WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert October 9, 2005

Mark 5:1-43 Healing and Faith

Mark 5 recounts three dramatic stories that show Jesus’ power over demons, disease and death. They are told at length and in detail, like the recollection of an eye-witness of events that left a powerful impression - consistent with the idea that Mark learned much of the story of Jesus from Peter. The three events also show how Jesus responded to the very different expressions of faith placed in him by three very different people.

1) The Demoniac

The first and most dramatic story involves a man who lives in all respects “on the other side.” Jesus crosses the lake to the region to the south-east known as the Decapolis – the Ten Towns – an area that was very Romanized, Greek-speaking, and part of the Roman province of Syria. The population was mostly Gentile, with a few Jews. Jesus’ foray into this territory is one of the hints, and they are no more than that during his ministry, that the new Kingdom he has come to establish will include Gentiles as well as Jews. Jesus has braved and conquered a storm to enter an area where people keep pigs, and wild men live in tombs – which were believed to be the haunts of demons, much as in more recent times, graveyards were thought to be haunted by spirits and ghosts.

The only man Jesus ministers to in this area is an outcast, so deranged that he lives in the cave tombs, so possessed by evil that he is screaming and self-destructive, and so strong that no-one can control him. Yet he recognizes Jesus and runs to throw himself at Jesus’ feet, begging to be set free. His personality is so divided that it is hard to tell when he is speaking and when the demons within him are speaking. They cry out to Jesus, whom they recognize as the Son of God, not to destroy them. They are so many in number that they call themselves “Legion,” invoking the image of thousands of Roman soldiers.

Yet their power is no match for the word of Jesus, and he casts them out of the man and into a group of pigs feeding nearby. It would no doubt have seemed ironic and appropriate to Jesus’ companions that the “unclean spirits” would be sent into the most “unclean” of animals. Pigs, we are told, had in Jesus’ day become almost a symbol of paganism – not only because eating them was forbidden in the Torah, but because during the Maccabean period 150 years earlier, one of the conquerors of Judea had desecrated the Temple and made Jews eat the flesh of pigs. The self-destructive power of demon-possession is made clear when the pigs destroy themselves, just as the tragic man from the tombs had attempted so often to do to himself. When the crowds, alerted by the pig-herders, arrive they find Jesus and the man “sitting there, clothed and in his right mind.” It is a dramatic change, the perfect picture of what Jesus’ healing and God’s salvation can do to a deranged man.

What shall we say to these things? Several points need to be considered, I think. We need to avoid two extremes; one is saying that this is all a fiction describing what we would now call a serious mental illness. But to deny the demonic reduces this story to nonsense, and makes Jesus either ignorant of spiritual reality or playing a role to satisfy the superstitions of the people. This is not a path that Christians can venture far along without destroying the very basis of Christian faith. A second error, in the opposite direction, is to say that every mental illness we see today is due to demonic possession. There are people who believe this, as well as those who believe that demons do not and never did exist. I think neither position is tenable. And the NT writers are certainly capable, as especially Luke the physician makes clear, of distinguishing between illness and possession. Are demons active today? Few of us have see any evidence of it, but there are plenty of Christians who have worked in places where they are sure that they do. To deny the existence of personal supernatural evil is to risk being very naive.

But this leaves us, in our attempts to apply this story to our lives, to recognize that there are people today who desperately need healing or deliverance from the powerful forces at work within them; people who live on the edge of “normal” society, people who are self-destructive and frequently cut or hurt themselves, people whom nobody knows how to help. The promise of the gospel is that healing and deliverance are possible; that the power of God through Jesus can restore broken people to be “dressed and in their right minds.” If you have someone in your family who is never dressed or in their right mind, then pray that God will work in them by his powerful Spirit, using any means he will, until they are whole again. Have faith in his power to heal and deliver. “With God, all things are possible.”

2) Two Daughters

You could not wish for a greater contrast between the demoniac and the respected religious leader who greets Jesus on his return to Capernaum. Jairus is probably the president of the synagogue, and his 12-year old daughter is dying. We are not told what her disease was, and Jesus does not ask. He simply responds to Jairus’ faith that he can heal the girl, and sets out for the house. From a deranged Gentile to a faithful Jew, Jesus is ready to help each one in their own tragic circumstances.

There are crowds, of course. Everyone knows Jesus is the great healer and exorcist, and want to see what he will do next. In the crowd there is a woman. Unlike Jairus the president, she is an outcast from the synagogue, “unclean” because she has suffered horribly from what is very likely vaginal bleeding for 12 years. No doctor has been able to help her, her money is gone, and she is only getting worse. But she knows about Jesus, and is desperate to get close to him. Her faith in him is almost superstitious; she believes that if she can just touch his clothes she can be healed. She does not want anyone to know what she is doing; but when she succeeds in touching the tassels of Jesus’ robe and knows that at that moment she is healed, she is suddenly confronted by his demand to know who touched him.

Jesus’ disciples ridicule his question, but the woman knows she must now come into the open. She risks trouble from the religious authorities for being in a public place and potentially “defiling” other people. Even by her own lights, she has probably “defiled a holy man” by touching him. But Jesus draws her, trembling and fearful and no doubt tearful, to confess her strange faith and actions. He does not deride her, but calls her “daughter,” and tells her that because of her faith, she is now made whole again. She can go on with her life in peace – the “shalom” and wholeness that God alone can give.

She is a reminder to us that faith is not always well-informed or articulate or accurate; that at times it is not much more than desperation and an intuitive sense that Jesus is the one to turn to. Her fear, trembling and confession are the marks of many a conversion, and a typical emotional response to Jesus’ call for people who live with suffering, pain and a sense of being “an outsider.” To be welcomed and affirmed by the love and grace of Jesus, especially if you are a woman; to know that you can be “made whole” again; is to release the torrents of emotion that have built up inside over many years.

But we must return to Jairus. Jesus has been delayed on his way to heal the synagogue president’s daughter. Now comes the message that she has died. Now it is all too late! That woman, taking up his time! What did Jairus think of the woman whose bleeding stopped Jesus healing his daughter? His anger and grief could easily have overwhelmed him, were it not for Jesus’ reassurance: “Don’t be afraid, and keep on believing.” But how to trust Jesus, and for what, now?

But Jairus’ faith is rewarded. Jesus dismisses the wailing of the mourners – people then and now in the Middle East deal with death much more loudly than we do – and insists that the girl “is sleeping.” They know she is dead, but Jesus knows that “death is just a sleep” to those who know about resurrection. In a tender moment, we hear the very words of Jesus in Aramaic: “Talitha koum” – “Little girl, get up!”- and she does! We can imagine the feelings in that room: tears from her mother, astonishment from Peter, James and John, and heartfelt thanks and devotion from Jairus for the man who has restored his daughter to him.

3) To Those Who Believe

What needs healing in your life, or in your family’s? Are you a respected, proud but fearful father, wondering about the future of your children? Is there someone in your family whose personality is so messed up that they cannot function “normally”? Is there someone whose life is under the powerful influence of the demons of alcohol or drugs and who needs “deliverance”? Is there someone who has been perhaps secretly ill for a long time? What about the ones who have spent all their time and money on physicians and are no better? The ones who are afraid of what lies ahead for them?

Perhaps these are people with little interest in God, with little or no faith. Then pray for them yourself. Jairus’ daughter had no faith, but her father did, and Jesus responded to it and rewarded it. Jairus must have doubted, but he “kept on believing” even when it seemed all too late and things were hopeless, and his daughter was restored to him. The man in the tombs had no faith that we would credit, but just enough rationality left to know that Jesus was the one who could help him. The woman who couldn’t stop bleeding was superstitious in her faith, but that didn’t stop Jesus healing her.

Jesus deals kindly with all kinds of people in trouble, and with all kinds of flimsy faith - which is just as well, because that is the only kind of faith that any of us have! We are all hugely ignorant of the ways of God, and what it truly means to trust him. But the issue in these stories, and in our story, is not how great our faith is, but how great is Jesus our Savior. To be his disciple is to grasp, however dimly, his greatness and mercy, and to gladly follow him. The result may be healing, deliverance, restoration; but it may also bring with it the compulsion, or even the obligation, to go and tell our family and friends “what the Lord has done for us and how he has shown us his mercy.” No matter who you are, or how confused your faith, you will discover there is a story you can tell.

Let us pray...