“Lower Class” Faith
various passages
Hope. We live
in a time and place where it’s easy to hope.
We have opportunities available, we have rags to riches stories here and
there. Good things can happen.
But I’d like you to consider the world of those who
have no hope. The “untouchables” of the
Hindu caste system, the AIDS infected in Africa, the little girls in brothels
in Southeast Asia in the sex trafficking world.
What is it to have no rights, no power, no cure, no
advocate, no hope? You live in a prison
of poverty, abuse and death.
In the Gospel of Mark, there are a group of character
who were these kind of people—people without hope. They were what Red (in Shawshank) was talking about. There’s no hope. We are the people without rights or power, without a future,
without hope. We are the condemned.
But the interesting thing is that these 13 characters
are the ones who find Jesus, and healing and hope. They are the ones who believe. They are (in a sense) the heroes of the book
(aside from Jesus).
We want to look at these heroes of faith and learn,
because in the Kingdom of God, things are not always what you might
expect. The Bible can turn our
world/understanding upside down.
Unusual
Heroes
The heroes were not the educated, white collar
religious leaders.
The heroes were from the bottom of society. They were the broken and beaten up.
1.
a
demon-possessed man (1:21-28)
2.
a woman with
a fever (1:29-31)
3.
a leper
(1:40-45)
4.
a paralytic
(2:1-10)
5.
a man with a
shriveled hand (3:1-6)
6.
a
demon-possessed man (5:1-20)
7.
Jairus, the
synagogue ruler who’s daughter was dying (5:21-43)
8.
a woman who
had been bleeding 12 years (5:24-34)
9.
a
Syrophoenician woman with a demon-possessed daughter (7:24-30)
10.
a deaf and
mute man (7:31-37)
11.
a blind man
(8:22-26)
12.
a father of a
demon-possessed son (9:14-29)
13.
Bartimaeus,
the blind man (10:46-52)
4 demon possessed, 2 blind, leper, paralytic, deaf
& mute
Gentiles, women, children
they are unnamed, except for two (Jairus and
Bartimaeus)
they were the weak, powerless, unwanted, suffering of
society
only one was “acceptable” or “respectable” person was
Jairus, the synagogue ruler
Forsaken,
Hopeless and Desperate
Rejects of Judaism:
They were unclean (demon possessed, hemorrhaging, leper); they were not
allowed in the community, let alone in the Temple. Gentiles, excluded.
Women and children were not valued.
Blind or crippled beggars were not valued.
There were no social programs for the blind and
crippled; the Romans didn’t have food stamps or Social Security programs, handicapped
accessible buildings or parking spaces.
They were tossed away as worthless.
Hopeless, helpless.
They lived in a world where they were unfit, unacceptable, unwanted,
even by God (it seemed). They were
rejects in Judaism.
I remember when the AIDS scare first hit. People were afraid of water fountains,
public phones, and most of all, public toilet seats. You were afraid that someone who had AIDS might cough or sneeze
on you, you were afraid they might hug or touch you.
And if you had AIDS, you became an untouchable. You were assumed to be immoral because AIDS
was seen as a gay disease.
That’s
the world these 13 people lived in. They
were powerless, distained, discarded.
I’d like us to consider the mindset of the poor
versus the mindset of the middle/upper class.
The middle/upper class mindset is, we have
opportunities, resources, abilities. If
there’s a problem, do something about it.
Try harder, do more.
But the mindset of the poor, the mindset of those who
do not have resources or opportunity is not, “I need to try harder.” They don’t feel empowered. They feel helpless. Telling a leper, a paralytic, a demon-possessed
guy, “Well look, you need to have a can-do attitude. Let’s try harder” would be absurd if not cruel.
In college
I had the opportunity to go to Kenya on a mission trip. I remember once when we were out visiting
different villages, we came to one village where the local factory had closed
down. One man asked, The factory is
closed, most of the village has no job, no income. What can your God do for us?
There
was this helplessness, hopelessness.
There were no opportunities, resources—there was no one to turn to. The mindset of the poor is not, “I’ll try
harder.” The mindset of the poor is, I
need a rescuer.
As I was studying these 13
stories, there were a number of commonalities.
Look at this:
A
man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are
willing, you can make me clean.” (1:40)
Seeing
Jesus, [Jairus] fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, “My
little daughter is dying.” (5:22-23)
There
some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged
him to place his hand on the man. (7:32)
[Some]
people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. (8:22)
[The Syrophoenician woman] begged Jesus
to drive the demon out of her daughter. (7:26)
Mothers, I’d like you to imagine. Your little girl is being tormented. You feel so helpless, so powerless, so
desperate. You believe Jesus can help
you little girl. In fact, you don’t
think there’s any other hope. “Even
dogs get crumbs!!”
Middle/upper class people
don’t beg. They do something.
The poor, they know how to beg. They’re weak and desperate. They knew they couldn’t solve their own
problems. And these are the heroes of
faith in the Gospel of Mark.
Jesus is for those who know they cannot save
themselves.
The healthy, religious, strong didn’t seek Jesus. It was the rejected, dying, unclean, etc.
“It is not
the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the
righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)
§
Jesus was a
revolutionary, because he was saying, God isn’t for the elite, the privileged,
the wealthy or powerful. God is for
the weak, the sick, the poor. Jesus
offered hope to the hopeless.
§
And for those of us who
want to know Jesus, the ironic lesson we learn, is that we need to learn how
to be poor, weak, helpless. We do
not come to God as the spiritual middle-class.
We come as weak and broken. We
need to learn how to abandon our middle-class mindset and think/see things like
a beggar.
Jesus told a story (Lk 18:9-14) about two people who
went to church to pray. One was a very
religious man, and he prayed, “Lord I thank you that I’m not like other men—racists,
sex offenders, corrupt businessmen—or even like that drug dealer. I fast weekly, I give generously to the
church.”
The drug dealer sat in the back with his head bowed
low. He beat his breast and prayed,
“God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Then Jesus said, if you want to get right with God,
pray like the drug dealer.
Faith
They didn’t have power, wealth, status. They didn’t have anything, but they had
faith. They are celebrated for their
faith. But what is this faith?
Got-to-get-to-Jesus Faith
Jesus has come to town and a crowd has gathered
around. He speaks in someone’s home and
there are so many people that these were spilling out the door. Some friends brought their paralytic friend
and were determined to get him to Jesus.
Since
they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in
the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the
paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus
saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are
forgiven.” (Mark 2:4-5)
Jesus is on his way to healing dying little girl. There are crowds of people pressing in
around Jesus, and this hemorrhaging woman fights her way in.
When
she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his
cloak, because she thought, “If I just
touch his clothes, I will be healed.”. . .
He
said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be
freed from your suffering.” (Mark 5:27, 28, 34)
Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is going to pass by the
road, and so he starts shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The people around him tell him to shut up,
but he cries out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
“Go,”
said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his
sight and followed Jesus along the road. (Mark 10:52)
“Got to get to Jesus” faith. They did a lot of things wrong (ripping open roofs), had bad
theology (“if I only touch his clothes”).
But they had one thing right: Jesus.
They were determined, desperate to get to Jesus. They did everything they could. Jesus saw that determination and
desperateness and said, “Your faith has healed you.”
Fernando Ortega, a Christian singer, has a really
simple song
In the morning when I rise (3x)
Give me Jesus
And when I am alone (3x)
Give me Jesus
When I come to die (3x)
Give me Jesus
Give me Jesus, give me Jesus
You can have all this world, give me Jesus
Who-you-gonna-call Faith
The critical piece here is not so much the degree of
your faith or the theological sophistication of your faith. The key is having the right object of their
faith: whom are they trusting? Whom are
they calling on? Who you gonna
call? [Ghostbusters
picture?]
Jairus, despite his position as a synagogue ruler,
doesn’t turn to Judaism, to other leaders of the synagogue. When his daughter was dying, he turned to
Jesus.
Imagine you were one of the passengers on the Titanic [picture?].
Well the ship sinks and those of us who aren’t already killed are
treading the ice cold water for our very lives. Suppose a rescue boat arrives, says the nearest shore is 100
miles away and offers you a line to pull you in.
You say, that’s okay, I’m a swimmer, as a
matter of fact, I’m on the swim team on campus. I’m in great shape, so if you’ll just point me to the closest
shore, I’ll just swim there myself.
That’s okay, I’m Donald Trump; I have 100’s of
billions of dollars. I could give
billion dollar donations, I could buy this ocean if I wanted to.
That’s okay, I’m a non violent activist for the
plight of the oppressed philanthropist.
I’ve won the Nobel Peace prize and have made the world a better
place. I believe I’m a good person, and
somehow my goodness will save me.
But suppose there is this little girl, barely
keep his head above the water. You toss
her a line, and she grabs it.
Well all have some kind of faith, we’re all
trusting something. You’re trusting
your physical strength, or your financial resources, or your “good deeds,” or
your could trust the rescuers tossing you the line. The point is the object of your trust. You have to put your trust in the right thing/person.
Who you gonna call?
The middle class spiritual person relies on himself (his abilities, his
power, his morality). The poor
spiritual person says, “I need Jesus.
God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Give me Jesus.”
Jesus was a revolutionary, because he was saying, God
isn’t for the elite, the privileged, the wealthy or powerful. God is for the weak, the sick, the poor. Jesus offered hope to the hopeless.
And for those of us who want to know Jesus, the ironic
lesson we learn, is that we need to learn how to be poor, weak, helpless. We need to abandon a middle/upper class
mentality and learn how to be weak and desperate, to learn how to beg. Those with privilege, education, power
generally missed him.
We do not come to God as the spiritually
middle-classed. We come as weak and
broken.
The Gospel has a way of
turning things upside down.