Paradoxes and Fools

For about a year now, I've been carefully and slowly reading through the Gospels. Those first four books of the New Testament draw me in like a moth to flame.

It wasn't always like this for me, though. At some point during the last few years, something has shifted in the way I see and understand Jesus. It's felt like getting a clearer, sharper lens. It really started during the years I was writing my dissertation which focused on the need for corporate lament in Christian worship. As part of that project I researched and wrote about Jesus' use of the Psalms of lament in his prayers. I started to see that he was different from how I'd perceived him, and certainly different from how he had been presented to me throughout my life as a Christian. I remember the dissonance I felt in my heart and head as I tried to reconcile the picture of Jesus I had versus the picture of him that started to surface in his prayers, his dialogue with other people, and the way he engaged the religious elite of his day. Although it's a picture I struggle to describe, I see it with such certainty that it's been nothing short of life changing.

This morning, my pastor preached around the stories from Mark chapter 5, and there I was again, astonished by Jesus.

Photo by Stephen Crowley on Unsplash

When the chapter opens, Jesus has just crossed back over the sea from the country of the Gerasenes where he had healed the man who was "filled with an unclean spirit," and lived in the tombs. What a wretched existence he must have lived, cutting himself, crying out, begging to be free. Jesus sent the legion of spirits into a herd of pigs, who rushed headlong into the sea. The people who witnessed it couldn't handle it.

Jesus seems to have that effect, doesn't he? He's so off the beaten path that we often find it hard to take him for what he is, to take what he does for what it is, and to really see into all the layers of why he does what he does. It's remarkable. Maybe that's why we shave off his edges sometimes so he'll fit in our proverbial box?

After Jesus freed the man in the tombs, he got back in the boat and headed back across the sea. As soon as Jesus disembarked, he was mobbed by people clamoring to see him, hear him, touch him, be healed by him. Among the crowd was Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue.

Think about that for a minute: Jairus was a ruler of the synagogue. I've read that line a few hundred times in my life, and have heard sermons preached around it a few hundred more. If there's one thing I've noticed while reading through the Gospels, it's that the religious elite don't take too kindly to Jesus. Think about it: Jesus is continuously upbraiding them for their overly-pious ways, their legalism, their arrogance. I don't know anything about Jairus, but how this guy mustered the courage to approach a man proclaiming himself as messiah is beyond my ability to understand. The level of risk was astronomically high. Jairus had undoubtedly heard all the rumors of healings and miracles performed by Jesus, and so his heart took a gigantic leap of faith fueled by fear for his daughter's life.

Jesus could have told Jairus to get lost. After all, Jairus and company had ridiculed Jesus, tried to back him into corner after corner by reciting religious laws and seeing if he would answer wrong, or break them. Who knows? Maybe he stood, stone in hand, ready to pass judgment on the woman caught in adultery whom Jesus pardoned. No one knows for sure what Jairus believed about Jesus, only that he really, really needed him in that moment.

But Jesus is "classic Jesus" here: "And he went with him." That is all that Mark records of Jesus' response. See what I mean? Jesus is not like us, folks.

While on the way to Jairus' home, one of my favorite stories in Scripture occurs. Jesus was walking with Jairus in the middle of a large crowd, when suddenly he cried out, "Who touched my garments?" Again, it's simply astonishing. Jesus was never in a hurry, never flustered, never, ever flattered by the attentions of the elite - in this case, Jairus. He turned in the crowd to find a wounded, wasted woman who had, over the course of twelve long years, spent all of her money trying to find a cure for a bleeding issue that tormented her. She was unclean, untouchable, marginalized from a society that saw blood as something abhorrent. The fact that she waded into that crowd is astounding enough, but that she had the audacity to touch someone, well, that leaves me with tears in my eyes.

One of my mentors, James Littles, once pointed out that Jesus could have just healed her, said nothing, and moved on. He really could have. But as Dr. Littles taught, Jesus always heals in layers because he knows our woundedness is never one-dimensional. When we are hurting physically, we often hurt mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. Before Jesus even addressed her physical needs, Dr. Littles noted, he addressed her deeper need of relational healing.

He called her daughter.

 “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” (v. 34)

Then, he healed her physically, mentally, and emotionally. Holistically, layer after layer.

I love that about Jesus.

On to Jairus' house they continued. Mark documents that word had come that Jairus' daughter had died, to which Jesus replied, "The child is not dead, but only sleeping." And the crowd laughed. Laughed. But Jesus was not deterred, and after putting everyone out of the house except his few disciples and the child's parents, he took her by the hand and asked her to rise up. That's it. Oh, and he told her family to give her something to eat, again, seeing all the layers of need as only he could.

Paradoxes and Fools

As I've been reading through the Gospels, I've realized what a paradox the life of Jesus really was. His teachings, his actions, his anger, his weeping, his insistence that the news of his miracles not be spread. The way he saw through people's motives, their fear that caused them to become so abrasive, cynical and defensive. I've also been thinking a lot about the various posts on social media I run across that smell strongly of the religious elitism and legalism Jesus so often upbraided, and quite frankly, got angry about. Arguments about whether women can preach in church - in front of men. Gasp. Arguments over something called "Christic manhood" which, for the life of me, I can't find a stitch of a word about in Scripture. Then there are those who feel they have to come out against statements or philosophies around critical race theory, which scrambles my brain in 2.7 seconds. I wonder if even the most learned philosophers really understand the complexity of that theory. People are so afraid of being associated with some things that they throw out the baby, bathwater, and all for fear of being tainted or looking sympathetic. So caught up in legalism and fundamentalism, some folks would rather cut off entire groups of people rather than to stoop down and risk getting the blood of uncleanness on their perfectly pressed button-down shirt. When did we become so threatened that we felt we had to circle the wagons around our creeds to the exclusion of the hurting? Jesus never did that. Never.

I'm not here to argue politics, or the particulars of denominational beliefs. What I will argue is that when I carefully read how Jesus lived and moved amongst the people of his day, I find my heart drawn to repentance over the many years during which I circled my own wagons, something I now realize I did largely out of fear. Even more largely, it was something I did because in my heart of hearts, I didn't really understand what it meant to call myself a Christian, one who had heard the Good News of the Gospel.

Jesus help me. Jesus, teach my heart to know who you really are, to see the way you loved people, healed people, called out and saw through legalism that kills instead of gives life. Help my heart to do that, too, without fear, but with faith, hope, love.

I'll close with the lyrics Michael Card's song,"God's Own Fool," which so perfectly capture this marvelous, indescribable paradox we know as Jesus:

Seems I've imagined Him all of my life

As the wisest of all of mankind

But if God's Holy wisdom is foolish to men

He must have seemed out of His mind

For even His family said He was mad

And the priests said a demon's to blame

But God in the form of this angry young man

Could not have seemed perfectly sane

When we in our foolishness thought we were wise

He played the fool and He opened our eyes

When we in our weakness believed we were strong

He became helpless to show we were wrong

And so we follow God's own fool

For only the foolish can tell-

Believe the unbelievable

And come be a fool as well

So come lose your life for a carpenter's son

For a madman who died for a dream

And you'll have the faith His first followers had

And you'll feel the weight of the beam

So surrender the hunger to say you must know

Have the courage to say I believe

For the power of paradox opens your eyes

And blinds those who say they can see

So we follow God's own Fool

For only the foolish can tell

Believe the unbelievable,

And come be a fool as well

Michael Card, "God's Own Fool," Birdwing MusicMole End Music, Capitol CMG Publishing, 1985.