Boundary Issues 2 Samuel 6:1-7, Mark 5:21-43

Preacher – “The Lord be with you.”
Response – “And also with you.”
[By prior arrangement, the preacher’s cell phone rings. The preacher checks the caller I.D, holds up a finger to the congregation and says, “I’ve got to take this.” The preacher chats a few moments, then hangs up.]

There are some things you just don’t do… [Hold up cell phone]
some boundaries you just shouldn’t cross.
Sometimes these boundaries are tangible, physical –
that yellow tape the police put up around the scene of a crime,
a barbed wire fence marking off your neighbor’s pasture.
But other boundaries are invisible.
Most of the time these boundaries aren’t written down or even overtly articulated.
we just expect everyone to know where the line is.

Sometimes these invisible boundaries are culturally defined,
for example, how much personal space we give each other.
It’s not something you measure,
but you know when your personal space has been invaded,
when somebody gets just TOO close for comfort.

Sometimes boundaries are part of a social class consciousness.
Rules of dress, for example.
When I was a teenager, my mother let me know in no uncertain terms
that I was never to go without a shirt, no matter how hot it was,
unless I was at the beach, at the pool, or in my own back yard.
Where you live can be another class-conscious boundary.
The train may not have gone through your town for a hundred years
but you know what it means to live “on the wrong side of the tracks.”

Boundaries serve a function – they provide structure to social life.
But what happens when somebody comes along and ignores the social boundaries?
What happens when somebody comes along
and deliberately, WILLFULLY, crosses the line that good people just don’t cross?
I don’t mean wearing saggy britches where your underwear hangs out
or failing to cover your mouth when you sneeze in the buffet line…
I mean what happens when somebody comes along and does something so outrageous
that it makes your skin crawl;
it makes you question everything you’ve ever assumed about social order.
I’m talking…of course…about Jesus.

First of all, we shouldn’t act like we didn’t expect it.
Anybody who ends a story with, “The first shall be last, and the last first”
is bound to challenge the status quo.
Still, as boundaries go,
our story today makes the Great Wall of China look like gossamer thread.

Mark is anything but subtle.
First of all, he places this story of Jairus and the anonymous woman
in the context of extreme boundary crossing.
Remember last week that Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee
leaving behind the familiar Jewish side of the lake to go to the Gentile side.
The lake, itself, serves as a boundary between clean and unclean.
And now, as Mark begins this story, they’ve come back across to the Jewish side,
but there are still boundary issues to face,
lines to cross that will make them uncomfortable…to say the least!

The first line that gets crossed is a small one, but it sets the tone.
Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, elbows his way through the crowd
and falls at Jesus’ feet.
It’s not that unseemly for Jairus to bow at Jesus’ feet,
given that he’s asking Jesus to do him a significant favor.
But Mark makes a point of saying that Jairus “begged Jesus repeatedly”
to come heal his daughter.
The implication is that Jairus loses his composure, he gets all worked up,
he makes himself vulnerable to Jesus and exposes his neediness to the crowd.
Jesus agrees to go with Jairus, but on the way something happens.
In the crush of the crowd a woman comes up and touches Jesus –
touches Jesus and is healed.
That sounds simple. It is anything but.

Mark pulls no punches in letting us know
just how low on the social ladder this woman really is.
In a society that saw prosperity and health as a clear sign of God’s blessing
the poor woman has no hope.
For one thing, she’s a woman. That’s one strike against her right there.
For another thing, she has been hemorrhaging for twelve years.
Twelve years of “woman trouble.”
She has been hemorrhaging twelve years and has endured many physicians.
Like millions in this country who lack adequate health insurance,
she has spent all she had on doctor bills and not only is she no better,
Mark tells us that she has actually gotten WORSE.

So here’s a woman who, because of her condition,
is not only considered unclean by Jewish law
but who out of respect for all acceptable social boundaries
should have segregated herself, should have stayed at home.
Here’s this woman, out in public, mixing in with a jostling crowd
a woman who has the temerity to reach out and TOUCH Jesus!

I don’t know how to convey to you just how nasty those around Jesus
would have seen that,
how far beyond the bounds of decency that would have seemed to them.
It would be like somebody picking their nose
and then reaching out to shake hands. Even WORSE!
And then Jesus, calm and self-possessed even in the crushing crowd,
feels the power go out of him, stops and asks, “Who touched me?”

Did you ever want to crawl in a hole and pull it in after you?
Put on your Harry Potter cloak of invisibility and just slink away?
Here’s this woman who thought she was being inconspicuous,
who thought no one would notice her – not her, not nasty, despicable HER…
Here’s this woman – twelve years an outcast,
suddenly being drawn into the spotlight by Jesus himself.
She likely would have had a heart attack
if she hadn’t already felt in her body that she had been healed.
Even so, her trembling made the earth around her shake
as she collapsed at Jesus’ feet in fear.

I picture everyone in the crowd recoiling in horror from this woman.
Imagine the nicknames they had for her around town.
“Look everybody, here comes Bloody Mary.”
But when the crowd draws away, Jesus steps close.
He takes her by the hand, lifts her up, looks her in the eye and says,
“Daughter – DAUGHTER – daughter your faith has made you well.
Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

It is astounding the lines Jesus crossed here –
touching a woman who wasn’t a relative,
touching a woman who, in the eyes of everyone in town, had been cursed by God.
touching a woman whose physical ailment gave her a serious “ICK” factor.
But one of the most significant lines Jesus crossed
was that in allowing himself to be delayed from his original mission,
Jairus daughter, the seemingly more IMPORTANT daughter, died.

She died. While he was allowing himself to be distracted by some tramp, the little girl died.
But that opened an even greater door for Jesus.
It gave him just the opportunity he needed
to show the mocking mourners, the grieving father, and his awe-struck disciples
that even the greatest boundary of all – even death itself –
could not block the purposes of God.

Jesus ordered all the scornful mourners to take their mess outside.
He took Jairus and his wife, and Peter, James, and John into the little girl’s room.
She lay there, still as stone, mouth slack, the color drained from her face.
Death hung thick in the air, a heavy curtain drawn around her tiny frame.
But Jesus pushed it aside.
To him it was no more than a spider’s web and he brushed it aside.
For the second time that day he reached out and lifted up.
And the little girl, the important man’s daughter, the joy of his life
got up and walked around.
To make sure we don’t miss the connection,
Mark then adds the kicker.
He says, “She was twelve years of age.”

Do you get it? Twelve. The number twelve.
In the Bible it is THE number that symbolizes God’s agency,
the activity of God working God’s purpose out.
Twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve disciples.
The woman in the street had been hemorrhaging for twelve years.
Jairus’ daughter had been alive just that long.
And through Jesus, God used them both to overcome boundaries:
boundaries of purity, of social status, even the boundary of death itself:
just blasted those boundaries to kingdom come!

This is not to say that there should be no boundaries.
King David found that there are certain lines even a king shouldn’t cross.
For example, the Ark of the Covenant was not to be touched. Period.
Abinadab’s son Uzzah found that out the hard way
when, without thinking, he reached out to steady the ark when it shifted.
And later, David discovered that, king or no king,
you don’t go committing adultery with your loyal soldier’s wife.

In Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, two neighbors meet in an annual ritual
to repair the rock wall that serves as a boundary between their properties.
One neighbor cites conventional wisdom
that says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
The other, however, reflects to himself,
“Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”1

In Ephesians the author writes of Jesus, “In his flesh he has made both groups into one
and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” (Eph. 2:14)
While there are boundaries that still give us some structure
and help us live together without being offensive or gross,
in Christ the boundaries that divide us have no place. No place at all.

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1 Frost, Robert, Mending Wall, North of Boston, 1915.