Mark 3:7-12 "Is There a Doctor in the House?"

         “People who are well do not need a doctor, but only those who are sick.  I have not come to call respectable people, but outcasts.” “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting the sin-sick, not the spiritually-fit.”

         That is what Jesus told a couple of nosy and outspoken Pharisees who questioned the authenticity of a self-proclaimed rabbi who would intentionally dine with the likes of tax collectors and their assorted low life friends.  That is part of the story that we heard last week here in church. 

         However, what we did not hear was that Jesus apparently cared nary a whit if his actions flew in the face of strictly observed Jewish purity rules dating back to Moses.  You see, a couple of days later he healed a man with a paralyzed hand, on the Sabbath no less.  You can imagine the uproar that moment of selfless love caused!

         And so from then on, Jesus was known as the compassionate rabbi who was willing to stand up to the theological rigor mortis of first century Judaism.  Not only that, he had the reputation of being a healer for the common folks – for the ones who had no health insurance or primary care physician, the ones who knew that they were broken in body or in spirit (and probably both), that they were flawed and outcast in one way or another, that they needed to turn their lives around and become whole if they were to enter the Kingdom of God that lay at the very foundation of Jesus’ ministry, if they were to be part of God’s dream for the world, an expression of God’s passion.

         Wow!  When did all that occur?  I mean, Christmas is but a few weeks past.  Some of us still have our wreaths on the doors, and yet, so much has happened – particularly when told from the perspective of the Gospel of Mark.

         As Lutheran scholar James Boyce observed, “We seem only barely to have begun, yet in these first few chapters Jesus has whirled through Galilee -- baptized at the Jordan, the Spirit alights on him and God’s benediction of choice is pronounced; he walks by the sea and summons fisher folk to follow, and they fairly leap from their boats in obedient response; he teaches with an astounding authority, but a kind of secrecy enshrouds him which only the demonic seems to recognize; a secret power breathes from him that will not be contained, as witnessed by the numerous events of healing that mark his route. This is Jesus…”

         No wonder, according to Mark’s Gospel narrative, word spread quickly.  No publicity was needed.  The grapevine was very effective.  The goat herder told the shepherd.  The shepherd told his wife.  His wife told her friends when they gathered at the village well in the morning to draw water for the day.  Her friends told their friends and their friends told the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. 

         And the reputation of Jesus soon reached far beyond the Sea of Galilee along which shoreline he often strolled in the early morning hours and near which he had begun to tell stories about God’s dream for the world and had laid his hands upon the physically sick - and sick at heart.  And they all felt better for his words, and many were healed by his touch. 

         The Gospel writer of Mark tells us that people flocked to the little backwater villages that nestled at the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  As Baptist pastor Geoff Thomas observed, “Jesus had begun his preaching a few months earlier by telling people that the rule and power of God – (the) Kingdom – was near, and then (he) manifested the actual presence of the Kingdom in this eruption of healing miracles. These signs and wonders couldn’t be ignored. No one could close their eyes to all that was happening. It was absolutely gripping news, even to people who lived far from Galilee. This was the theme on everyone’s lips, “Did you hear what Jesus of Nazareth did yesterday?” 

         And so women and men came in droves from as far away as Jerusalem, walking over a hundred miles just to meet Jesus. They straggled in from Tyre and Sidon on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the north and west.  They journeyed even further from the southern land once populated by the Edomites near the Dead Sea, and they traveled from Judea. 

         So many were the halt and the lame, the deaf and the dumb, so many were the walking sticks and crutches, the hollow eyes of the blind and the trusted hands of the caregivers, so many were the wheelchairs and the pallets, so universal the cries and the moans – like the buzzing of a million bees – so overwhelming was the loneliness and depression, the emptiness and broken hearts, so piercing the cries of the evil spirits that haunted the demented and spooked the psychotic – so big was the crowd that Jesus instructed his disciples to prepare a boat and be ready to sail away from the shoreline and into the Sea of Galilee should the crowd clamor so much to reach him – be within earshot, close enough to touch him -  that he become overwhelmed and crushed. 

         What is going on here?  Why is the Gospel writer including this little vignette in his narrative?  I think it is a transition tale, a way to let us know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus had achieved rock star status.  Even his adversaries – the demons – knew who he is. 

         The Gospel writer is telling us six ways from Sunday that the world is about to turn – and not just Jesus’ local world. By going to great lengths to tell us exactly where people journeyed from , Mark proclaims that Jesus is on a global mission to make God’s dream a reality, to usher in God’s kingdom, to oppose the forces of evil the world over.  The Gospel writer wants us to understand that Jesus and his mission are big.  This is no small potatoes!

         We do not know whether or not Jesus had to step into that boat.  We do not know if he was able to stand his ground further up on the beach or if he ended up preaching, teaching, and healing in ankle deep water. 

         However, one thing we do know is that Jesus’ ministry began at the shoreline.  It began on the edge.  In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus does not march into the temple and announce who he is and what his intentions are.  He does not journey to Jerusalem and begin his work in the very epicenter of Jewish religious belief and scholarship.  He begins on the margins. 

         Jesus begins small – not with scholars and religious leaders to guide him but rather with a few fishermen and a tax collector – ones who were small in life experience and maybe even smaller in brains.   However, though they hailed from small towns, they were big on commitment and big on following this man wherever the Spirit might lead.  And look what was happening now!  Huge crowds were clamoring to be near Jesus, so many that a safety boat had to be ready to carry him away.

         We too – here in our church - may come with smallness – in numbers, in life experience.  The question is whether we also come with bigness – big on commitment, big on Jesus – as the disciples were. 

        You see, as ethics professor Ted Smith remarked, Jesus does not ask his followers to “add one more task to their busy lives. He calls them into new ways of being." Discipleship then is not a list of things to do, but "a new identity." 

         Imagine: This church business is about a whole new life!  This Jesus thing is no small potatoes!  How that calling will play out for us as a congregation – whether our bigness will win over our smallness – is an important question for us – one we need to take up a bit at our Annual Meeting and into 2018.

         Something else that the Gospel writer of Mark emphasizes in his narrative is the healing power of Jesus in an ancient world of hurt. In my mind’s eye, I picture Jesus stepping into the boat – if only to keep his feet dry – and I imagine this healer balancing in the gently rocking boat, his arms outstretched in an ancient sign of blessing and all the men and women around him standing and kneeling and sitting and lying on the beach, their moans and cries hovering in the air, all those people who sought to be whole and to leave their assorted ailments behind. 

      And I think of all the world’s people today who, like those first century men and women who walked hundreds of miles to find Jesus, all the people today would give just about anything to be healed.  I think of all the people on our prayer list and all the people you ask to be remembered in prayers and all the people whose names you murmur or whisper silently. 

         I think of the ones whose lives and the lives of their families have been irrevocably changed by illness or injury or death – those who are undergoing difficult chemotherapy treatments, who have recently been diagnosed with cancer, those with heart problems, those facing months of rehabilitation, and those who have become reconciled that the way they now are physically is most likely the way they will always be. 

         I think of those with dementia and those whose bodies are just worn out.  And then I think of those whose pain is not visible – those whose marriages are falling apart, those who battle addiction, those who cannot make sense of the world, those who are just plain tired.  Like the people who flocked to Jesus over two thousand years ago, we live in a world of hurt.

         And in my imagined scene I picture those people whose names we know on the shoreline clamoring for Jesus, for the one who, with power unlike any we have ever known, can bring healing, if not always physical healing then at the very least wholeness to any broken life.  And I imagine healing power surrounding them, emanating from the man in the boat.

         And then I re-imagine Jesus in that boat with all those people on the shoreline who travelled such distances to be near him.  And I picture Jesus not only as a man but also as a symbol – a symbol of love, grace, forgiveness, and acceptance.  In my mind’s eye, I envision that same healing power coming forth and surrounding the crowd, ferreting out all the petty malice and resentments they carry, all the intolerance, all the hatred and fear and racism, all the disrespect – and in the holes in their hearts left behind – I imagine a warm gush of compassion flowing in.

         I guess for me the gist of this passage for us today in our church is that our ministry – whether big or small - must always be a ministry of healing.  We too can and must be healers.  Why?  Because there is so much healing on so many different levels that needs to be done. 

         We could do worse than be the church whose mission is healing.  We could do worse than be the church whose mission is that all its programs and ministries lead to wholeness – for those to whom we minister, but also wholeness for ourselves.

         It would not be an easy mission because it would involve more than sitting in the pews on Sunday morning. It would involve a widespread commitment to actually engaging with each other, with our community, and with the world.  It would involve embracing a vision that is anything but small, but a vision that I believe would be authentic and could be deeply meaningful. 

         And my prayer is that we would respond to the “prescription” that  Richard Cardinal Cushing suggested when he talked about the modern church: “If all the sleeping folks will wake up, and all the lukewarm folks will fire up, and all the disgruntled folks will sweeten up, and all the discouraged folks will cheer up, and all the depressed folks will look up, and all the estranged folks will make up, and all the gossiping folks will shut up, and all the dry bones will shake up, and all the true soldiers will stand up, and all the church members will pray up, and if the Savior of all will be lifted up . . .then we can have the greatest renewal (and I would add the greatest healing) this world has ever known.”