Jesus and Boundaries: My Sermon for June 27, 2021

On Sunday, June 27, my pastor was out of town, and he asked me to preach.  The Gospel for the day was Mark 5: 21-43, and I preached that it was a series of boundary crossings:

--By this point in Mark's Gospel, synagogue leaders are already concerned about Jesus and his popularity.  They aren't only concerned about losing their power, but they are also concerned about attracting attention from Rome, and that wouldn't go well.  But a leader of the synagogue is so worried about his sick child that he seeks out Jesus.

--A bleeding woman is so desperate that she, too, seeks out Jesus.

--Jesus heals her before he even realizes that he's done it.  Or is it her faith that heals her?  Or is it the words after the encounter?

--I gave a brief primer about purity laws, and about all the purity boundaries crossed with a bleeding woman and a dead girl--blood and a corpse, and Jesus touches both.

--We have people asking for healing for others, while we also see the bleeding woman assert her own needs--more boundary crossing.

--We see Jesus raise a girl from the dead--she's been dead for awhile before he gets there.  It's not just that her goofy relatives mistake a deep sleep for death--she's dead-dead.  Yet Jesus crosses the boundary between life and death by bringing her back.

So what do we do with all of these boundaries burst?  I wasn't sure how I was going to finish, but as I listened to my spouse chant Psalm 30, it came to me.  I love the end of verse 5:  "Weeping spnds the night, but joy comes in the morning."

As I was preaching about wholeness and healing, I looked across the congregation and realized how many people are wrestling with health issues.  I even made mention that hearing about these miracle stories might make us feel inadequate:  do we just not have enough faith to be healed?  Is it that no one loves us enough to advocate for us, the way the father does for his daughter?

I said that it was crummy theology, which you will never hear me preach.  I read the end of Psalm 30:5 again.  I reminded us all that Jesus never tells us that there will be no weeping.  But Jesus reminds us again and again that God has a different vision for us, a different world that could be possible if we let go of our rigid boundaries and strictures.  

Of course, it may not look like the wholeness that we yearn for.  But maybe it will be better.  I ended this way:  "Jesus comes to say, 'Hey, in your human brain that likes to think of things as ordered and structured, maybe reality isn't that way.  Maybe the boundaries that you think are there are not the boundaries that are really there.  Maybe all you have to do is reach out and a whole life can be yours."