"if I Can Only ..."

As he rushed towards the shore, his heart sank as he saw how many people were already there. How was he ever going to get close enough to Him to plead for his daughter’s life … but still. He had to try. He would do anything to save his precious daughter’s life … even if it meant he had to fight everyone in the crowd … and even then he wasn’t sure if he got close enough to the Rabbi that he would have a chance to speak to Him, to beg Him to come lay hands on his daughter or pray or whatever He could do for her … and there was no guarantee that He would help. He did it for Jairus’ neighbor, Jacob … healed his mangled foot and made it like the wagon wheel had never run over it … and Jacob was just a baker … surely He would help Jairus… after all, he was one of the leaders of the synagogue.

Suddenly the people began to crowd even closer to the shore and word began to spread: “There He is!” Jairus began shoving his way to the front, ignoring the angry stares and suspicious whispers: “What’s ‘HE’ doing here?” He didn’t care. For the sake of his daughter, he pressed on until he was standing on the shore … and saw Him … standing in the front of the boat … and a wave of hope washed over him … “If I only I can talk to Him …”.

She saw the crowd gathered on shore, intently looking out at the lake and she was relieved. There were so many of them and they were so intent on meeting Him that they probably wouldn’t notice her as she covered her face and slipped into the crowd, hoping not to be noticed or else they would cast her out … or worse … and she wouldn’t have a prayer of getting close enough to this mysterious Rabbi with great power. She had heard about what He did … all the people that He had healed and all the poor souls He had freed from demons … and she was willing to risk a possible beating if she could just reach out and touch Him. She had no illusions about walking up to Him or talking to Him. The people who knew her wouldn’t let her get that close because of her condition … and they would be right … they would be protecting themselves and protecting this holy man of God from her impurity. “But,” she thought as she quietly and patiently worked her way through the crowd, “if I could just get close enough to touch Him … then maybe … I don’t know what will happen … but I’m willing to try. I’m willing to risk the anger of the mob to just touch Him.”

As I have said several times already, things happen quickly in Mark’s gospel. Jesus is preaching and healing when He is accused of being mentally unbalanced by His own family and He is accused of being an agent of Beelzebub. He sails over to the gentile or pagan side of the Sea of Galilee … where Jesus stills a deadly storm in the middle of the night … and is immediately accosted by an insane man possessed by a thousand demons the second that the boat that He’s in touches the shore. There was a crowd that followed Him to the shore when He left and now there’s a crowd waiting for Him when He comes back … and in that crowd were desperate people … more than two, I’m sure … but for Mark’s purpose, he choose two people in the crowd to once again demonstrate Jesus’ true identity, His true nature, His true power and … once again … to challenge US to see Jesus’ true identity, His true nature, His true power, and His true compassion as a way of helping us understand why He came and why He did what He did for us.

As I said, we don’t know how many people where there that day out of curiosity, how many were there because they heard rumors about a great healer coming to town, or went there to just to hear Him teach. I’m sure there were people there for all kinds of reasons … and some of them, like Jairus, where there out of sheer desperation and others, like the sick woman, who were there in the hopes of being healed … and the contrast between the two tells us volumes about Jesus and the heart of God. One person is a leading member of the community, the other an outcast. One person was there to plead for the life of a loved one and the other was there seeking help for their physical condition … and what’s key is that Jesus takes the time to help both. I say “time” because “time” is an important factor in the lives of these two people … one whose loved one’s time is running out and he doesn’t have seconds to spare and the other whose been burdened with a sickness that has affected her for many years.