Saying "Yes" to Intrusion -- Luke 8:40-56 • Geoff Bradford

This room together where we've never worshiped before but to be in this place that we've spent a lot of time preparing and praying over and had envisioned such a gathering for a long time. So, it's thank you for being here. It's so good to have all of you here whether you're in person or on the screen but just want to really tell you how much this means to me.

You know, as we step into this I was thinking about this survey. This Swedish psychologist named Olas Vincent—perfect Swedish name, I think—did a survey a number of years ago where he asked American college students and also Swedish graduate students how they would rate themselves compared to other drivers. And this is what he found out. He said American college students think that 88% of them say they are above average compared to other drivers. 73% of Swedish students say they are above average compared to other drivers. And this is kind of consistent with other surveys that have been done.

There was a survey done years ago of college professors that showed that 90% of college professors think they are above average teachers. And of American high school students, they interviewed 800,000 American high school students and asked them about their social skills. And only 1% said they had below average social skills.

See, this is something called illusory superiority or better known as the Lake Wobegon effect. Now, Lake Wobegon was a radio show for a number of years that was about a fictional community in Minnesota and the tagline for this community is "Lake Wobegon, a place where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."

You know, in the same way, I think we all think of ourselves as above average when it comes to compassion. When it comes to ability to love other people and yet, like these driving statistics, it's impossible that 88% of the people are above average. And actually the world would tell the church that maybe that stat is off in our perception. That maybe we actually are not as high quality with regard to compassion and love as we would evaluate ourselves.

So this fall, we've been working through the gospel accounts and all these kind of vignettes, these snapshots of Jesus and his incredible, breathtaking compassion toward people and we're trying to learn from Jesus how do we become people ourselves of compassion.

Two Delays, Two Daughters, Two Defilements

So today, we're going to look at this account and all of my points begin with D. In fact, there are two Ds in every one of them. So, we're going to look this morning first at two delays and then two daughters and then two defilements.

Two Delays

Now, this passage in a lot of ways is all about delays. It's all about interruptions. Jesus is on the way to some place else and this man, Jairus, comes and interrupts him on his way. This man is described as a synagogue ruler, and he does something that no self respecting Jewish man at the time, especially one who's this high and elevated in the community would ever do. He runs. He's desperate. He shows emotion. This was completely out of character for men in Jewish society. You don't do this.

And Jairus comes and yet he is begging Jesus. "Please come. Please come. Look at my daughter. Please come. Heal her." And Jesus agrees and you can picture Jairus in that moment sighing with relief. Jesus is going to come with me. He's coming to my house. He's going to come look at my little girl and yet again, there's an interruption, right?

This unnamed woman comes up in the crowd and touches Jesus and Jesus stops. And not only does Jesus stop, Jesus stops for a while. He has a conversation with this woman. And we know that from this passage that it says the disciples were irritated when Jesus was like, "Hey, who touched me?" They go like, "The whole crowd is around you. What do you mean who touched me?" But I will imagine, I mean, think about this. I mean, if the disciples are irritated, how was Jairus feeling on the inside? I bet he was freaking out on the inside. Like, you don't understand. This is an emergency.

You know, if you think about if these two families came into the emergency room at the same time and Jesus is the doctor on duty and he goes and takes care of the woman first who has a chronic condition that's been going on for twelve years and ignores the girl who's dying. That Jesus, that physician would be sued for medical malpractice. Right? I mean, come on, Jesus. That's chronic. This is emergency. Don't you see? I mean, Jesus seems to be all out of whack here on his priorities.

And he would be definitely sued for medical malpractice because this woman—we could take care of that anytime. We'd come back later. We'll be back in an hour. But Jesus doesn't do that. He's not in a hurry. The disciples must be thinking, what are you doing?

I mean, don't you understand the situation? Hurry or it's gonna be too late. And then, of course, when Jesus will not be hurried, Jairus' worst fears come to be. He gets a message from home. It is too late. She's gone. Can't imagine what that was like for him. And then Jesus turns to him and just says, simply trust me. Hang in. Don't go anywhere.

Every culture has a different sense of time. If you go to Northern Europe and Germany, the trains all run on time. Switzerland, what are they known for? Their watches, right? They're known for things being on time. I've spent a good bit of time in Central America and things happen when they happen. This is more important than whatever is in Central America. No matter what your background is, I think that God's sense of timing always confounds us. I mean, no matter your culture, it always seems like we're people who are on Swiss time and Jesus is on Central American time. He's not in a hurry and it drives me crazy. Anybody else?

In October 1983, a truck loaded with explosives in Beirut, Lebanon drove into a marine compound and exploded. It killed 220 marines and 18 sailors and three soldiers and it was the single deadliest attack, the single deadliest loss of life in one day since Iwo Jima for the armed forces.

My cousin David was stationed there. My first cousin David, a career marine, was stationed in that barracks and for some reason, he just happened to be called out that evening. So he just happened to not be there. This was such a big deal in David's life. That interruption, that disruption, which he was annoyed at at the time, ended up being something that saved his life very likely. He lost a lot of friends in that.

And yet, I don't know about you, but often for me, I can't trace. I can't connect the dots. I can't figure out why. Why this now? Why this interruption? Why this delay? Why is it like this? But I love this scene because it helps me understand what God is up to in his timing. It helps me to see what we learn about the delays of Jesus.

God is not saying in this scene, "I won't be hurried even though I love you." He's not saying that. Rather he's saying, "I won't be hurried because I love you. I won't be hurried because I love you. I know what I'm doing." And if you try to get on German time when I'm on Costa Rican time, you're going to automatically think that I don't love you anymore. You're going to automatically interpret my delays as my abandonment.

It's precisely because of Jesus' delay that both Jairus and the woman get more than they bargained for in a good way in this passage.

So Jairus, what does he get? He was banking on Jesus for the healing of his daughter and instead he saw a resurrection from the dead. Jesus invites him into a test of his faith that doesn't last for fifteen minutes, not just from the time when he asks Jesus until we get back to my house. Jesus actually engages his faith on a level that he had never anticipated was going to happen that day. He gets way more than he bargained for. He is the first person who really sees a resurrection from the dead. This is before Lazarus. This is an incredible moment.

And what about the woman? She's probably a superstitious person, probably one of those people who has a lucky rabbit's foot or a coin in her pocket, sort of thinks, "If I just touch him, something magical will happen." What does she want? She wanted to touch and run. She wanted physical contact and healing and disappear. She wanted to just evaporate into the crowd. But Jesus wouldn't have it. He's not just satisfied with her healing. He wants her publicly declared clean. He wants for all the people to see. He wants to engage her faith. He wants a conversation.

As far as the disciples and Jairus are concerned, this is medical malpractice. Jesus has completely lost his mind. It's completely irrational what he's doing. But look, it's the same for Jesus. Healing and raising from the dead—are either of those a harder thing for Jesus? We see in this passage? Not at all. Both are the same for him.

It seemed to Jairus and the disciples that Jesus is delaying for no good reason, and that may seem like the same for you right now. All of us are walking through, slugging through mud and it's foggy and we can't see where we're going and everything just feels on hold. Anybody feeling like that? I am feeling like that. And yet we can take comfort in this. It's almost as Jesus turns to us and says, "Can you trust me right now?"

Can you trust me in this? Two delays. Two daughters. Two daughters—Jairus' daughter and then the bleeding woman. Let's look at this woman first. What's wrong with her? Well, when it says a discharge of blood, that's a very polite way of saying this is an unending menstrual flow for this woman. It's an unending condition. It meant not only was she sick and bleeding, unable to have children, she was also unclean according to the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, the book of Leviticus.

We looked at this two years ago. We studied through Leviticus in the fall and we walked through the kosher laws about food and clean laws around diseases and people. If you were there at the time, you'll remember this is one of the things I said over and over again: wholeness with a W in Leviticus is connected to holiness with an H. All of Leviticus was given to God's people to communicate things about God's nature. It wasn't just arbitrary. It's meant to communicate things about who God is and how what he wants to do in the lives of his people. He who is holy wants to make his people whole. So the types of food that they ate had to fall into traits that were whole animals, not diminished in some way. Or the laws with regard to diseases—a disease meant that a person, like with leprosy, there's something diminished about that person's body. They're not a whole person. And so because of that, that person was declared unclean. Not as something mean to that person, but actually it's like performance art. It was meant to communicate something about God's character to his people.

Now, the implications for this woman are rough. The implications for this are hard. Twelve years. Twelve years she can't go into the temple. She's declared unclean, which means she can't touch people. She hasn't been hugged in twelve years. People avoid her. She's not even supposed to be in this crowd. She's incurable. We know from Luke, who's a doctor, he described her condition as incurable. She spent all she had and it made her worse. The doctors' healings had made her worse. And she's poor, she's helpless.

It sets up this contrast between Jairus and this woman. Jairus has a daughter who's been 12 years old—she's been sick for the whole time that girl's been alive. Jairus has a name that everybody knows in the village. We don't even know her name. He's a ruler of the synagogue. She's probably not allowed in the synagogue, definitely not allowed in the temple. He was well respected. She is rejected.

And she comes up and touches the fringe of his garment. A rabbi, a Jewish man, would have tassels—zizotz—on the bottom fringe of his garment, which represented the law. So she comes and pulls on one of those. If you ladies have been wearing a dress before and someone steps on your dress, this is what this would have felt like.

And Jesus immediately turns around and says, "Who touched me?" Now you've got to wonder what's going through her head. Oh no. I've been called out. I've been discovered. Is he going to publicly shame me in this moment? Is he going to call attention to me? And she knows what that feels like—to be kind of seen but rejected.

The Greatest Moment in This Passage

And this comes the greatest moment in this passage. And really, the central question of the whole Bible, which is this: What's it like to be exposed in all of your sin and shame in front of a holy God?

And there's this incredible transaction that takes place. Jesus turns to her and says, "Daughter." This is the only person in the whole Bible, the only person in the New Testament in the Gospels that Jesus ever calls a daughter. This is a woman who's given no name, and Jesus names her with this term of intimacy and knowing and love and acceptance and grace. It's the exact opposite of what she must have been expecting.

Jesus calls her out. And we see it in this picture, this passage—we see what a daddy is supposed to do, right? Jairus is a good daddy. He runs to get an appeal on behalf of his daughter. He is so concerned for her. He gives up all his dignity. He's like, "Jesus, you gotta come. Help my little girl." I mean, he's a good daddy. And that's what a daddy is supposed to do.

And we see in this passage though, there are two daughters. Jairus and his little girl, and Jesus and this woman. A lot of you here have daughters. Many more of you are daughters. And I think the father-daughter relationship is one of the most powerful ones. It has the power to set a woman on a trajectory in her life that's filled with confidence and with this sense of being seen and beautified, known, protected. Likewise, a wound in that relationship can be a really hard one that you never really get over.

I used to think the whole Disney princess thing was a dumb idea. I only have boys so I don't really have a whole lot of experience with it, but I thought, oh, this is setting up a generation of young women to have this outward view of beauty. But the more I thought about that in light of this passage, I think it's a wonderful thing because it's a statement of value to call your daughter a princess. It's a statement of incredible worth. This is who you are to me. I value you this much.

The late Kobe Bryant was a famous girl dad. There's an interview done with him a couple years ago where the interviewer was asking him about his daughters. He said, "Just be grateful you've been given that gift because girls are amazing." His third daughter, Bianca, was about a year and a half old at the time. The interviewer asked if he wanted more children. His wife Vanessa really wanted to try again for a boy, but was sort of jokingly concerned that it would be yet another girl. The interviewer said, "Four girls, are you joking? What would you think? How would you feel?" Without hesitation, Kobe said, "I would have five more girls if I could. I'm a girl dad."

When Kobe died this year with one of his daughters, tragically, the internet responded in this wave of honor for him. Not so much about his basketball career but with the hashtag girl dad. He set up his life around being this kind of a father. And I think this woman comes to him trying just to get away. Yet the Father of all fathers looks at her and says, "Daughter"—this is a statement of incredible value. The unwanted one is prized and valued by the God of the universe.

If you have ever wrestled with, "Does God really see me and know me and love me, the mess that I am?"—this is a passage for you to take great comfort in. In your weakness and your sense of yuck about who you are, this kind of grace, this kind of God seeing and calling you, not just calling your name but calling you His own. This is what's poured out for us in this passage. This is what we see over and over in the character of Jesus. This kind of compassion.

There's two kinds of people who stay away from Jesus. Those who are prideful, who say, "I'm too good. I don't need this," and those who think, "I'm totally unworthy." Jesus looks upon us, all of us, where we are and says, "Daughter, son." This is the character of our God.

Two Defilements

Probably the most shocking thing of this passage is what happens when she touches Jesus. This is not what's supposed to happen. The unclean one by touching Jesus is supposed to make Him ceremonially unclean too. That's why she wasn't allowed to go into the synagogue or the temple. This is why she wasn't allowed to be in crowds. This is why nobody could touch her because contact with her makes another person unclean.

If I've got a cold and I sneeze on you and I'm like, "Oh, I'm sorry. I got a cold," you probably got it now. It doesn't mean that my cold goes away—unfortunately, or I would try that a lot. What it means is I've spread my cold to you. In the same way, contact with an unclean object, an unclean person, unclean foods in Leviticus made that person unclean.

And yet what do we see in this? Jesus, the clean one, the holy one of God. When she, the unclean, touches Him, He isn't made unclean but rather she is made clean. It goes the opposite way. It's not supposed to work this way. It goes the other direction, and this is because the ministry of Jesus over and over—what we see throughout Scripture—is Jesus's ministry is one of substitution. Me for you. He takes our uncleanness. All the ways that we are not whole. All the ways that we feel dirty and diminished and shamed and unvalued, unwashed, and unworthy. He takes all of that and gives us His cleanness.

It's a regular occurrence talking to those who've been victims of abuse or those who are abusers. They feel dirty. We feel dirty. It's a common thing: "I need to take a shower." Even when you watch a movie, you're like, "Ugh, I feel ugh. I shouldn't have seen that." Something about washing on the outside that we're trying to do something. And Jesus shows us this is the only way that your soul gets clean—by contact with me. Substitution with me.

The second defilement here: Jesus touches a dead body. That's a no-no as well. You're not supposed to touch the dead body, Jesus. Haven't you read Leviticus? Oh yeah, you wrote it, right? But He touches the little girl. He takes her by the hand.

He doesn't just go in and touch her by the hand, raises her up. See Jesus came to reverse the curse. Not like the Chicago Cubs, but like reverse all of death and defilement and decay. And in his first coming, he brings this to us on a spiritual level. In his second coming, he will do this with the entire universe. You know, what we see in this passage, even what he's done in the lives of so many of you, it's just a preview. It's the trailer for the full movie. This is the dawn before the fullness of day. This is what he's bringing to all of us.

I want to invite you. If you're like, "I know lots of Jesus things but I haven't experienced his healing and transformation in his life," I want to invite you to give your life to him this morning. He is present with us. His arm is not too short to save. He is this gracious to sinners. I'm going to invite you to do that in a moment.

But for you who are Christians, I want you to think about this. Jesus said that the world would know that we are his disciples by the way we love. You know, we live in a world with uniforms. There's all kinds of uniforms. You see a person wearing scrubs and you know that's part of the medical community. You see someone wearing a clerical collar, you're like, "That's a priest." You see somebody walking around your front yard in a blue outfit carrying a bag, you're like, "That's the mail man or woman." You see somebody in a red hat and a big coat and you're like, "That's a fireman." In the same way, the uniform for the people of God is supposed to be how we love.

And yet, I think we're not as good at loving as we often think we are. We've bought into the Lake Wobegon effect. We think we're all above average in this area. Yet I look on the compassion of Jesus and I'm like, "Man, I've got so much to learn about compassion." Don't you?

Three Applications of Compassion

What's this uniform supposed to look like? I just want to give you three applications this morning. What is your uniform, people of God, supposed to look like? What's our compassion that we put on supposed to look like?

First, it looks like this: being interruptible. Being people who are delayable, open to intrusions. You know, intrusions are probably one of the hardest things about being a parent of little kids. Like, constant interruption. You can't go to the bathroom by yourself. That's life with little children. But this being interruptible is one of the qualities that should define us as God's people.

You know, if we're people who are ruled by our watches and our calendars, and there's no space, there's no margin for somebody who needs our help—a friend who needs compassion, a stranger who approaches us—and we're like, "I'm too busy. I'm on my way somewhere else. I can't help you right now." That's a problem. It shows that there's something off on the inside. We're not tracking with Jesus's compassion.

Are you interruptible? Are you delayable? Jesus gets first dibs. That's what it means for him to be our Lord. He gets first dibs on my iCal, on my schedule, on my days off. He gets dibs on that. You know, Jesus will send you opportunities this week to love. Will you see them?

Second application: love looks like compassion looks like seeing people who are on the fringe, who are on the margins. You know, we don't know this woman's name and I think that's really not surprising in the story. I bet a lot of people didn't know her name. I bet a lot of people in that town just knew her by her condition. She was that unclean woman.

Do we see people who are on the fringe? You know, the reality is we see—if you just operate your normal life, going to the gas station, going to the grocery store—you see people all the time that you don't see. What I mean by that is, the people who kind of pass out of the periphery because they're not that important. The New Testament writer James really called out the church for a sin of partiality—of having people that were worthy of our time and attention and people who weren't.

Who are you seeing? Do you see these people that are in front of you all the time? See, those who know the compassion of Jesus—this is part of our uniform—is seeing those on the fringe. Learning names. Engaging.

And finally, love looks like going to the untouchables. You know, you get dirty when you love. Love is messy. Compassion requires something from you. It's going to hit your wallet and your schedule and your mental space. It's just going to be inconvenient.

You know, are we people who are willing to go to the untouchables? Let me close with this.

One of my favorite pictures of compassion in the past year in modern movies is from the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a fictionalized picture of the life of Mister Rogers. Tom Hanks stars as Fred Rogers. If you don't know who Fred Rogers is, he ran a kids show that was on throughout my childhood from the 60s up to the 80s called Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

In this movie, Fred Rogers is being approached for an interview by a journalist named Lloyd Vogel. Lloyd is famous for his ability to pick people apart in his journalism—he's ruthless in finding the dirt in people's lives. His editor sends Lloyd to interview Fred Rogers hoping that being around somebody who's kind will make Lloyd a better person.

The interaction between Fred Rogers and Lloyd Vogel is interesting. When Lloyd shows up to interview Fred Rogers, Fred Rogers doesn't seem all that interested in being interviewed. He's not interested in the publicity or the story. Interestingly, he's more interested in knowing Lloyd. He wants a friendship with him.

Throughout the movie, we get to know more about Lloyd. We realize he has a broken family. He goes to his sister's wedding, where he encounters his father who's been estranged from the family since they were kids. Lloyd has all this anger, and he actually gets into a fist fight with his dad at the reception of his sister's wedding. He shows up for an interview with Fred Rogers with a black eye.

Mr. Rogers asks, "How'd you get that? Where did that come from?" He pursues the question until finally Lloyd tells him what happened. Rogers shows this incredible interest in Lloyd—"What's going on with you?"

The pivotal scene of this movie finds out that Lloyd's dad is dying. Fred Rogers wants to go with Lloyd to see his father. He offers to go with him and walks into the bedside. Lloyd is still angry, still bitter. Fred Rogers interacts with this father in a way that's filled with such compassion that it forces Lloyd to look at his dad really for the first time as a person. It forces him to see what for him has been an untouchable—a man on the fringe who's been unforgivable. And it kind of blows up his world.

Brothers and sisters, this is what compassion does. Compassion changes the world. It flips relationships upside down. It transforms enemies into people who can be friends. It restores families. It restores us.

Go and do likewise. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.