Today we continue a series through the Gospel of Mark. Throughout the first four chapters of Mark, Jesus has been growing in popularity. This man, Jesus, had brought a new kind of teaching, a teaching ‘with authority’ (1:27); he had cast out demons; he had healed Peter’s mother-in-law, a paralytic and many others who were sick. Mark records the reaction of the crowds:

This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!” (Mark 2:12)

But there was also a growing opposition. More and more, Jesus was coming into conflict with the teachers of the law, the Pharisees. This all came to a head in the latter part of chapter 3. The Pharisees came together to accuse Jesus of being in league with Satan. They were so persuasive that even Jesus’ own family were convinced that, at the least, Jesus must be out of his mind (Mark 3:21).
Not all the opposition was human in origin, either. Two weeks ago, Tim recounted an incident from the end of Mark 4 where Jesus and his disciples are out in a boat and a huge storm arises, threatening the swamp them. Even nature seems against him! Yet Jesus rebukes wind and waves and they submit to his command. The disciples ‘were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”‘ (Mark 4:41).

Which brings us to Mark 5. In this chapter, Jesus demonstrates his authority over evil and oppression; sickness; and even over death itself.

As they get out of the boat, Jesus and his disciples are approached by a man ‘with an evil spirit’ (v. 2). Mark is at pains to emphasise the power of this evil spirit: in spite of many attempts it cannot be bound, let alone subdued,¹ by any human effort; it names itself ‘Legion’, a picture of military strength in numbers. Afraid of his strength, the people of his village had driven him out, with the result that he was living in the local cemetery. In other words, he was as good as dead.

Reading about evil spirits prompts an almost contemptuous response in many today. ‘That’s just how they described people with schizophrenia, and other kinds of psychosis.’ Yet we ought not to jump to conclusions. C. S. Lewis once wrote,

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.²

Possibly this man would receive a particular medical diagnosis today, and would be treated and, perhaps, medicated, accordingly. But I would certainly not want to say that all who have mental health issues are possessed; nor would I want to say that all who are possessed will manifest mental health issues.

Nevertheless, there are two factors that confirm Mark’s analysis of this man’s situation. Firstly, he had been driven into isolation, cut off from anyone to show him compassion or care for him. This, to me, is one of the signs of evil at work. The second sign is found in verse 5: ‘Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.’ That tendency towards self-harm is a strong indicator of an evil spirit trying to deface the image of God found in him.

Many people today find themselves in similar straits, often totally unaware of the path they are on. Sometimes it comes in the form of an addiction: drug and alcohol addicts find themselves increasingly isolated as they hurt the people who love them, even as they are destroying their own health. Adulterers and porn addicts devalue human sexuality and damage their capacity for meaningful relationship. But sometimes it can be addictions to more ‘respectable’ things that isolate and harm: wealth; power; beauty; success. Sometimes it is ‘lonely at the top’ because of all the people stepped on in getting there. Sometimes the relentless pursuit of physical perfection pushes people away rather than attracting them.

What is it in your life that isolates you from others, that causes them to push you away or you to push them away? Human beings are made to be in relationship. What is it that causes you to denigrate or damage the image of God in you or in others? Is your head often filled with thoughts of failure, of self-loathing, of worthlessness? These things may or may not be a sign of spiritual oppression, and you will require wise and godly counsel to discern and address the root causes. That was what this man needed, but instead his community drove him out.

Then, one day, he met Jesus… and everything changed.

Not far from there, a man named Jairus was getting frantic as he watched his daughter dying in front of him. He was a man of wealth, influence, and standing in his community, but nothing he did seemed to make any difference. He had called in the best doctors, all of whom had looked grave, shaken their heads, hemmed and hawed and eventually admitted they had no idea what was wrong let alone how it could be fixed. For twelve years he had delighted in his daughter: held her in his arms, nursed her when she was sick, laughed and cried, danced and played, and now… it was all going to end. This had come out of nowhere and there was nothing – nothing – he could do about it.

Perhaps you can relate? What is it in your life that has rendered you powerless? Perhaps you have stood where Jairus stood, watching a loved one clinging to life with a desperate but failing grasp. The cause may be different – cancer, car accident, or catastrophe – but the emotional trauma is off the charts. Perhaps it is not a life under threat but a suddenly broken relationship – with a spouse, with a parent, with a child, with a friend – and you feel utterly helpless to do anything to restore it. For some the crisis might be financial – sudden unemployment, a fire destroys your home – and you don’t know how you’re going to get by. If you have stood in any of these places then you know something of the despair that Jairus must have felt.

Then, one day, Jairus met Jesus… and everything changed.

Amongst the crowd that day was a woman who ought not to have been there. Unlike Jairus, the last twelve years had not been spent in blissful family life but in increasing desperation, trying to find someone who could help her with her problem. You see, for twelve years she had bled from her uterus – if not constantly then at least considerably more often and more heavily than was to be expected. As a result she would have been constantly weak and in pain. If that was not bad enough, she was also considered ‘unclean’ because of the blood³, meaning that she could not engage in the religious life of her community, nor could anyone touch her without themselves being rendered ‘unclean’.⁴ That is why she ought not to have been there in that crowd that day. Yet she was desperate. So she forced her way through the crowd.

Is this where you find yourself today? I know there are some in this church who suffer from chronic illness that means they are often unable to worship with us on a Sunday morning. For others it is the infirmity that comes with old age that gets in the way. Or maybe you feel isolated from your church and your community because you have children whose special needs consume so much of your focus there is little time for anything else? Perhaps your job means you are in a different city each week and so never get to really settle into a church community. Do you long to connect with people but, for whatever reason, you just can’t? Then you know something of this woman’s desperation.

Then, one day, she met Jesus… and everything changed.

At one level, these three people are just about as different as could be: two lived on the fringes of society, the other was a respected citizen; two were men, the other a woman; two were Jews, the other a gentile; only Jairus was wealthy, though the woman may once have been so.⁵ If they had anything in common, it was their utter desperation and helplessness.

Nor is there any common pattern in the way they were delivered from their maladies: one was healed with a word, one was healed with a touch, and one was healed with a word and a touch. Certainly all three had to exercise faith, but at different times. Jairus exercised faith before the act (in coming to Jesus, and in believing his words), and he exercised it on behalf of his daughter (who could no longer do so for herself). The woman’s greatest act of faith was not so much in her touch as in her coming forward in response to Jesus’ query. And it is doubtful whether or in what sense the demoniac exercised faith at all during his healing; his expression of faith came afterwards in his desire to follow Jesus, and in his going back to his village to bear witness.

Trying to read the gospels in order to discern a ‘method’ for ministry is ultimately futile. Mark seems to be deliberately undermining any attempt to categorise Jesus as a magician by showing that there is no fixed ‘method’. Even the ‘incantation’, talitha koum, – a common feature of magic stories – turns out to be nothing more than a gentle instruction to ‘get up’ in the girl’s native tongue, and is followed up with an instruction that she should be fed.

It is sobering to realise that many of the things Jesus did defy commonly accepted mission methods. What was he doing in gentile territory, pig-farming land, amongst the tombs? Evangelism ‘ought’ to be done where there are concentrations of people, not one-on-one in the wilderness with a crazy person. But Jesus had a divine appointment to free this man at this time from his oppression. Why would you allow such a man to then go and preach on his behalf. Surely, given his history, he would have little credibility. In fact, in the Gospel of Mark, this healed demoniac becomes the first missionary-preacher sent out by Jesus, a Gentile sent to the Gentiles,⁶ at a time before Jesus trusted even his own disciples to go out on their own.⁷ As Mark McCrindle said when he preached on this passage a couple of years ago, he was ‘a most unlikely ministry candidate’!⁸

By contrast, church marketers would have cheered at the approach of Jairus. Here at last was somebody influential, somebody who could really catapult Jesus into the stratosphere of religious opinion and popularity. Why would Jesus stop mid-stride and ask an apparently nonsensical question (‘Who touched me?’) and risk offending the very person who could get him places? Because he is about loving people rather than ‘getting places’. He calls the woman out, not to get ‘the credit’, still less to embarrass her, but so he could call her, ‘Daughter’ and bring her peace (v. 34). Why does he forbid Jairus and his family from telling anybody about the girl, when he had already commissioned the healed demoniac to go and spread the good news? Perhaps because it would take Jairus away from his family to do so, whereas the gentile man was being sent back to his.

The only constant through all three episodes is Jesus himself. At some point, all three found themselves at the feet of Jesus, begging for his help, his compassion, his mercy. And in each case he gave it… though, according to the Law, he had reason not to. You see, touching a gentile, or a woman with her period, or a dead body would all result in the one who touched being made unclean. They themselves would then be ineligible to participate in any kind of religious services, or to enter the temple. ‘Many teachers avoided touching women altogether, lest they become accidentally contaminated.’⁹ This is probably why the woman came forward ‘trembling with fear’ (v. 33); she feared that she had contaminated this rabbi, and was about to be publicly rebuked in front of the whole crowd.

But that is not the way Jesus saw it. You see, he knew something none of them knew: his purity would swallow up their impurity. And this was so because of what he was about to endure on the cross. Jesus could deliver the man from that evil spirit because he himself would endure all the devil’s wrath and yet emerge victorious. Like Moses before him, he commanded the waters – be still! – then used it to dispose of a hostile enemy, bringing about a new exodus and a new freedom. Jesus took that man’s oppression upon himself and, in so doing, freed the man.

Similarly, although the woman’s blood was a contaminant according to the Law, blood was also the only means prescribed by the Law for cleansing the altar and taking away sin. Jesus himself would soon offer his own blood as the ultimate detergent.¹⁰ In describing her suffering, Mark uses the metaphor of a scourge or whip (μάστιγός, vv. 29. 34); he will use the same word again in Mark 10:34 where Jesus prophesies his own literal flogging at the hands of the Romans. Jesus took on her suffering as his own and, in so doing, delivered her from it.

Finally, Jesus was not afraid to touch the girl because he knew that her death was no more significant than the sleep he proclaimed it. As one writer puts it,

The keys of death were hung on the inside of Christ’s tomb. From the outside, Christ could do many wonderful works, including raising a twelve-year-old girl and two men from the dead – only to die again (Mark 5:41-42; Luke 7:14-15; John 11:43-44). If any were to be raised from the dead, never to die again, Christ would have to die for them, enter the tomb, take the keys, and unlock the door of death from the inside.¹¹

Hallelujah!

Friends, I don’t know your situation. Perhaps you are facing an immediate crisis like Jairus; or ongoing suffering like the woman; or, perhaps scariest of all, you don’t actually know you have a problem, until you are face to face with Jesus. Whatever the case, you have a choice to make, a response to give. Will you, like the villagers, try and drive Jesus away, the way they had previously driven away the man he healed? Because the tragic irony is that the one who is strong enough to expel ‘Legion’ from the area will allow himself to be driven away… for a time. Will you, like the professional mourners at Jairus’ door, scoff at the words of Jesus? Or will you, like Jairus, like the woman, and like the man, fall at the feet of Jesus and ask for his mercy?

Come and meet Jesus… and everything will change!

Bibliography

Edwards, James R. The Gospel According to Mark. Accordance electronic ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.

English, Donald. The Message of Mark : The Mystery of Faith. Leicester, England ; Downers Grove, Ill., U.S.A.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1992.

Garland, David E. Mark. Accordance electronic ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.

Keener, Craig S. The Ivp Bible Background Commentary : New Testament. Accordance electronic ed. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993.

Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. Sixtieth Anniversary ed. London: HarperCollins, 2002.

Piper, John. The Passion of Jesus Christ : Fifty Reasons Why He Came to Die. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2004.

Endnotes

1. ‘Mark’s description is more fitting of a ferocious animal than of a human being; indeed, the Greek word for “subdue,” damazō, is used of taming a wild beast in James 3:7.’ James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 154-55.
2. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (London: HarperCollins, 2002), ix.
3. Lev. 12:7; 15:19–24; 20:18.
4. Lev. 15.19.
5. She could once afford ‘many doctors’ (v. 26).
6. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, 160.
7. Donald. English, The Message of Mark : The Mystery of Faith (Leicester, England ; Downers Grove, Ill., U.S.A.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1992), 111.
8. Sermon preached 3/3/13, http://www.wphcc.com/sermons/transformed-by-christ/#
9. Craig S. Keener, The Ivp Bible Background Commentary : New Testament (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 148.
10. David E. Garland, Mark (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 229.
11. John Piper, The Passion of Jesus Christ : Fifty Reasons Why He Came to Die (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2004), 100.