, “Jesus responded to the shy reproach of individual need as surely and deftly as a magnetic needle responds to the North Star”. Now the burden of my petition may not be answered in the way that I seek… but there will be transformation!
So… why was Jesus not totally drained of power that day, why were not dozens who came forward in response to the disciples’ interrogation of Jesus?
Pride… despair… contempt… this unholy and wretched trinity will definitively prevent us from enjoying the miraculous transformation which God offers to me, to you this morning.
PRIDE!
In today’s Gospel from Mark (chapter 5) we read of two people who, for very different reasons, could well have refused to reach out to Jesus because of pride. Jairus – a leader of the synagogue… well-respected by the people, well-versed in the Scripture, well-accustomed to leading not following, well-practiced (no doubt) in giving directions not in making petitions… this man willingly, eagerly sheds his importance and experience in order that his daughter be healed.
The woman would have been encouraged by religion and tradition and social custom to keep her sickness (involving the loss of blood) very much to herself. Perhaps she might even have felt rather foolish to have expended all her resources on such a pathetic group of “many physicians”.
You see, by shedding their pride (perhaps all they thought they had left)… they stopped being “one of the crowd” and were touched mightily by the Lord!
DESPAIR!
At the very point of his daughter’s death… Jairus overcomes all despair (or, at least, refuses to surrender to despair). He seeks Jesus out… falls at his feet and begs him… repeatedly… “Come and heal my daughter”.
For 12 years (interesting that the daughter was 12 years old?) – the woman had suffered. The Message Translation reads, “The woman had suffered a condition of hemorrhaging for twelve years—a long succession of physicians had treated her, and treated her badly, taking all her money and leaving her worse off than before”. Surely we would be more than sympathetic if we knew such a person and they were tempted to despair? And yet despair, hopelessness, desperation did not have the final word… and they need not, should not, have the final word with us!
Since coming to this church, I have known many who have refused to surrender to despair and continue to make their “petitions known to God” – I pray with them and I pray for us all the patience of waiting of which today’s Psalm speaks (Psalm 130: 5 “O wait for the Lord”). But I also have known many who in their despair (though they have visited many doctors and expended nearly all their resources – of body, of mind, of pocket)… they have been “touched by the Lord” and have been transformed!
You see, by shedding their despair (at least for a moment)… they stopped being “one of the crowd” and were touched mightily by the Lord!
Pride, Despair and CONTEMPT!.
The disciples with contempt (is it not contempt?), with contempt in their voices make light of Jesus’ question, “Who touched me?”. Oh I imagine their eyes were rolling with such speed as to make leaves flutter on the trees!
The crowd around the dead child laugh at Jesus with ridicule… (Message Translation) “Provoked to sarcasm, they told him he didn’t know what he was talking about”.
Herbert Spencer (one of the greatest minds in Victorian England… a theologian, philosopher, scientist) wrote: “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation”.
Bill Wilson (co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous) included Spencer’s quotation in his writing of the Step 11. He knew that “contempt prior to investigation” would prevent a man or woman from discovering freedom from their addiction. We know that “contempt prior to investigation” will prevent a man or woman from discovering the life-changing, transforming power of God.
You see, by refusing to succumb to contempt - Jairus and the woman stopped being “one of the crowd” and were touched mightily by the Lord!
To adapt slighty G.K. Chesterton’s famous quotation, “The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanted but rather… it has not been wanted and has never been tried”.
Pride, Despair and Contempt (that unholy trinity) will hold us back from being transformed by God… they will establish us as merely “one of the crowd” – how sad, how very sad!
Today “stand out from the crowd” and reach out again to the Lord! So be it! Amen
