Crossing the Barrier Ps 130 2 Sam 1:1, 17-27 2 Cor 8:7-15 Mark 5:21-43

Introduction  https://youtu.be/Ey585Hz8UtQ

Today’s readings are connected by intense expressions of need for God’s help, and just as intense expectations of deliverance. They challenge us to cross cultural, emotional, and spiritual barriers on the way to a richer encounter with Jesus as Lord of all. At the heart of this challenge is the need for a deeper revelation of who Christ is for us.

Psalm 130

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! 2 O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!” (Ps 130:1). The psalms have proved so popular over the centuries because they are raw expressions of the inner life of their singers. Psalm 130 is an excellent example of this. Whilst most references to depths in scripture refer to the uncontrollable depths of the sea (Ex 15:5; Neh 9:11; Ps 68:22 etc.), they also speak of “the deep things of God” (1 Cor 2:10). When the depths of God’s Spirit touches the depths of our innermost being, more often than not, “pleas for mercy” break forth (Cf. Pss 28:2, 6; 140:6; 143:1; Isa 19:22; Jer 31:19; Dan 9:3, 17-18, 23). In scripture, such pleas seem always answered from heaven because their intensity matches the seriousness of God’s desire to heal, save and deliver us from our desperate the desperate plight. I was reading the biography of a man who became a famous missionary and it mentioned that during his teenage years, “Kjell went to sleep many times to the sound of his mother Helga’s tearful prayers as she cried out to God for her children.” This is as straightforward as it is challenging, but what can we make of the lament of David for Saul and Jonathan?

2 Samuel 1

Old Testament laments were sung publicly (2 Sam 1:17).  As a warrior David was certainly a “man’s man”, but in his lamentation he was a model for the mourning of what is described “singing men” (2 Chron 25:35). For about 20 years David had known from the Lord (1 Sam 16:13) that he would succeed Saul as king of Israel, and that for this to take place his best friend Jonathan must also die. Neither of these facts tempered the measure of his grief, he was completely transparent in the way he mourned over the man who repeatedly tried to murder him, but in God’s order was called to be to him to like a father[1]. The lamentation of David and the man who hated him and over the covenant brother (Jonathan) who loved him (1 Sam 20:1-17) must remind us of Jesus lamenting over a city destined for destruction; “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 Behold, your house is forsaken.” (Luke 13:34-35)[2]. Now we pass on to a well known story about Jesus.

Jesus in the Midst

“Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet 23 and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” (Mark 5:22-23). There is little surprise that Christ went to the man’s house and raised his daughter from the dead. But what needs to capture our attention today is that the father “fell at Jesus (his) feet and “implored him (Jesus) earnestly”.  This act of sheer unselfconscious desperation could not ignored by the Lord whose dominant emotion in the Gospels is “compassion” (Matt 9:36; 14:14; 15:32 etc.), a word which originally meant the twisting of the intestines. According to the wisdom of God (cf. 2 Cor 8:9)[3] the deep movement inside the desperate father so vigorously expressed in his deeds and please necessarily penetrated the depths of the perfect humanity of the Son of God making healing a certainty.

The star of the story however is a woman. “And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.”” (Mark 5:25-28)[4]

Almost certainty this woman had a menstrual disorder which under the Mosaic Law barred her from normal social and religious life (Lev 15:19-33). [In the story she is the very opposite to the respectable and dignified synagogue leader.] None of this made any difference to how she was spoken to and honoured by Jesus. “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” (Mark 5:34). Beyond this, something very important was happening in the invisible spiritual realm. “Jesus, perceived in himself that power had gone out from him” (Mark 5:30). Whilst its not that important to know how Jesus experienced this transfer of power, what is important is that] the Father/Holy Spirit made a sovereign decision to release this woman from all her physical, religious and social disabilities. Now to our final reading,

2 Cor 8:7-15

Whereas “help for the needy” in our readings so far comes straight from God, 2 Corinthians is about how the Gentile churches can provide relief to the impoverished Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. A close examination of the passage unveils why the Gentiles, long alienated from Israel (Eph 2:12-13), are now motivated to supply their needs. A new and glorious vision of humanity has revealed for the first time in history in God becoming human. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor 8:9). This means that in Christ[5] Jesus crossed the seemingly impossible barrier between a finite fallen humanity in guilt, shame and under judgement (Eph 2:1-10) and an infinitely holy God. The distance from heaven to the cross and into the resurrection is inconceivable, but it has been accomplished once for all (John 19:30). What we need to “see” is that all pleas for mercy, of desperate psalmists, bereft fathers, unclean women and all others, have first of all[6] been uttered and answered in Jesus’ “prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him (God) who was able to save him from death” (Heb 5:7).

In the Incarnation an essentially new revelation of the character of God has broken into human consciousness.  A revelation of a God who has not only reached out to the needy, but became more needy than all of us, so that we might be lifted up to his eternal glory. In this “wonderful exchange” the Son of God entered into the brokenness of our humiliation so we might be translated into the glory of his exaltation.

This is a vision of extraordinary richness. We must grasp that divine lowliness for human elevation was always foundation for God’s creating, preserving, and perfecting the world[7]. The essential nature of divine character is to stoop down and meet the needs of the oppressed[8]. This was the hope of the spiritual men and women of the old covenant, like David, and those who saw Jesus face to face in their hearts sensed it was true. What does all this mean for us?

Christian

Let me tell you an embarrassing personal story from this week. On Tuesday morning Donna asked me to help her make a bed by lifting up a queen-sized mattress, I immediately threw out my back, quite painfully. I later went out to Bible study and when I came back Donna shared she had lost her purse with all the credit cards. Both of us were immediately stressed out so much that we regressed to quite childish responses, then a couple of minutes later we prayed. After prayer we had a sense that we were under severe spiritual attack but that the week would end up a good one. Why however didn’t we pray as a first, instinctive and foundational response to a time of need? When I asked the Lord about this, I strongly sensed we struggle to believe that in “Christ” pain isn’t a message that we have been separated from God and deserve his punishment[9].  All our pains were fully taken up in the enfleshment, suffering and death of Jesus[10] so that suffering has become a bridge between our needs and the help of God. By his redemptive suffering[11] Jesus has “bought our pain” so that it now belongs to him[12]. [In Christ all “our” suffering has redemption for its purpose] Our struggling in allowing Jesus to actively become the Master of our needs is our struggle to cross barriers of shame, anticipated rejection and fear of disappointment in approaching God.

Conclusion

A certain theology of social justice teaches that God shows a “preferential option for the poor”. “Poor” can mean anyone in physical, mental, social or spiritual need[13]. We all instinctively sense that the moral test of any society is how is how it treats its most vulnerable members. Psalmists, emerging warrior-kings, religious leaders and marginalised women were all treated in the same way by God and Christ, when they intensely cried out to him for mercy. Our muted responses could be due to one of two things, either we have no needs, or we don’t really believe the Lord is willing to do anything about them. [Since the first possibility is completely untrue to the broken human condition, everyone has needs/problems[14]], The truth is that we have a deep heart unbelief about the ability or disposition of God to act on our behalf. [I guess that even those of us who don’t know the Bible so well] remember the story of the father whose child was convulsed by an evil presence, he cried out to Jesus, “if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”” (Mark 9:22-25). Jesus met what is perhaps the greatest need of all by setting the boy free. The greatest of all human needs is unbelief. Let us ask the Lord for the Spirit’s gift of “pleas for mercy” (Zech 12:10[15]) to help us cross the barrier to the delivering power of God.