Now With the Ability to Finally Live: Mark 5.1-20

You now understand that through Jesus' death and resurrection all the sins you ever did are eternally forgiven; not only forgiven, but forgiven by God, whom we all have offended and sinned against. Amazingly our sins are forgiven but also our guilt. In American culture we are very good at second chances, forgiving people, however we always want the offender to readily know that what he did was wrong and that every knows this about the individual; God is not like us in that regard. How wonderful! How mind blowing and illogically delightful! God does NOT say, 'I forgive you but I still remember what you did.' The Bible says that God purposefully and intentionally FORGETS our sins once we have come to him for forgiveness. As one song states clearly, 'No guilt in life, no fear in death.' We have no need as the minister in the book The Scarlet Letter thinks to literally or emotionally or mentally beat ourselves for our sins that have been brought to Jesus. No more guilt! Rarely is it the actual crime that leads people to a suicidal state, rather the guilt of the crime and this God, in his great kindness towards us, says is gone too.

There was a man possessed by demons. It was not some illness or mental dysfunction but actual, real demons which were making the man something unhuman, undignified. First he was in the city he grew up in and the people, due to his state, chained him up for fear of what he might inflict on others; he broke out of these chains and fled to caves, fled to a place where he was alone. In this solitude he discarded his clothing and cut himself: he was tormented by the demons. People, no doubt, could hear his screams of torment at night, people who he was childhood friends with, his own parents.

Jesus came to this man and set him free from the demons, the evil spirits which tormented him. The man who was minutes ago in torment was instantly freed from those who brought him the pain and suffering, the solitude and scorn. The man immediately wanted to follow Jesus, be where this powerful man was, to walk with him, to learn from him; this was not uncommon, for Jesus had the Twelve whom he especially taught but there was almost always a large crowd of others learning from Jesus as well. Oddly though Jesus tells him no: 'Jesus did not permit him but said, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."'

What is Jesus doing?! Clearly this man wants more, he wants to be taught, he was to be trained, he wants to be discipled? Is this one of Jesus' rare ministry mistakes? How could Jesus be so cruel; didn't he know that this man might have a hard time coming back to society? The people of the city, it is said in the passage, were freaked out by what transpired. I thought Jesus was compassionate, let alone wise!

In our eager and earnest desire to do we often forget to live. When one comes to God for forgiveness, for healing that person is free from guilt and shame. Jesus conveys the idea that for many, we have already experienced the living and one true God, now go and live the life you were made to live. Go back to your job as a forgiven person; go back to your friends as a healed individual; go back to your old shoes with new feet. The heart of the Gospel is and has never been some gnostic journey or a search for experiences. The Gospel is forgiveness which Jesus says is freedom. You can live now because you are forgiven. You can love now because YOU are loved.

Sometimes it is easier to go evangelize or read your bible or go to Church or seminary or whatever thing it is you feel you should be doing than it is to live and live simply the way God wired your redeemed soul to do. Let's not make the Gospel less by trying to make it about doing more.

Bloody Mercy: Leviticus 15.25-30

Imagine: according to the laws of your day you have a physical infirmity that renders you socially outcast. The very chair you sit in, the bed you lie in, the cloths you wear are all deemed unclean and therefore unusable by anyone else. You cannot host friends or family in your home, none the less go visit others, lest you mar them and their home as well. Who would marry someone unclean? No one should or maybe even could. If you had children they might be given to another for care while you were ill. Normally this infirmity only lasts a few days but you have possessed this disgrace for 12 years!

For 12 years you have been this outcast, unclean even to go offer sacrifices to the God of your people. You have no possessions because you have tried every known treatment to heal you, you have done everything humanly possible to make yourself well . . . but to no avail.

With the background of Leviticus 15.25-33 we find this very individual in Mark 5.25. This very woman who has suffered so hears of him who can heal. She, after exhausting all medical resources and probably praying every day to be relieved of her disease, hears that Jesus is in town. In hope she rushes out her door forgetting who she is, but for a moment. She finds a crowd of people surrounds Jesus but 12 years of misery shoves her to him. Forgetting who she is, she reaches out and touches Jesus’ jacket. 12 years of people unclean and suddenly, miraculously she is healed of her now gone bleeding. Immediately she can become clean, presentable in the temple to worship YHWH, the God of her forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; immediately she can become normal again.

As Jesus stopped in his tracks, her heart, struck by the realization of what she just did, stopped as well. Jesus looked on her and saw her faith in him; her faith that said, ‘HE can heal me!’ She confessed she had a disease and that is why she touched him. The crowd around them was on edge. Remember how Aaron’s sons approached God wrongly and were killed? Or how Uzzah touched the ark and died? she thought to herself, what have I done? But she did not die. Jesus’ holiness did not divide the woman and he, and his holiness did not kill her; rather, Jesus’ holiness made her holy. Her Jubilee had come.