Design

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:45

If you are maddeningly familiar with the Scriptures and you love Jesus, but you are stuck in a Bible-reading rut and looking for the next level of depth with God’s Word, let me suggest one word that has the potential to unlock a whole new layer of interest, engagement, and spiritual clarity for you: Design.

I grew up with some assumptions about the Bible based on my own experiences that wound up being a million miles from the truth. For one thing, growing up in the American South in the ’80s meant that the Bible itself was a ubiquitous thing in my world. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a Bible. Copies of that book were absolutely everywhere. That fact led me to assume the first believers in Jesus had just as many copies of the Scriptures lying around all over the place as we did. I pictured first-century churches having tons of affordable paperback Bibles, just like every single room of my church did. I assumed writing the Bible was just like writing a letter, an email, or a text—in other words, something you simply throw together using whatever happens to be at the front of your mind at the moment. Again, I was way off. When the New Testament authors wrote their works of Scripture, writing itself was one of the most highly specialized and expensive activities an individual could undertake. To write a long-form work like one of the four Gospels would have required a deep education, tons of costly materials available only to skilled craftsmen, and a fairly significant capital investment from backers with expendable means.

What does all this mean? Well, for one thing, it means that no work of Scripture was some knee-jerk, haphazard thought jotted down in the heat of the moment on scrap paper lying around. These books required not only vast resources to come into being in the first place, but, from a content-creation standpoint, extensive care, intention, time, precision, and methodical composition. All of this points to one thought that can really change the way you read the Bible and has the potential to utterly transform what you get out of your experience with Scripture. That one thought goes like this: The Bible wasn’t thrown together. It was highly organized and intricately designed by people who not only followed Jesus, but who were themselves gifted artists who used their pens like paintbrushes and computer code. They fully intended to ignite your imagination and open the door for the Holy Spirit to run a program of change in your heart and mind. When you read Scripture, open your heart to the Lord, but also open your heart to these brilliant, artistic authors who know how to engineer an experience that can take your understanding to a whole new plane.

How does that work exactly? Well, let me give you one place to start with our last look at a helpless person who came to Jesus. It was the story of blind Bartimaeus, who received his sight on the border of Jericho. Books that are highly designed are meant to be read, reread, thought about, discussed, and read over and over again for the rest of your life. That’s what you do with the Bible. When you read the Gospel of Mark, you’re supposed to read about Bartimaeus, notice some things, write them down, talk to a friend about them, put them in your pocket as you live your life, and then, the next time you read through Mark, remind yourself of them as you read it again. If you did all that, what might you notice this time through? Oh boy…that’s where everything gets really cool.

Maybe the last time you read through Mark, you noticed that this scene with Bartimaeus is the last miracle before the resurrection. Is that weird? We are only two-thirds of the way through the book, and this is the last miracle before the very end? Why? Is this part of Mark’s design? Surely Jesus did a ton more miraculous things, but Mark has decided to skip them all. Why? Is he trying to show us something? Who knows, but if you carry that knowledge into your next journey through Mark, maybe you remember that fact right before you read about Bartimaeus. If so, you might notice that this very last miracle is situated directly after Mark gives us the single most critical and important statement in the entire Gospel. Bartimaeus isn’t just the last miracle Mark gives us before the cross; it’s the first thing he gives us after dropping the atomic bomb of his entire theme for the Gospel. What is this heart of the Gospel? What is Mark’s main theme about Jesus? It’s in chapter 10, verse 45, where Jesus says that He came not “to be served, but to serve” and give His life away to pay our ransom and buy us back for Himself. And after that stirring and electric statement, Mark gives us one last miracle to consider.

It’s a miracle where the most powerful being in all the universe humbly faces a broken, needy creature and says, “What do you want? Make a wish. I’m here for you. Your brokenness is why I came. Do you have the courage to admit what you need and say it out loud? If so, I have come to serve you and help you and rescue you, and nothing can stop me from doing whatever it takes to make you whole.” From that point on, we see God in the flesh on the long march to laying His beautiful life down for you and me. Mark designed this book in such a way that the more you read, the more you ask, the more you need, the more you will find. You’ll see Jesus declare exactly why He came, and, as if on cue, everything else He does from that moment on is His way of saying, “Watch this!”

THE KINDNESS THAT KICKED OFF THE COUNTDOWN

Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed.”

John 7:21

This week, we looked at the miracle of Jesus healing a man at the pool of Bethesda who had been paralyzed for 38 years. This man didn’t ask for Jesus’ help. He didn’t exercise any faith whatsoever. He wasn’t like the leper who told Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” He wasn’t like the centurion who understood the dynamics of authority and petitioned Jesus as a military officer holding sway over sickness. He wasn’t like the woman who touched Jesus, risking everything to break through the crowd if only she could make the slightest contact with the Healer. No, this man not only didn’t demonstrate any faith, but he didn’t even bother to get to know Jesus after the miracle took place. He simply received his healing, rolled up his mat as directed, and walked off into the sunset. The only problem was that the sunset he was walking off into was a Sabbath.

Am I the only one who imagines Jesus glancing at the camera with a knowing smile and possibly a wink at this point? Consider the way the first section of the scene ends in John 5. Verses 8 and 9 say, “Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath.” Can you picture Jesus breaking the fourth wall and letting us know He knows exactly what He’s up to? There were tons of people there that day. There were seemingly endless problematic stories to solve and broken people to heal. Not everyone would have been as well-known as a man who had been an invalid for 38 years. Not everyone there came equipped with their own props. Jesus told this man to pick up his mat and walk. That mat was a symbol of the fact that he was stuck. The mat was an emblem of his helplessness. Jesus’ command to carry it away was a profound statement about complete healing and a brand-new pattern of life, but it was more than that. That one little instruction to carry away the mat was the match that lit the fuse that ignited the bomb that changed everything forever. That man carrying that mat that day cost Jesus His life.

The religious leaders at the pool somehow managed to ignore the outrageously amazing fact that a well-known, broken beggar was healthy, whole, and fit as a fiddle. It never occurred to them that the appropriate response to seeing this man healed was to praise God. No, they narrowed their gaze to his cargo and called him out as a lawbreaker. “It’s the Sabbath. The law forbids you to carry your mat.” Seriously? This outrageous hypocrisy was like giving a parking ticket to a wheelchair user who got miraculously healed and left their chair in the handicapped space. We should be partying, not prying! They could have been celebrating, but they were too busy scowling.

John says it was because of this act on this day that the religious leaders began to persecute Jesus. They found Him, cornered Him, and questioned Him. He told them that there is no Sabbath rest for God while any one of His kids anywhere is hurting. He said His Father is always working, and He is working as well. And that, as they say, is all she wrote. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Not only had Jesus encouraged what they considered lawbreaking on the Sabbath, but He had the cheek to call God His Father, making Himself equal with God. This act of mercy and these words of explanation became His death sentence. John says, “They tried all the more to kill Him.” As G. Campbell Morgan said of this moment, “They never forgave Him.”

I don’t know about you, but this leaves me with a huge question: Why this guy? Why this day? Why not anyone else at the pool? Why not heal on a Tuesday or a Thursday? All of the controversy could have been so easily avoided. All of the persecution could have been sidestepped with a couple of slight edits in the strategy of the Savior. The answer, of course, is the reason I always imagine a little nod and wink toward the camera from Jesus in this scene. Every last detail of this story was intentional. Jesus was pushing His opponents toward action. He was lighting the powder keg on purpose. Jesus didn’t come here just to work wonders. He wasn’t simply on a mission of compassionate healing. Jesus came here to die. He was on a mission to lay down His life to pay for yours and mine. It was the only way to offer us forgiveness. It was our only hope for Heaven. The prophets foretold His rejection and accusation. The Scriptures spelled out the clear path of pain and suffering. This action on this day was the catalyst to the cross. Oh, that I could hear the resolve in His voice when He gave the order that sealed His fate. What did He sound like when He told this man to pick up his mat and walk? Jesus knew He was signing His own death warrant. It’s why He came. He not only faced the end, He did it with bold decision and merciful kindness to a man who needed His help. Wow.

Washed Up

“Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.” Revelation 20:14

Are you a roller coaster person? Have you spent much time with non-roller coaster people? Despite being deathly afraid of heights, I love a good roller coaster. I guess I just trust the rails, the brakes, the shoulder bars, and the hundreds of folks who have ridden the thing before me. When I’m on one, I let go completely and laugh my tail off for those two and a half minutes of controlled excitement and terror. I don’t judge folks who don’t love them, and I understand that, as with anything else, something could always go wrong. But if you catch me at an amusement park, I’m gonna be coasting!

Admittedly, it’s a strange way to have fun. It’s kind of like taking everything that can possibly happen in ten or fifteen different car crashes, mixing it all together back-to-back into one event, and then, at the end, somehow slowing down and coming to a controlled stop instead of actually getting in a wreck. Whose idea was this, anyway?

Now imagine, for a second, that no one had ever ridden a roller coaster before, and one just showed up out of nowhere and you were encouraged to try it. In this thought experiment, it’s not whatever roller coasters started out as—like some lame little downhill on a wooden track—but one of the huge and intimidating coasters we have these days, like VelociCoaster, Iron Gwazi, or Steel Vengeance. They boast stats like being over 200 feet tall, reaching speeds well over 100 mph, and having 90-degree turns into drops that give riders as much as 27 seconds of airtime, floating out of their seats. Whoa. Would anyone ever volunteer to be the first person to ride one of those? What kind of guarantee would it take for you to willingly be the first person to strap into that situation for a bit of casual fun?

My guess is you would say no to being the guinea pig on this outrageous contraption. And yet, that same lighthearted attitude most people have while riding roller coasters is exactly the way the New Testament encourages us all to feel about death. This week, we looked at Jesus gently raising a twelve-year-old girl from the dead right there in her home. It was a sweet and tender scene in which we see the beautiful heart of the Savior up close. The thing that’s easy to read over if you’ve spent a lot of time in church or read the story many times is something Jesus says right before He raises the girl from the dead. In Mark 5:39, He says, “The child is not dead, but asleep.”

How could Jesus say this? The mother and father of this little girl are right there in the throes of despair and mourning, and Jesus seems to dismiss their pain. Is that the deal? Is Jesus that insensitive? Well, it’s either that, or Jesus knows something we don’t. What if, in some way, Jesus is the builder of the roller coaster, letting everyone know that no matter how scary it seems, it’s perfectly safe and not at all what you think it’s going to feel like? The New Testament teaches some pretty incredible things about death, and I think we who follow Jesus need to stay connected to those words so that we know how we’re supposed to think about, talk about, and feel about death.

If you know Jesus, death ain’t what it used to be. Death has been defeated, humiliated. Death is washed up. Here is a quick rundown of what our faith says about death: The sting of death has been defeated by Jesus’ resurrection. The victory of death has been defeated. Whoever believes in Jesus never really dies. Death is not a final state for anyone, and one day, every single person who has ever died will hear the voice of Jesus and get up out of their graves to answer Him. Death can’t separate us from God’s love. To die is gain for the believer because we are instantly with Him forever. Our apparent mortality will be swallowed up by the new life. Jesus holds the keys to death. The second death has no power over believers at all. Death itself will actually go to court, be sentenced, and be tossed into an eternal lake of fire. In the New Creation, there is no more death at all.

The new life of the believer after what appears to be death is such a real and full life that what we now call death, Jesus calls sleep—like a nap on a perfect afternoon before we get to enjoy the best day ever.

Playbook

“Let everyone listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. I will give some of the hidden manna to everyone who overcomes. I will also give him a white stone. On the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the person who receives it.”

Revelation 2:17

Jesus healed a blind man at Bethsaida in stages. It was a completely unique situation in which the miraculous change brought by the Lord’s power was gradual. Jesus healed him somewhat, asked him for a situation report and then rolled up His sleeves and healed Him some more until the job was done. There’s no one else in the Gospels that gets healed in this way. The really interesting thing is that when you dig in deep to the miraculous healings of Jesus, you find that He never healed anyone the same way twice. Jesus never repeated Himself. He always met a new situation with a new method. He handled every individual person’s need with an original, singular touch.

The blind man at Bethsaida was one of seven blind people who had their sight restored in the New Testament, (some lists say there were eight, but they are typically counting Bartimeus in Jericho twice) and every single time a blind person was healed by Jesus, it was done in a completely particular and specific way. One man got a sort-of mud mask treatment and was told to wash his face in the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. In one case Jesus laid hands on a man’s unseeing eyes. In Bethsaida, Jesus actually spat on the man’s face, while one man was simply told to go, and his sight was immediately restored. One person was even healed through the ministry of another believer laying hands on him. And these examples only cover the blind people. Jesus always did something unique with every person that He hadn’t quite done before.

This is not the case when it comes to the enemy. The Accuser (Satan) is a brilliant, cunning, tireless foe. We can’t outsmart him or out think him, but that doesn’t change the fact that his tactics, while effective, are pretty boring. What I mean is, he only has about five chess moves. He uses the same stale, overworked, cliche plays over and over again without ever introducing any innovation or creativity into his efforts to discourage and destroy human beings and stall the advancement of the Kingdom of God. He may be good at what he does, but he is utterly uninspiring from an inventive point of view. In 2 Corinthians 2, the Apostle Paul says about the devil that “we are not unaware of his schemes.” Why is that? Simply put, he always repeats himself with every person he attacks. He bombards the human heart with shame, pride, power, envy, lust, and despair. Over and over again, the enemy of our souls breaks our faith, splinters our commitment, fractures our hope, and shrinks our love by playing those same old songs to us time after time after time. The reason of course is that we aren’t individuals to him. We are just like cattle. We all look the same. He doesn’t care about us. He doesn’t even hate us. We are simply raw material he uses and throws away so that he can attempt to hurt the heart of Jesus with our systematic slaughter. We don’t matter to him, and since we fall for the same tricks all the time, why bother mixing it up?

That’s what makes Jesus so wonderful. He genuinely cares. And He not only cares about humans in general; He cares about every last one of us as if we were the only lovable thing in all the universe. The heart of Jesus for every single person is infinite in affection, compassion and attention. He isn’t in a hurry with any of us, He isn’t waiting for a more interesting person to come along, and He never falls back on rote formulas to save effort, energy, or time. Jesus approaches every situation and every human heart with limitless creative specificity. It’s as if Jesus is developing a unique and elaborate handshake for every friendship in His life. It makes me think of the Lord’s letter He wrote to the church at Pergamum in Revelation 2. In that letter, Jesus says He has a new name for every person. It turns out this name is a secret between you and Jesus. Individuals matter to Jesus, and that means you. For the Lord, there is no pattern or type when it comes to human hearts. There are only the unique sons and daughters He loves. You matter to Jesus.

When in Rome...

“All God’s people here send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar’s household.”

Philippians 4:22

Jesus used one of His most glowing public compliments about a foreign, pagan officer of the army that controlled His homeland as an invading oppressor. Take a second to let that sink in. We may all be familiar with the passage in Matthew chapter 8, but this was an incredibly offensive and shocking thing for everyone who first heard it. You see, Jesus never once praised the faith of Israel’s high priest or any of the ruling class of scribes or Pharisees. He didn’t applaud any synagogue rulers or rabbis. In the story of the Centurion, Jesus’ rousing chorus of “For he’s a jolly good fellow” was reserved for a person almost every one of God’s people would have considered automatically canceled for being an unclean, illegal alien, utterly exempt from God’s blessing. Jesus didn’t cancel him, though. He gave the Roman Centurion a standing ovation the likes of which He never gave anyone else.

But that’s not all. The Lord had an even more surprising thing to say about God’s favor and the people we don’t always include in the guest list. He declared that when it’s all said and done, there will be people seated at the table enjoying the Heavenly feast who were always treated as outsiders down here, while many of the folks who assumed they were God’s favorites wouldn’t even make it through security. It is extremely difficult to understand how infuriating and unpatriotic these words of Jesus would have felt to almost everyone who heard them. Jesus didn’t care one bit about that. He was and is building a kingdom that obliterates every national, tribal, or cultural boundary humans have invented. Jesus is rescuing people from themselves and adopting them into His beautiful family from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation.

The politics of Jesus are hard for most people to understand, but that is really an emotional issue because His politics aren’t complicated at all. Modern American Christians divide up into teams with jerseys. We stand with our side in loyalty while the folks wearing the other team’s jersey are our worst enemies. We talk about the political decisions of the other side as being the most dangerous threat to the continued existence of our very civilization. Well, that is all just a bunch of nonsense - the result of our outlandish pride run riot. Psalm 2 says “The One enthroned in Heaven laughs” at all of this absurdity. It says that the Promised King is going to rule all of reality as His own private possession. He will run the whole show. The Psalm says the Messiah will inherit all of the nations and when He does, He’s not keeping them around. Enjoy the Olympics while you can. We won’t have those medal ceremonies in the sweet by and by. Psalm 2 says Jesus will break the nations with an iron scepter and dash them to pieces like pottery. You see, people go to Heaven. Nations do not.

One of the things we sometimes forget when we read the New Testament is that every single scene is happening against the background of the Roman Empire. The most powerful human force the world had ever known up to that point was the Roman army. Jesus’ life on earth as one of us begins with the story of Roman taxation. His life ends on a Roman cross at the washed hands of a Roman governor. The fledgling church is finding its feet in the shadows of Roman power. Peter and Paul die in Rome. If you could send a drone back in time to the first century anywhere in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, you would have footage of a world utterly dominated by Roman power and yet, I can read the New Testament and sometimes forget they’re even there. Jesus didn’t fight with the Romans, He loved them and reached them and even saved some of them. Paul didn’t resist the Romans, he preached the Gospel to them and welcomed them into the family. If you love Jesus, you are a citizen of the Kingdom of God first and foremost. Every other citizenship you hold is less significant and has an expiration date. There is no human identifier or division line that should keep you from loving, praying for and welcoming any and all people into the family of God. In other words, when in Rome, reach the Romans till we all become children of God.

It's Go Time

“ ...the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.”

Revelation 13:8

Jesus healed a lot of people during His ministry. Sometimes His opponents put Him up to it. Sometimes the suffering person asked for it. Sometimes a great ocean of resistance was crossed by a courageous coordination of faith and desperation and Jesus responded with compassion and power. But sometimes, He acted all on His own without any prompt or plea. In Luke 13, Jesus healed a woman who had been bent over double for eighteen years. She didn’t ask for help that day. She didn’t show up for worship hoping to be healed. She simply did what she did every Saturday - she went to honor God and lo and behold everything changed.

Luke tells us this woman couldn’t stand up straight, she couldn’t look anyone in the eye. She was like a human right angle, frozen in a living grovel, staring at the ground. She was effectively cut off from community, friendship and love. Can you imagine going months without looking anyone in the eyes? What would you do if you couldn’t meet anyone for coffee, accept a warm hug, or go one a walk with your best friend for eighteen years? That’s the entire lifespan of a senior in high school. She was excluded, unknown, invisible, and faceless for almost two decades.

One thing I find really interesting about this scene in Luke’s Gospel is that no one tells Jesus her story, and He doesn’t ask any questions to figure out her biographical details. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. Jesus tells everyone else her story. He already knows it. He enters the scene already thoroughly aware of her history and deeply concerned with her plight. It reminds me of the way He already knew everything about Zacchaeus and Nathanael. He knew the stories of the woman caught in adultery and the woman who anointed His feet in the home of the Pharisee. He read the minds of the men who judged Him when He publicly forgave the paralytic and He knew how many times the woman at the well had been married even though they never met until that day in Sychar. Jesus was and is Almighty God the Son. He has always existed. He was the Agent of creation. The Apostle John says without Him, nothing would exist. When Jesus asked questions, it wasn’t because He needed information. It was always part of the unique and beautiful way He loves to work in concert with us. The questions of Jesus draw us into engagement and coordination with His loving actions. His questions weren’t a necessity, but rather just a part of His style.

When Jesus healed the woman bent double in Luke 13, no one asked for His help. On that Sabbath day, He stepped into the synagogue and took over. He said she had been bound up in suffering for “eighteen long years”. This scene took place after the transfiguration, which means it was within the last six months of Jesus’ ministry. That would make Jesus around thirty three years old, which means this poor woman’s affliction began when Jesus was around fifteen. Jesus was in Nazareth when He was fifteen. He was working in the carpenter’s shop in those days. He had already celebrated His bar mitzvah. What were those tender hands working on the day this woman first suffered? Did the teenage carpenter tremble a little? As her back was bending and growing painfully stiff, His enormous heart was moving forward toward the day He would finally close up the carpenter shop for the last time, leave home and begin His journey toward the cross. Part of that journey included this day in the synagogue when He placed His hands on her and she stood up straight, praising God.

Jesus the Messiah was born to die. Hebrews 10 says the baby Jesus was quoting Psalm 40 in His infant mind and heart, somehow miraculously knowing His mission even in the manger. He came here to give His life so that He could undo all the world’s wrong and heal every hurt. All suffering had a start time and all pain has an expiration date. There is a day coming where He will wipe every tear from every eye. Revelation 13 talks about the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. He sees the invisible, welcomes the rejected, moves toward the runaways, and holds the helpless. I can’t help but think about the excited focus Jesus experienced when He woke up the day He went to the synagogue to heal that dear woman. He’s not done yet. Jesus is always at work. As long as there is a heart that’s hurting, it’s go time.

PUNCTUATION

“We must do the works of Him who sent me”

John 9:4

Jesus healed a man who was born blind. What an incredible miracle! He gave light and color and perspective to a man who had never seen wildflowers, waterfalls, his best friend’s smile or his own mother’s face! He didn’t have a progressive disease that gradually took away his sight. He wasn’t stricken blind in some freak injury. He had never seen at all in his entire life and for the disciples of Jesus, a life like that posed a deep theological question: Who was to blame? Jesus answered their question in such a cool way, but His answer is fairly easy to completely misunderstand and it is worth digging in a little deeper - especially into the original language exact punctuation of our translations.

When you read John 9:3-4 in English, there seems to be something funky and fairly cutthroat about the response of Jesus about the plight of the blind man. It seems at first that Jesus is telling His disciples that this poor man was subject to an entire life with no sight just so Jesus could swoop in and be the hero of the moment, saving the day. When you read it, it’s as if Jesus needed a stage to show what He could do, so in order to set that up, this poor man had to suffer through an entire life of sightless struggle. Wow. Check it out for yourself:

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of Him who sent me.” (NIV)

Pretty cut and dry, right? Well, not really. Sometimes translations can be incredibly interpretive. In other words, the translators get as close as they can, but sometimes they let their own preferences of meaning come through in the English words they choose. For instance, in this translation, they simply added the words, “this happened so that” into the verse when they translated it. That idea is not in the original Greek at all. Not only that, but the Greek of the New Testament had absolutely no punctuation. In fact, it had no lower-case letters or paragraph indentions or even spaces between words! The entire original Gospel of John manuscripts looked like a 30 page unbroken block of capital letters. John 9:3-4 in our words (without the added stuff) would have looked something like this:

NEITHERTHISMANNORHISPARENTSSINNEDBUTTHATTHEWORKSOFGODMIGHTBEDISPLAYEDINHIMASLONGASITISDAYWEMUSTDOTHEWORKSOFHIMWHOSENTME

Whoa. Okay. So, when we translate that, we have work to do. We not only have to change Greek words to English equivalents, but we have to figure out where to put the punctuation. Greek scholars will tell you that the only way to decide which punctuation to use comes down to context, meaning and which rendering of the verses lines up with our doctrine best. In other words, what do we know about Jesus and which version sounds more like something He would really say? So, if we change the punctuation, what happens to these verses? Well, try this on and see how it reads:

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned. (stop) But that the works of God might be displayed in Him, as long as it is day, we must do the works of Him who sent me.”

Do you see the difference? Do you feel it as you read it? This version of the punctuation isn’t saying a guy had to suffer a sightess life so Jesus could show up all of a sudden and be the hero of the day. This version is saying, “The world is complicated and broken and you can’t just assign blame for suffering, but God wants to get to work in the business of reducing and relieving pain. Let’s join God and see if we can help this poor man.” Now that’s the Jesus I know. He doesn’t make people live through pain so that He can show off. He knows life is hard in a messed up world and His compassionate heart wants to roll up His sleeves and get down to helping the hurting. Let’s join Him.

TWELVE

“Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old).”

Mark 5:42

Today we talked about “the woman who touched” in Mark 5 - about how she pushed through her pain, poverty, public disgrace, private prison and progressive death sentence to carry out a wild plan: put on on a costume, sneak through the crowd on Main Street in Capernaum, get close enough to Jesus to grab the tassel on His prayer shawl - because maybe, just maybe, His power would be contagious like everyone thought her problem was.

And it worked! She was healed and what’s more, Jesus called her his daughter. It was beautiful and filled with hope for all of us who wear our costumes to cover up our own problems.

But wait! There’s something super cool we didn’t get to - a number. Specifically, the number 12.

The story starts with Jairus - a rich, important, well-connected man who asked for Jesus’ help. Turns out he had a daughter at home who was so sick she was dying. He begged Jesus to come to his house and heal her. Jesus said yes and the excited crowd made their way to Jairus’ place.

The problem was that at a certain point, Jesus stopped. He paused. He wanted to know who touched Him. Can you imagine what Jairus was feeling in that moment? If I was the dad of a dying little girl, I would be furious! I would be frustrated, confused and filled with anxiety. He had to be thinking, “Who cares who touched you! We have to GO. We should have already been there! Don’t stop. Don’t pause. Let’s move!” But Jesus did stop and pause and He had a whole public conversation with this woman who had been suffering and was now healed because of her gutsy gamble of grabbing Jesus’ garment.

I know what it’s like to be frustrated with Jesus and His timing. Do you? I know what it’s like to wish Jesus acted faster and more along the lines of your personal desires. But this scene was actually really important for Jairus. I don’t know for sure, but it’s possible that in Jairus’ frustration he could have thought to himself, “Look Jesus, I know you’re single and childless. You’re amazing and all, but you don’t know what it’s like to be a father. You don’t know how it feels to have a sick daughter at home. You don’t know what it’s like to have a twelve year old little girl who you love dying in front of you.”

Mark tells us that after the woman who touched was healed, she told her whole story - about how she had been progressively getting worse - daily dying for twelve years. At the end of her story, Jesus said something to her (in front of Jairus) that He never said to anyone else. Jesus called her His daughter. Whoa. After Jesus went to Jairus’ house and raised his little girl from the dead, Mark slips us this tiny detail we better not miss - she was twelve years old. Jesus was letting Jairus know, “I have a daughter too. You have a 12 year old daughter suffering and at the same time, my daughter has been suffering for 12 years. I know what you’re going through better than you can possibly understand. Hang in there and trust me.” Whatever you’re facing, He gets it. He understands. He knows how it feels and He knows exactly how He’s going to make it all right in the end.