Unrealistic Jesus

July 1, 2012
Pentecost 5, Proper 8
Mark 5:21-43

            Just before the power went out on Friday, Holden and I watched a movie called “Our Idiot Brother.”  In it, Paul Rudd plays this character whose life philosophy is to always be kind and honest, always assume the best about people, always trust, in the assumption that people will rise to their better natures.  He ends up wrecking havoc in the lives of everyone he meets, but at the end, he inspires them all to live more honestly and openly too.  It was a decent movie – good character development, funny.  But at the end I was left thinking about how unrealistic it was.  It’s such a rosy idea to be so idealistic and assume the best about everyone, but it real life that guy would probably be dead in a back alley somewhere.

It was only after I’d pretty much discounted this character as a life model that I started seeing the parallels to Jesus.  Because Jesus is constantly doing just that – offering us models for living that are utterly unrealistic.  Love God with all your heart?  Then how can I fulfill my work requirements, save enough money to feel secure, get everything done that needs doing, guard my heart from pain?   Love my neighbor from myself?  Then how can I stay safe in the world, prevent myself from being taken, put my family and country first, and, again, guard my heart from pain?  Jesus’ models don’t work in the world as we’ve constructed it either. 

And maybe that’s because Jesus isn’t calling us to fit into the world as we’ve constructed it.  Maybe Jesus is calling us to shake this world to its core, to help usher in the kingdom of heaven.

This morning’s Gospel reading brings us yet another example of Jesus modeling a way of life that is so unrealistic that it threatens to bring peace to our souls.

As a way of introduction, let me tell you about my most useful coping technique as a working mother of three -- multi-tasking.  It seems to be the only way to get everything done.  Helping one kid get their homework done while we’re waiting to see the doctor for another.  Organizing a playdate with a kid’s friend to take place in the gym childcare.  Getting a sermon written in chunks here and there or when I ought to be sleeping.  Checking e-mail while helping the kids take their baths.  Returning long overdue phone calls while driving.  Recently it struck me how bad it had gotten when Dylan from the back of the car said, “Mommy, wouldn’t it be safer to have your hands on the wheel while you’re driving?”

I relate all this not because it’s so terribly interesting, but because it’s so terribly common.  This is how we live, isn’t it?  We get our groceries in the 15 minutes between carpool requirements; or grab lunch as we hop from meeting to meeting; or try to get work done on one project while our speakerphones are on “mute” for some other project; or take care of aging parents and spouses while trying somehow to also take care of ourselves. 

            And this generation of kids are even better than we are at this phenomenon of multi-tasking.  They eat dinner in the car on the way to soccer, or do homework in the window between school and rehearsal, or listen to their i-pod while texting and doing homework, or who knows what else.

            Frankly, I’m not sure there’s any other way to manage all the balls up in the air.  The problem is, while I’ve become fairly good at accomplishing more things at one time than seems humanly possible, I end up feeling like I’m short-changing everyone.  Including myself.  Sometimes I end up feeling more like an automaton, a task master for the kids, than a person who loves my God and my neighbor with all my heart.

            I think that’s why I find this morning’s Gospel story so intriguing.

            If your life feels like a hamster wheel sometimes, judging from this section of Mark’s Gospel I’m thinking Jesus could relate.  And yet he has a completely counter-intuitive – and of course, absolutely unrealistic – way of dealing with all the things that get thrown at him.

            Jesus has just come from rebuking the wild wind and calming the angry sea that we heard about last week.  Then, in a story we didn’t get, he cast out a crowd of demons into a herd of swine.  Throughout, he’s been teaching and preaching to soul-hungry crowds.  Jesus has had a very busy week.  And now he's on his way to Nazareth to preach at his hometown synagogue.

            And so here is Jesus, just beginning his long, dusty journey with his friends and disciples, when up rushes Jairus, a leader of the synagogue.  Jairus falls upon Jesus and begs him to heal his daughter.  And instead of saying, “I’m so sorry, sir, I wish I could help, but I’m expected in Nazareth,” he steps off his intended path, carves a big hunk of time out of his plans, to hurry to Jairus’ home, where his little girl is at the point of death.

            That would be remarkable enough, really.  But Jesus and Jairus have no sooner set off, when here comes this woman, an unnamed, ritually unclean nobody, pushing her way into the crowd around Jesus from behind and grabbing his coat.  Now more than ever, I could imagine him saying, “Sorry, ma’am, I’m off to help a dying child of a very important person – I’m sure you understand,” but of course he doesn’t say that, not Jesus.  He wouldn’t even consider ignoring her desperate pleas.  And so he turns and has a conversation with her, healing and loving her, calling her “daughter.”  And then, once he’s given all she needs, he turns back to Jairus and starts walking with him again.

            At first glance, it looks like either Jesus is pretty distractable or the writer of Mark needed a better editor!

            Except of course neither one is true.  In seminary, I remember learning about how for decades the prevailing wisdom about the Gospel of Mark was that the writer of the Gospel was not much of a writer.  He seems to be all over the place, easily distracted, with the beginnings and endings of stories interrupted by seemingly unrelated stories.  Only fairly recently did some scholar notice that all of these frenetic interruptions were actually a consistent literary technique of Mark’s, dubbed “sandwiching.”  The stories inserted into the middle, it was discovered, might actually provide the key to the theological purpose of the entire sandwich. 

            I think the sandwiching in this story teaches us something important about Jesus.  It isn’t that Mark wanted to tell an orderly story about Jesus and kept getting sidetracked.  And it isn’t that Jesus had an agenda and just was too disorganized to keep his eye on the ball.  Instead, Mark shows us a Jesus who doesn’t need to travel from Point A to Point B.  A Jesus who doesn’t accomplish anything in the way we’d expect.  A Jesus who is open to insertions, surprises, unexpected lessons. 

            The woman that comes up behind Jesus isn’t a random interruption in the story, after all.  Maybe it isn’t possible to be an interruption to Jesus.  Jairus and his daughter, the unnamed woman who comes up behind him, every single person Jesus ran across.  None of them, none of their needs were distractions from his mission.  They were his mission.  And so are we.  Everyone Jesus encounters was and is an opportunity for Jesus to love and listen and heal, just as the people who might interrupt our lives or best-laid plans can be an opportunity for us to minister to or learn from, in big or small ways. 

So this week, instead of multi-tasking, why don’t we try giving “sandwiching” a try?  Trying to worry less about getting things done and putting as much attention and love as we can into whatever, or more importantly, whoever is in front of us.  Trying to think about the unexpected things that pop into our lives not as interruptions but as possibilities.  Nothing may go quite as we’ve planned, but maybe that will end up being the most important part of our stories.  It’s absolutely unrealistic.  We’re almost certain to fail.  And yet in trying, we might end up turning the world just a little bit upside down.  And maybe bring a little more peace to our souls in the process.  Amen.