Mark 5:21-43, from Proper 8 (13)

Grace flows through the world like water through a creek bed. Its will is to gouge, lift, carry and deposit until the way for the life it brings is wide and straight and level and deep. The noise it makes is the sound of its will being thwarted.

Mark 5:21-43 opens with a great deal of such noise. A large crowd is pressing and jostling Jesus on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, possibly the same crowd he had escaped for a few days during his mission among the pagans on the lake’s opposite side. Impediments to the will of grace are everywhere, and Jesus is throwing himself against all of them at once. Suddenly, the throng parts, because an important man has arrived to speak with Jesus, and the rules of the world say that when important men show up, ordinary ones must make way. The man’s name precedes him in reverent whispers that ripple through the crowd: Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue. He falls, distraught, at Jesus’ feet, probably not noticing that until this moment, there had been no room to do so. That’s how privilege works.

His little daughter is dying, he tells Jesus. He begs Jesus to come heal the girl. There is no apology to whoever had been next in line for grace, no acknowledgement that he is diverting the flow of it down his exclusive, personal spillway. But let’s not judge Jairus harshly. Under similar circumstances, who among us would not use every resource at our disposal without hesitation or even a thought? And while much of the world is built to channel grace toward those with power and means, Jesus reminds use elsewhere that they uniquely struggle to receive it (Matt. 19:24).

Jesus surrenders himself to the desperate man, and the two bob along in the crowd now flowing to Jairus’ house. But an impediment awaits them. She is the opposite of Jairus in every way: isolated, impoverished, female. Blood had been seeping out of her constantly for the last 12 years, and despite having spent much money on many doctors – a clue, incidentally, that she might once have belonged to Jairus’ upper-crust society – the hemorrhaging has grown worse. Her last, penniless, friendless hope lies in Jesus. Without the means to capture his attention the way Jairus has, though, she realizes the grace she needs will be hers only if she steals it. She slips up behind Jesus in the crowd, reaches out her hand, and touches his cloak. Instantly, she is healed. But in the same instant, grace’s troubled way through the world grows suddenly smoother and quieter. And Jesus, to the woman’s horror, notices the change.

“Who touched my clothes?” Jesus turns and demands, glaring at the people who, as the disciples impatiently point out, seem to have all been touching him all at the same time. But the woman knows she is caught. Trembling, she confesses her theft. Judged unclean because of her illness, the woman would have made Jesus similarly unclean by touching him. But here as elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus seems to care little about what others consider unclean. Softening, he validates her faith and tells her to go in peace.

But the delay she caused has been catastrophic for Jairus. Messengers arrive with word that it is too late. His daughter is dead. Let Jesus get back to his regular business, they say, meaning the mundane business of the common folk.

But Jesus won’t have it. The way is not yet wide, straight, level and deep, and the will of grace is relentless. “Stop being afraid,” Jesus tells Jairus, “and start believing.” At the house, there is yet more noisy resistance to grace: crying and wailing – then ridiculing laughter aimed at Jesus for saying that this obstacle, too, will be moved. He shoos them and their cacophony out of the house, allowing only three disciples and the dead girl’s parents to remain. He takes the corpse’s hand. That, too, would have made those of his time consider him unclean. But, again, he seems unconcerned. She had been 12 years old, one for each year of misery the recently healed woman had endured, and her body had been on the cusp of beginning the monthly cycles that, for the woman, had somehow gone debilitatingly out of control. Too little life and blood in one place, too much of both in another. Gouge, lift, carry, deposit. The way must be smoothed.

“Little girl,” Jesus says tenderly, in Aramaic, the language of the common people, “get up.” And making no noise at all, she does.

My resistance to the flow of grace made a lot of noise last week. So did the resistance of others. Some of us got what we needed – and more – by diverting it down spillways maintained for the purpose. Others, desperate for a single drop, had to steal even that. A furtive touch of the cloak and a secretive trip across the southern U.S. border are both small misdemeanors, considering the misery motivating them. But “diverting” and “stealing” can mean the same thing. One way or another, we’re all thieves of grace, unless and until it runs smoothly and quietly through the whole world, bringing abundant life to all.

Mark 4:35-41, from Proper 7 (12)

“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” iconic villain Darth Vader growls in the famous “Star Wars” scene as he telekinetically crushes the windpipe of an imperial officer who has scoffed at the mystical “Force.”

Jesus may not magically choke anyone in Mark 4:40 when, having calmed a storm that had panicked the disciples who were sailing him across the Sea of Galilee, he asks, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” But he comes off as only slightly less callous.

If you picture it the way Rembrandt did, the storm was a real doozy. The sky in Rembrandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” is dark with clouds. The boat, tilted precariously upward, is cresting a tall, violent, wind-whipped wave. A sail has torn, and its ragged edge is flapping in the gale, as are a block and line ripped from their fastening. Five men toward the bow are struggling to contain the rigging crisis. A boat hook appears ready to fall overboard. In the stern, one man strains at the tiller. Another leans far over the gunwhale and peers grimly at the water; he has just vomited, or is about to. The remaining men are either huddling against the wind and spray, holding on for dear life, or beseeching the newly awakened Jesus to save them. One man, his hand on Jesus’ shoulder, looks mad – in both senses of the word.

In truth, the Sea of Galilee is a smallish, generally calm inland lake surrounded by tall, steep hills. After seeing the lake in person, one can’t help wondering whether Rembrandt overdramatized things a little. How bad could it really get out there, with land visible even from the center of the lake’s widest stretch? But Mark, Matthew and Luke all assert that Jesus’ sailing companions felt sure they were about to die. Seated with them in the rocking, creaking belly of the boat that night, amid the darkness and wind and waves, feeling bilge water slosh across my feet and noting the conspicuous lack of life jackets, I just might have come to agree with them. And scolded by Jesus afterward, as they were, I probably would have felt confused – and indignant. Easy enough to be brave, this Jesus, when he knows he can dissipate a storm with a few words. Wouldn’t he be sweating drops of blood before long on the Mount of Olives, once it was clear his enemies were coming, and his death was near? Wouldn’t he beg for deliverance, just like I had?

It might be important to understand, here, that Jesus’ evening command to “go over to the other side” of the lake hadn’t been about some frivolous desire to see what Capernaum looked like while breakfasting in the eastern shore. The text suggests it might have been about “leaving the crowd behind,” but the text also indicates that other boats came along, so the move couldn’t have been completely about finding solitude and rest. Given the urgency of the trip – why not wait until dawn? – and the accompanying flotilla, this looks to me more like a mission, and the disciples must have known it, especially when you consider the trip’s destination. Across the lake lay the cities of the Decapolis, built by Rome, inhabited by gentiles and imbued with a Hellenistic culture contrary to everything a Jew stood for. Good Jews, and especially their rabbis, didn’t just sail over there without a purpose. Read ahead, in Mark 5:1-20, and you’ll find out what the purpose was.

As the storm died and the lake’s restless surface calmed, perhaps what Jesus found so disturbing in his disciples – the crack troops he had just recruited and commissioned back in Chapter Three – was the speed with which they had concluded that the entire enterprise was fated to end as a pathetic patch of flotsam and dead bodies. Hadn’t he told them only hours ago that the Kingdom of Heaven would flourish no matter what, like the wild mustard that grew unchecked on the hills around the lake? They seem to have forgotten the lesson already. Or maybe they never got it in the first place. Their lack of faith wasn’t as much about a loss of courage as about a loss of trust, of hope. Perhaps Jesus was thinking that, in precious little time, these men would have to hold onto their faith despite far more convincing evidence of total disaster: an unjust arrest and trial, a battered corpse hanging from an imperial cross, a tomb, sealed and silent. They had been afraid of the storm, and that was fine. But they also had been afraid of more than the storm, and that wasn’t fine. It is telling that ending the storm not only failed to end the disciples’ fear but actually made it worse. “They were terrified,” Mark writes, “and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!'” If, before, they feared Jesus had too little power, now they fear he has too much – and might use it, Vader-style, on them.

I suspect that if I were to audit every prayer I have ever prayed, I would find that an alarmingly high number parallel the disciples’ mindset either during or after the storm. My supplications would boil down to either, “Why aren’t you saving me?” or “Please, don’t destroy me!” Both varieties reveal more than ordinary, perfectly rational fear of enduring painful circumstances; they reveal a lack of faith in the power, goodness, and, most critically, powerful goodness of God. This God loves me, and the whole world with me, and he is doing his powerfully good best to save every one of us. If I can’t get that right about him, then I can’t get anything at all right about him.

Rembrandt’s painting is probably a sight to behold – or at least probably was, until it went missing in a 1990 art heist. But one of its most compelling details has to do with the blue-clad man standing amidship, his right hand gripping a line, his left hand keeping his purple cap from blowing off in the wind.

Of the 15 characters in the boat – savior, soon-to-be saints, others – only he looks outward, at us. At you. The man is Rembrandt, who painted himself into the boat. He has locked eyes with you, and the absence of a visible shoreline suggests you are riding out the same storm in a nearby boat, perhaps one of the others that went along on the trip.

His mouth is open, as if asking how you’re holding up over there. Will you keep your faith during the storm? Will you keep it after?

Mark 4:26-34, from Proper 6 (11)

I used to feel differently about dandelions.

These days, as chief keeper of the family lawn, I typically look at a dandelion just long enough to aim a stream of herbicide at it. But when I was a kid, a dandelion was a thing of wonder, especially if its blossoms had matured into tuft-topped stems that I could pluck and blow on, imagining the seeds to be regiments of tiny paratroopers as they scattered in the breeze.

Replace “mustard” with “dandelion” in Mark 4:26-34, and you might get a better sense of how those listening to Jesus probably heard what he said. Because even though Jesus called mustard “the greatest of all shrubs,” mustard in first-century Palestine was undeniably a weed. Like dandelion, mustard had both culinary and medicinal uses. But also like dandelion, its most obvious characteristic was that it grew abundantly, without cultivation, and just about everywhere, including where it wasn’t especially welcome. And that’s the characteristic that made mustard an ideal topic for the riddle Jesus was telling about the Kingdom of God.

An aside: Jesus’ parables truly were riddles most of the time. Christians sometimes talk about how Jesus used parables to help explain things in terms the simple, agrarian folk of his place and time would more easily understand. But this somewhat snooty view ignores that fact that Jesus’ parables often confused even his disciples, necessitating frequent post-sermon remedial sessions during which Jesus would walk his disciples back through the parable, explaining what meant what and who represented whom. We tend to go at parables as if they were coconuts that will crack open and yield a quick snack if we whack the shell in just the right places with just the right amount of force. But parables more closely resemble onions – multilayered, releasing new potency each time you peel off one layer to expose another. Like an onion, a parable can be irritating, even tear-inducing, but well worth the trouble, if you stick with it.

Mark implies here that Jesus’ parable likening of the Kingdom of heaven to a common weed patch left the crowd stumped yet again (vv. 33-34). Small wonder. In the prevailing understanding of kingdoms, founding, defending and expanding a kingdom takes sweat, blood and treasure. Jesus’ listeners certainly knew as much. They had lost their kingdom to Rome, they desperately wanted to get it back, and they indicated on more than a few occasions that they expected Jesus to roll up his sleeves and help them do exactly that.

So it must have been about as enjoyable as a mouthful of raw onion to hear Jesus talk instead about a kingdom that, despite the obvious presence of an occupying army, was already everywhere, flourishing without anyone’s help and apparently offering nothing of practical value beyond a shelter for birds. But what alternative did Jesus have? Give it to them straight? “Look, everyone. They’re going to arrest and execute me soon. Three days later, I’ll be alive again. Some of you will see me. Most of you will just hear rumors. Then I’ll be gone, but my Spirit will be with you. The Romans will stay in power. You’ll rebel, but it won’t work. They’ll sack the temple, level Jerusalem, starve your last holdouts into mass suicide at Masada, and drive you out of Israel. But don’t worry about any of that, because the balance of something more fundamental than political or economic power will have shifted in your favor. Sin’s curse will have been undone, and you along with the rest of humanity will have been unconditionally redeemed and reclaimed by God.”

I’m pretty sure anything along those lines would have fallen even flatter than his kingdom-and-weeds analogy. I’m pretty sure it still would today, with so many Christians conflating faith and politics and rendering to Caesar not only what is Caesar’s but also what is God’s and even making Caesar their god in place of God. The seedy, weedy grace of a mustard-patch kingdom makes sense only if you’re done with trying to build, defend and expand the conventional kind.

I don’t know whether you’re done yet, but I am. Or, to be more honest, I’m ready to be done. I haven’t surrendered all of my kingdoms to God’s, but I’ve gotten as far as realizing all of mine are doomed. That’s a start. Paul explained to us, and Luther reminded us, that one joins God’s kingdom not by being or becoming good enough, but by faith alone. Nobody can make mustard grow, but anyone can let it grow. In fact, it will grow in spite of anything anyone does or doesn’t do.

I hope this blog opens up some fresh ground for a nice, bushy mustard patch. I hope the stuff gets completely out if control and goes everywhere, including places I presently consider it unwelcome.