Walls

Delivered 6-30-2024 at St. Andrew Lutheran Church I Poplar Bluff, MO

Lamentations 3:22-33; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43

Our Gospel today is an excellent example of a writing technique known as a “Markan sandwich.” Mark uses this technique a lot in his Gospel. He will start one story, then in the middle of that story stop and tell another story, then go back and finish the first story. It’s a very effective technique, and the two stories are always thematically related, and the inner story parallels the meaning of the outer story.

In this case, the “bread,” or outer story is that of a synagogue leader, Jairus, coming to Jesus and asking him to save his daughter’s life. The “meat”, the inner story that illuminates everything, is the story of a woman with an “issue of blood,” a hemorrhage that simply will not stop.

The easy interpretation of this passage is simply two acts of miraculous healing. And that’s not wrong. But looking a bit deeper, we run into the idea of ritual impurity. This was a real thing in the Israelite world. Now, ritual impurity was not the same as sin. It was just impurity. There were a bunch of things you could do that would make you ritually impure that didn’t rise to the level of sin. And there were certain things you couldn’t do if you were ritually impure: go into the Temple, for instance. If you did one of these things that were forbidden while you were impure, then it became a sin. And if you were impure, people who touched you or people you touched would also become impure. Impurity was considered contagious.

A menstruating woman was considered impure. And a dead person…well, that was the biggest impurity of all.

But, in general, ritual purity wasn’t something that needed to stop life in its tracks. In general, it was easily fixed: A sacrifice, some prayers, maybe a waiting period, and you were good to go. No sweat. Ritual impurity was just part of life. You dealt with it and moved on. No big deal.

But some forms of impurity couldn’t be easily fixed. When a woman never stopped bleeding, she could never break out of that impurity. She was perpetually impure. No worshipping at the temple. If you touched the ones you loved you made them impure, and then they had to deal with it. What a lonely, lonely way to live.

And when somebody is dead, they can never be ritually pure again. And the people that love you can never be with you again.

So here we have two stories of Jesus dealing with impurities that can’t be fixed. Impurities that kept people from being with the ones they loved. Impurities that created walls between the woman, and Jairus’ daughter, and others. Walls they couldn’t break through.

But Jesus…Jesus didn’t seem bothered by these barriers. He blasted right through them. He wasn’t concerned about being made impure. Some commentators say that Jesus was trying to tear down the impurity system, but I have doubts. Jesus was an observant Jew. I think he was okay with the impurity system, but he also recognized when it just couldn’t work for people. And he could fix it. He could break the walls separating those who had been impure. He could make them pure again.

And this is what Jesus still does. He breaks through walls. He breaks through the barriers that keep people apart. He’ll break the walls that keep us from being the human beings he wants us to be, if we let him.

We modern Westerners don’t have any system of impurity per se, but we certainly have plenty of substitutes built into our society. People who have been convicted felons are discriminated against even after they have completed their sentences. We don’t like to hang out with people who aren’t like us – who don’t look like us, who don’t think like us, don’t worship like us, don’t love like us. And our society tells us that we are right to do that. That we need to protect ourselves.

Yes, we humans a very, very good at building walls. Walls of class, walls of nationality, walls of ethnic identity, walls of gender identity, walls of religious identity. But there’s really only one reason to build a wall: because we’re afraid of something. We’re afraid of what’s on the other side of that wall.  And that’s a problem, because, like Jesus, we should be breaking down walls, not building them. We can’t be fully human in the way Jesus was fully human if we’re forever separating ourselves from others with walls.

Instead of building walls, we should be breaking them down every single day. Breaking down the walls of division. Breaking down the walls of hate. Breaking down the walls of fear. Breaking down the walls that make us less than God wants us to be.

In this coming week, let’s look around us at the walls WE put up to keep ourselves safe. How do we distance ourselves from others? What “impurities” do we see in others that make us want to put up barriers between us. What is in others that we are afraid of, that makes us want to protect ourselves? And once we see the walls, let’s see what we can do to tear them down.

Because that’s what Jesus would do.

Amen.