You Feed Them.

Luke 9:12-27.

I.

            Jesus and the disciples are in Bethsaida, where crowds have gathered.  They want to hear Jesus preach about the Kingdom of God and be healed of their diseases.  Apparently they overwhelm the village so they gather in a deserted place outside of town.  And they spend a whole day out there with “5,000 men;” and we can imagine around that many women and children as well. 

            Jesus and the disciples minister to the people until it gets to be around dinnertime.  This is all very informal and thrown together; there is no food court or even hot dog carts around to feed the people.

            They come to one of those crisis points where something has to happen.  And what happens can either be something routine, compromised, normal, and deflating, something that drains the energy out of the group because of necessity everyone has to come back down to earth and attend to necessities.  What happens now will make all the difference between whether this is another movement that is just talk, but really doesn’t change anything, or an exceptional and extraordinary event that ratchets up the energy-level and places the whole movement on a higher plane.

            We come to these shock-points in life, where we have a decision to make.  We can either fall back into what is safe, normal, and familiar, or we can take a leap into a new future, which is risky.

            The disciples have just experienced, if not miracles then certainly an unexpected and eye-opening set of events.  They went on a missionary journey taking no provisions at all, and they were surprisingly provided for anyway by the poor people they visited.  They relied on God, and God came through!

            Now, however, they are faced with a situation of no provisions, and it does not occur to them that God could come through here as well.  This is not one or two visiting apostles being fed by generous local people.  This is like 10,000 people!  Surely there are limits to what God is willing to do.

            They take inventory and discover that they can scrounge up five rolls and two dried fish, barely enough to feed two people if they’re not too hungry.  The options they consider would back away from this opportunity and fall into normal, routine, boring life.  They suggest sending everyone away to fend for themselves, or that they themselves go and buy dinner for 10,000, which they probably do not have the resources to pull off.

            Meanwhile, Jesus is just going, “No, you give them something to eat,” like he’s not quite comprehending the situation.  Eventually he sees that the disciples are clueless about what he means.  They are not making the leap from their own recent experience of reliance upon God and applying that to what is going on now.  So I imagine that he sighs and says, “Okay.  Have everyone gather in groups of about 50 and sit down.”

II.

            What then happens is still shrouded in mystery.  It is the only miracle story that appears in all 4 gospels.  None of them describe what happened in any detail; but for all of them it is the most impressive and powerful thing Jesus does in his ministry.  Whatever happens that day made such a profound impression on everyone that his disciples have sought to imitate Jesus ever since by ceremonially repeating his actions here at their weekly gatherings.

            He takes the bread and the fishes, he blesses them, he breaks them, and he gives them to the disciples.  He takes, blesses, breaks, and gives.  Jesus will repeat this set of actions at his final supper with his disciples, and when he is with two disciples he meets on the road after his resurrection.  This simple series of actions – taking, blessing, breaking, and giving – becomes the most potent sign of Jesus’ living presence.

            I have never been able to even picture this event in my mind.  Bible scholars and film makers have to figure out some way to describe and explain what happens.  But all the gospels tell us is that he took, blessed, broke, and gave the food… and everybody ate, and there were 12 baskets of food left over.  They go from having 5 small loaves and 2 fishes, to having 12 baskets full of leftovers, after feeding 10,000 people.

            We may assume it is a supernatural miracle, that the bread just manifested out of thin air, like some magic out of the Harry Potter books.  But the gospel writers don’t say this.  Some scholars posit the idea that the people were inspired to share what little food they had with them, and it turned out to be more than enough.  (This is called “demythologizing.”)  The gospel writers don’t say that either.  Whatever happens, it is the one event that everyone remembers in more or less the same way.  It becomes the defining act of the Jesus-movement.

            The impact of this event is that the people do not have to depend on the normal and accepted economic institutions for their sustenance.  Neither do they have to fend for themselves in the marketplace in competition with their neighbors for scarce resources.  They learn that the so-called laws of supply and demand don’t apply.  They may have all that they need and more if they rely upon Jesus Christ.  If they assemble in his name, approach creation with reverence and thanksgiving, and take, bless, break, and give what they have, they will have more than enough, together.  That is our faith, that taking, blessing, breaking, and giving is the shape of true human life in the Kingdom of God.

III.

            Some time later, after prayer, Jesus asks his disciples who everyone is saying he is.  They give the same report that Herod received: people are saying the Jesus is John the Baptizer returned to life, or the prophet Elijah, or one of the other prophets.  Everyone seems to think that Jesus is either a resurrected or reincarnated dead person from the past. 

            Then he asks the disciples who they think he is, and Peter answers for the whole group.  They do not think he is someone from the past, but from the future.  “The Messiah of God,” Peter says very simply.  Jesus is “the One who is to come,” he is the One anointed by God to deliver, save, redeem the people.

            Jesus does not contradict Peter, but he does tell Peter and the disciples to keep quiet about the Messiah thing.  Probably because there was a lot of baggage that went along with that term, and Jesus doesn’t want to be defined in people’s minds by their preconceptions about what a Messiah was and what a Messiah was supposed to do.

            Because he immediately goes on to explain that he is not going to fulfill those expectations.  Rather, he predicts for the first time that he will “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

            He clearly sees, at this turning point in his ministry, how this is inevitably going to end.  He is offending and threatening the people in his society with the most power.  He is doing the one forbidden thing in an oppressive system: he is organizing people.  He is empowering people.  He is demonstrating that people do not have to participate in their own bondage anymore. 

            With his burgeoning popularity, Jesus knows what he is in for.  But he has known that all along.  At the beginning of his ministry, right after his baptism, he made an enemy of the devil.  And the devil is the one who has a grip on the Herods and Caesars and Pilates and Caiaphuses of this world.  When Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming release to the captives and forgiveness of debts, he had to know that this was not going to be popular with the authorities benefiting from people’s enslavement and indebtedness.

            Jesus chooses a path that would involve his arrest and execution; it is something he knows and intends from the beginning.

IV.

            But then he says something else.  It is one thing for Jesus to suffer and die, and then be raised.  But it was never Jesus’ intention that this be something he does and his disciples merely watch and remember.  Following him means following him, every step of the way.  It is not only his life that gets laid down.  But discipleship demands the life of everyone who would follow Jesus.

            And this is what he starts saying not just to the disciples in private, but to everyone. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.  What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?”

            So now his tone changes.  His message is different.  It must surely have confused people.  Now his ministry is not just about getting your diseases healed.  It’s not just about being set free from the demons oppressing you.  It’s not just about getting yourself fed.  It’s not just about taking benefits and giving thanks for them.  Now it’s about taking something else, taking up a cross, an image that would have horrified anyone of that time who heard it.

            Taking up a cross meant being executed by the Romans as a political criminal.  It was humiliating torture ending in ignominious public death.  No one signing up for Jesus’ movement would want to be reminded that this was what was in store for anyone perceived to undermine Roman authority.    

            Jesus is saying that it’s time to get serious.  There is a cost to this discipleship.  And the cost is your life.  The model that he demonstrates in his signature miracle with the loaves and fishes, of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving, well, that applies as well to each of our lives as disciples.  What we take and bless from God we also break and give to others.

            What we have we have received from God is not inherently ours, a private possession with which we may do as we please.  It is a gift that has come with detailed instructions from the giver about what to do with it.  What we have is not simply to be kept, saved, stored, hoarded, and enjoyed for ourselves.  It is to be blessed, or given thanks for, recognizing that it comes from God as a gift, not an entitlement or an earned benefit.

            What we have is also to be broken, not in the sense of destroying it, of course, but in order to share it by giving it to others.  This receiving and giving, with blessing and breaking in between, is the structure of what we are to do with what we have from God.

V.

            This is what Jesus does with his own life.  He takes up his life among us, he bathes it in blessing and thanksgiving in his ministry, and finally he allows it to be broken on the cross and gives it to us in his resurrection.  He was broken on the cross so his life could be multiplied and distributed to many.

            Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is completed in the breaking and the giving… that’s the challenge.  It’s about the distribution, the sharing out among many, what we receive from God.

            That’s why Jesus talks here about each disciple having to take up their own cross.  We have to be broken and give up to others in turn what we have received from God.  Indeed, we don’t even truly receive anything, until we participate in this basic pattern of multiplication for the sake of distribution.

            And Jesus would have this apply to everything we receive from God, which is to say everything.  This rule applies to food, money, talents, expertise, knowledge, skills, energy, imagination, love… everything.

            What Jesus says here will begin to cause his popularity to weaken.  People will shrink from following him out of shame.  They are disturbed and embarrassed by his talk of death.  They are put off by this bizarre talk of taking up crosses.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that, “When Christ calls someone he is bidding them to come and die.”  But that is not usually what we want on the message board in front of the church.  “Come and die here.”

            But Jesus knows that what has to die in his disciples is that part of them that only wants to receive and not give, the part that only wants to be fed and not feed, the part that only wants to be healed and not heal, that part that only wants the “forgive us our debts,” without the “as we forgive our debtors,” that part that wants the “take” and even the “bless,” but not the “break” and “give.”

            This taking, blessing, breaking, and giving constantly happening among God’s people is how the Kingdom of God becomes realized among us.  The Kingdom of God is a communal network of sacrificial sharing funded by Jesus’ own giving of his life to us.  For as Paul says, “If we have died with him in a death like his, we will surely be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

            When Jesus says, “Take up your cross daily and follow me,” he immediately follows it with the promise that “those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”  In the end, Jesus Christ sees and guides us beyond the cross, beyond death, beyond all that would hurt or harm us.

+++++++            

Lose the Baggage.

Luke 9:1-11.

I.

            After the incident with the two women in Capernaum, the older one whom he frees of hemorrhages, and the younger one whom he raises from the dead, Jesus gathers the twelve of his inner circle together.  He then gives them “power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases.”  I imagine he lays his hands on them and prays over them words indicating the power he is transmitting to them.

            He has come to the milestone in his ministry where one person, even he, cannot do alone all that has to be done.  And the disciples have seen, heard, and learned enough to be entrusted with being Jesus’ representatives.  This is where the disciples become apostles, the word apostle means “one who is sent out.”

            The thing that Jesus sends them out to do is “to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal.”  This proclamation of the Kingdom of God is significant because it is Jesus’ way of talking about the new relationship people have with God, and the new relationships they have with each other in community. 

            Now, whenever we hear about the Kingdom of God I think it is important to flush from our minds centuries of misleading ideas about it.  The disciples are not supposed to go out and talk about life after death, which is one reductionistic and false way of thinking about the Kingdom of God.  Jesus does not tell them to go out and get people to confess him as Lord and Savior so they can go to heaven when they die.

            The Kingdom of God is, of course, the core of Jesus’ teaching.  It is the summary of his proclamation and the whole purpose of his ministry.  He talks about it at the most pivotal points in his work, like here at the sending of the apostles.

            And it nearly always refers to the adoption by a living community here on the earth in real time of the principles and relationships that God intends for us, and which characterize God’s time.  The Kingdom of God is at the same time “coming,” and already here.  It is when God’s time and God’s order break into our lives.  

            So the power and authority Jesus gives to the apostles is that of announcing this new community, and healing.  These two activities are very closely related.  The new community is a place in which people find healing in the equality, compassion, freedom, justice, and love that Jesus reveals at the heart of God. 

            The Kingdom of God is a healing community, where people are restored to their original created wholeness; it is a place of forgiveness and release.  Jesus has been talking about it, and enacting it in his miracles, since chapter 4.

II.

            When he sends them out, he gives them explicit instructions about what to take with them.  Basically, they are to carry nothing.  “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money — not even an extra tunic.”  They are to travel ridiculously – we might even say foolishly and irresponsibly – lightly.  They are to be exclusively dependent on God for everything.

            That this is exactly the opposite of the way we travel goes without saying.  We don’t even leave the house without carrying more than this, to say nothing of undertaking a missionary journey.  The apostles were to travel without any baggage… and you may understand that in every sense of the term. 

            Our baggage just gets in the way.  Christians have so much historical, cultural, doctrinal, and ecclesiological baggage, that we are often paralyzed.  People don’t even see us coming; all they see is our baggage.  We spend so much of our time defending, rationalizing, explaining, and cherishing our baggage, that we never get around to proclaiming the Kingdom of God.  We may even think our baggage is the Kingdom of God.

            We carry a staff to help us walk.  But to some people it looks like a weapon… because it has been used that way so frequently.  So Jesus says, no staff.  We carry a bag to hold the things we think we need.  But many warily think we’re going to try and sell them something out of that bag.  No bag, says Jesus.

            We carry some bread, even the holy bread of the eucharist.  But the experience of some is that we keep it for ourselves, having long lists of requirements for people to meet before we will share it.  Don’t bring any bread, says Jesus.  We carry money, and that only separates us from those who have no resources.  They are used to being sucked into crippling indebtedness.  Jesus says not to bring any money.  We carry a change of clothes.  But even this cuts us off from community by making us self-reliant, independent of others.  That may be a value for us.  It is not a value for Jesus.

            We can’t proclaim the Kingdom of God, which is about equality and sharing, if we approach others with all this extra stuff.  Our stuff, our baggage, makes us look superior, especially when we think of it as ours.  That attitude, even if it’s not intentional or conscious, kills evangelism. 

            Jesus says, ditch your stuff.  This is what Jesus himself does when he empties himself of his own equality with God, for heaven’s sake!  He comes into the world with nothing, like everyone else, like all of us.  We don’t emerge from the womb with a whole lot of baggage.  Some, perhaps.  But not much.

            And that’s the way Jesus would have us go out into the world representing him.  Open.  Free.  Unencumbered.  Able to have the love and power of God flow through us unblocked and unhindered.  It is not about us.  It is about what flows through us.

III.

            When the time comes, the apostles depart.  Empty-handed.  Perfectly reliant and dependent on God, and what God provides for them from others.  It must have felt weird.  Didn’t they have at least a little anxiety about where their next meal was going to come from? 

            I guess that when they approach a village, people would see them coming and wonder about these strange baggage-less travelers.  They would start talking to people about Jesus, of whom they had probably heard, and the Kingdom of God, which might be new to them.  Most likely their speeches would be versions of the speeches they heard from the Lord, like the one in Nazareth, based on Isaiah 61.

            They would preach the idea of forming communities of sharing and equality, forgiveness, freedom, acceptance, and healing.  “We’re all pretty poor,” they might say.  “But we can support and share with each other.  We can forgive each other and remit each other’s debts.  We can withdraw our participation in a system that is trying to bleed us dry and turn us against each other.  We can care for one another.  This is what God wants.  This is what the Torah describes.  This is what the prophets proclaimed.  And it’s what our teacher, Jesus, brings to you.”

            And they would heal people who came to them.  They would even cast out evil spirits in Jesus’ name.  Certainly, they performed the kinds of miracles Jesus did.  And, let us also not underestimate the healing qualities of community itself.  Many of our demons, like addictions, compulsions, resentments, phobias, and stress-related maladies can be healed simply by the concern, love, attention, acceptance, forgiveness, and support of others.

            Jesus gives them instructions about some of this.  One house in each town should be their base.  Maybe he wants them to exemplify community in one home to start with, which takes a lot of time and energy.  Moving around from house to house would dissipate that energy.  Maybe later new disciples could extend the movement to other houses in that town.

            I think this mission of the twelve laid the groundwork for much later, when the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection spread from Jerusalem.  There were gatherings of disciples already out there waiting to hear the news.

IV.

            It is this mission of the twelve that gets the attention of Herod, the local ruler.  By the time these stories get to him they have become embellished and blown out of proportion.  The great prophet Elijah has come back to life! is what some said, an event that people were expecting as a signal of the end times.  Others said that this was a resurrection of John the Baptizer, whom Herod had beheaded. 

            When Jesus was just one faith-healer, wandering around Galilee, Herod might not have even heard of him.  But now, when the disciples are bringing the Kingdom of God movement to village after village, Herod’s informants get wind of it and tell him.  The idea of the people getting organized in any way is the greatest threat of any kind of tyrant.  If the people stopped participating in their own oppression, it would be all over. 

            The oppressive system feeds on people’s fear, division, work illness, and especially indebtedness.  These are the ways tyrannical regimes maintain their grip.  People who are always trying to make payments, are not people who make any trouble.  People who are sick or possessed, are docile, weak, and compliant.

            But when people are healed, and freed of their demons; when they share with each other so they don’t have to buy or borrow as much, when they are hearing again the story of the Bible as the story of God’s liberation of the people… when they decide to be members of God’s Kingdom, well, that is a danger to Herod’s kingdom.

            Herod recognizes in Jesus the same popularity he saw and dealt with in John.  Herod is a gritty politician.  He knows people don’t come back from the dead.  And he certainly doesn’t hold to any of those superstitions about Elijah… except when it is politically expedient to do so, no doubt.

            Like his father, Herod the Great, who sought to visit the infant Jesus in Bethlehem, he too wants to meet Jesus.  Probably for the same reason: to eliminate this potential threat to his power.  And of course, eventually he will – but that will only last for about three days.

V.

            Eventually, the apostles return to Jesus.  He takes them to a city called Bethsaida, north of the lake, where Jesus’ intention is to have what we might call a de-briefing session where they share their experiences.  The message of the Kingdom of God has now been brought to dozens of towns throughout Galilee, with new cells of Jesus’ followers in many of them.  The seeds are being planted.  The Kingdom of God is actually beginning to take shape on the map.

            The crowds find out where Jesus is and they flock up to Bethsaida as well.  He does not disappoint them.  He preaches to them about the Kingdom of God, this new order of sharing and forgiveness, and he heals the sick.  His action in healing the sick is always a demonstration of his words about the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom of God is about transforming disordered, dysfunctional lives into lives that witness to God’s grace and presence.

            With this story we come to the turning point in Luke’s gospel.  Galilee is veritably aflame with the good news of God’s Kingdom.  People are organizing in the villages.  Jesus is mobbed like a rock star wherever he goes.  People are healed and liberated.  God’s Kingdom is manifest in the welcoming of the outcast and alien, the forgiveness of sinners, the lifting up of women, even the raising of people from the dead!  Herod himself has taken notice.

            The true church is where the Kingdom of God is happening now.  A church that takes the Kingdom of God seriously is busy building a community of healing, equality, liberation, and forgiveness.  A church like that is undermining the foundations of wealth and power.  A church like that worries Herod.

            We need to be that church.  We need to be that church that turns away from the kingdoms of this world and instead proclaims and enacts the Kingdom of God. 

+++++++

           

Two Women.

Luke 8:40-56

I.

            Jesus and his disciples, having largely failed in their mission to the Gentiles on the other side of the lake, return to Capernaum, in Jewish Galilee.  Jesus is so popular there that people are waiting for him to come back.  When they see the boat coming, an enthusiastic crowd gathers.

            As they climb out of the boat in what must have been a scene of mass confusion, they hear a man’s voice shouting over the general hubbub.  The man pushes through the mass of people and manages to fall down at Jesus’ feet.  The man’s name is Jairus, and everybody knows him because he is the leader of the local synagogue.  Jairus represents the bright, successful, and pious establishment.  He begs Jesus to come to his house immediately because his 12-year-old daughter is very sick, so sick that she could die at any moment.

            So Jesus says “Lead the way,” and this whole throng of people starts moving with him up the street, through the town, to where Jairus lives.  It is slow going to begin with, with the disciples trying to clear a path through the densely packed humanity. 

            In the middle of this confusing and jostling progress, Jesus suddenly stops.  He looks quizzically around and asks, “Who touched me?”  And this whole crowd that had been patting him on the back, bumping into him, maybe even accidentally shoving him as he is trying to make his way to Jairus’ house, all step back and go, “Not me.  I didn’t touch you.  Did you touch him?  Wasn’t us, Jesus.”  Rolling his eyes, Peter says to Jesus, “Uh, like, everyone is touching you, Lord, so I don’t understand….”

            Meanwhile, Jairus, who has been trying to drag Jesus faster through the crowd, must be beginning to panic as Jesus comes to a halt.  Imagine his extreme impatience at how slow this is going… and now Jesus stops.

            “No,” says Jesus, still looking intently around at the faces.  “Someone did touch me; I felt the power go out from me.”  And his eye lands on a woman who is pointedly not looking at him, and trying at the same time to control feelings of overwhelming joy and relief, and quietly push her way back into anonymity.  But she feels Jesus’ gaze, and realizes there is no escape. 

            So she throws herself down in front of Jesus, crying, “Alright, it was me!  I have been – had been – sick with, with, well, bleeding for 12 years.  I spent all my money on doctors who couldn’t cure me, and in desperation I thought that maybe if I just touch the robe of the famous healer Jesus – I know I am unclean so I wouldn’t presume to touch your body, you understand – but maybe it would be enough to touch your robe, and so I pushed to where I could just reach you, and when I did I immediately felt that I was healed.  My pain disappeared right then.  Forgive me, Lord.  And thank you so much….”

II.

            Meanwhile, the disciples and others are wondering what the hold-up is.  Jairus, standing there, is practically beside himself and in tears with frustration at this delay.

            Jesus is not bothered about the delay.  He looks at the woman.  She’s not old.  She’s probably 24.  She had contracted this disease when she was the same age as the girl they are going to visit.  She’d had it half her life.  It has destroyed her life.  She is destitute from paying doctors.  (There was no health insurance, and anyway, the people Jesus is dealing with could not afford such a luxury even today.  And it goes without saying that there was no Medicaid or national health care.  No.  In those days, if you got sick you gave whatever little money you had to doctors and they you died.  They must have had our Congress.)

            She was also ritually “impure,” so she could not go to the Temple or the synagogue to worship and pray.  Plus, no one was allowed to touch her without becoming themselves impure; so this whole trip into the crowded town square to touch Jesus’ robe would have been pretty risky.  She was unable to bear children so she probably wasn’t married; the money she’d spent must have been her father’s, so the whole family might now be in poverty.  And unless she had some nephews the family had no future either.

            According to tradition her name is Bernice.  She has traveled from Caesarea, like 25 miles to the north, probably hearing about Jesus and waiting to see him.  It was the people in that town who knew her and kept her story alive until it got into a collection that made it into the hands of the gospel writers, decades later.

            Jesus just smiles at her, feeling her joy at her newfound wholeness, and her gratitude.  He also sees that she is afraid, I guess that he will punish her for surreptitiously taking power from him, or something.  But he reaches down and lifts her up and he simply says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”  “You had it within you all the time, but you had to find it out for yourself.  You had to find within yourself your trust in me and God’s power to heal you.  You have shown courage, audacity, determination, confidence, and hope... not to mention desperation.  Now you have a new life.  Go and witness to God’s healing power and be at peace.” 

            She smiles back in tears, thanks him even more profusely.  Her example of faith has stood ever since. 

III.

            But Jesus isn’t even done speaking to her before someone comes with a message for the anxious Jairus.  “Your daughter is dead, do not trouble the teacher any longer.”  And Jairus instantly spirals into the stages of grief, beginning with denial, and a strong component of anger because, like, why have we been standing here for 10 minutes?  You could have talked to that woman later; there was no reason to stop; we could have made it!

            Jesus says, “Jairus, relax.  Do not fear.  Trust me, I know what I’m doing.  Your daughter will be saved.”

            Jairus realizes that Jesus is either completely crazy, or something else is going on here.  No one would make the kind of claim that Jesus just makes without being able to back it up.  If they couldn’t, it would be the height of irresponsible cruelty and hubris.  How can Jesus, at a distance of a block, know the medical condition of his daughter?  Then again, there is a rumor going around that Jesus has even raised a young man from the dead…. 

            They finally get to Jairus’ house, which is in an uproar of grief, complete with mourners already “weeping and wailing.”  Jesus points and Peter, James, and John, indicating that they are to accompany him into the house, and he motions for Jairus and his wife as well.  As the six of them make their way into the house, Jesus says to the mourners, “Do not weep.  She is not dead, but sleeping.”

            At this the mourners laugh, not because Jesus said anything particularly funny, but because when we hear something incongruous and delusional and wildly misinformed we can laugh with bitterness.  These people may have seen the body themselves; they know what it looks like when someone is dead.  “Hah!  What do you know about it, you haven’t even seen her yet.  We have.”

            They go into the room where the girl is.  She sure looks dead.  Jesus sits down by the bed as everyone else stands around.  He looks up, smiling.  “Sleeping,” he says.  Then he takes the girl’s hand, and he calls out, “Child, get up!” just like he is calling for her to get out of bed on any ordinary morning.

IV.

            Luke tells us “her spirit returned,” which could also mean she suddenly gasps for breath.  She opens her eyes and starts to sit up, to her parents’ utter, open-mouthed astonishment and delight. 

            “See?”  Jesus says kindly.  “Just sleeping.  Give her something to eat and she’ll be fine.”  Then, after the tearful hug, he says to them, before they leave the room, “Just don’t tell anyone about this, okay?  She was sleeping.  Let’s leave it at that.”  They look at each other, and nod.

            The story gets out anyway, though.  Stories like this always get out.

            What we learn from these two stories is that Jesus’ compassion always overrules everything.  Any concern for ideas like ritual purity, social mores, rules and regulations, politics, conventional morality, theological doctrine, or even socially acceptable manners, goes out the window as far as Jesus is concerned.  His only agenda, which he fixes on with laser-like focus, is bringing healing, wholeness, and freedom to people in need.  Nothing else appears to matter for him. 

            He is not disturbed that a woman approaches him in secret and, in effect, “steals” healing power from him.  He stops because he has something to say to the person.  He wants her to know that it was her faith, her trust in him, that is, something inside of her, something that she always potentially possessed, something gestating in her and waiting to be born, is what heals her.           

            She may think she has to steal it from him by stealth; but he is only interested in giving his power away anyway.  She is conditioned to approach this as if Jesus only has a limited amount of healing power.  But what Jesus is giving away is free and boundless.  You just have to be in need and have in your heart this trust in the God Jesus has come to reveal to us.

            With the girl it is not even her trust in him, it is her father’s.  Who knows how many hours he spent on the lakeshore scanning the horizon, waiting for the return of the only One he could imagine having the power to heal his daughter.  If that mission to Gerasa had been successful, who knows how long Jesus would have stayed over there?  It might have been weeks or months.  And with her condition deteriorating hourly, who has this kind of hope?

            But were it not for this “failure” the girl would have died and stayed dead, and the woman might never have had the chance to sneak up on Jesus and get herself healed.  Our failures are always set-ups for God’s successes.

V.

            Both of the individuals saved from death or disease here, of course, are women.  They have in common the number 12, which is the age of the girl, and possibly the age of the woman when she got sick.  Girls of this age are on the cusp of womanhood.  Women represent the new life of the future, and by healing these two women Jesus is saying that the future is in God’s hands and it is secure, if we trust in God.

            But it is a different future that Jesus opens in these women.  He rescues our future from the grip of powers and principalities that continually foreclose on it.  He takes the marred liability of women’s existence under oppressive powers, and turns it over.  For Jesus, women are not mere baby factories producing the next generation of soldiers, workers, tax payers, consumers, and mortgage holders, all to create and protect the wealth of the wealthy and the power of the powerful.  He sets women free.  Free from a disordered and self-consuming version of womanhood, and free from death, free from the demands of the empire.

            Women and feminine images have pervaded the last chapter or so of Luke’s book.  Even that story of the demoniac over in Gerasa, a man possessed by a veritable imperial “Legion” of demons, reflects on this theme.  The Romans in their art habitually portrayed conquered nations as subjected and dominated women.  In their policies they treated conquered peoples, male and female, like slave-women in ways I will not describe.

            What Jesus is doing, and what Luke is writing about, is astoundingly subversive.  “The stone the builders rejected has become the corner-stone.”  That verse from Psalm 118 pervades the thinking of the early church.  Jesus is that stone.  The people who follow him are that stone.  Women in particular, not empowered in regular society, become fertile good soil of the Jesus-movement.  As do slaves, and workers, and the poor, and aliens, and the ubiquitous “tax-collectors and prostitutes.”  The core of this movement is rejected, victimized, disenfranchised, weak, and marginal people.

            Jesus Christ comes to show us that this is where God’s future comes from.  This is the “good soil,” shaped by death, grief, suffering, failure, and loss.  This is where the Word takes root and thrives and explodes with growth, bearing a hundred-fold.  This is the womb where God knits the people together, the community of disciples, always bearing the good news of God’s love into the world.

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