MPC, 17th September 2000.Mark 5:21-43 & 7:1-23 - Clean and Green
Maurie Cropper MPC, 17th September 2000.
Well, in case you hadn't noticed the GREEN GAMES have begun!
Some of our friends and family in Sydney, have visited the Olympic site over the past few months. Special tours were being run almost every day.
I decided to check out their web site the other day. The Olympic website.
Everything you want to know about the Green Games is there.
The Green venues are listed. The energy conserving stadiums with their natural ventilation.The oversized lift shafts, stairwells and escalators to draw in cool air and let the warm air get out. Gas co-generation engines for the stadium's power - with no greenhouse gases.
Air conditioning at the Aquatic Centre has been designed to cool, now get this, only the air around the spectators, and not the air around the pool - meaning less energy to cool the venue and less energy to heat the pool.
And it's the same everywhere else, like the cycling SuperDome!
Have you heard about the basement of SOCOG Headquarters. There's 400,000 little volunteers working [their guts out] hard down there - all in the name of the Green Games! And these one's are working 24 hours a day. And talking about not wasting space. SOCOG's got them jammed into only 1 1/2 square metres.
How do they do it? They're worms. Chewing away at the food waste from the staff canteen.
As part of their commitment to a Green Games, they're recycling everything they can. Even the disposable cups and plates and cutlery can be recycled into different coloured waste bins, or composted.
Everyone, from athletes to spectators is encouraged to be green.
Even the Olympic Torch has to meet Green standards. Everything about it, from the fuel, to the material that makes up the torch, all had to be recyclable.
Everything to do with the games had to embody the Green principles of the Games.
To be 'Green' is to be 'clean'. Its the GREEN - CLEAN SHOW.
Everything had to be cleaned up. Green is clean. Clean is green. Sydney wanted to shine on the world stage.
SOCOG's General Manager of Public Relations and Community Relations, said: "...that we have to put our best face to welcome the world".
But maybe the CLEAN APPEARANCE can be covering up what's under the surface. We have to put on our best face, but maybe only some of our faces were considered to be our 'best faces'. Some faces weren't considered to fit the 'green clean category'.
Did you read the article a couple of weeks ago about the guy, he was sleeping rough on the streets... and he was given a bus ticket by someone involved in preparing Sydney for the Olympics. A bus ticket OUT OF SYDNEY, to Brisbane.
And he said that heaps of people, street people, people who didn't quite fit the 'Green - Clean' image that the world needed see of Australia, they were given free bus tickets to anywhere they wanted; a destination of their choice; as long as it was away from Sydney. Get them out. Because they're undesirable; untouchable; UNCLEAN.
How about that? Clean up the surface, and you can fool anyone into believing that a place is clean. And that the only people you'll find there are clean people.
In fact, the only people who matter are clean people.
So what's changed? Back when Jesus was walking the shores of Lake Galilee people with illnesses, people with leprosy, people with unclean spirits, people with congenital diseases, the desperate, the lonely, the poor - they were shunned, the were shoved aside if a dignitary or someone important came by. They were considered irrelevant; they were UNTOUCHABLES. They were UNCLEAN.
But not to Jesus.
In the Bible passage we're looking at, there are two people who fit the category of UNCLEAN. Let's take a look.
Picking it up at v. 21, ....Jesus and his disciples have just crossed over the lake when a large crowd gathers around. And out from the crowd comes one of the synagogue rulers named Jairus. His 12 year old daughter, she's really sick; near death; and Jairus falls at Jesus' feet and pleads with him to come and put his hands on his daughter ...so that she will get well and live!
Mark doesn't report any hesitation on Jesus's part. They just go! And the crowd with him. Pressing hard against him, they all head for the house. You can just imagine it. Everyone keen to see what's going to happen next. No-one wanting to miss out on what Jesus might do. A bit of pushing and shoving. Jostling for the best view. But in the middle of the crowd, someone who's desperate to get close for a different reason. There's a hand, reaching out. Trying to touch.
And Jesus turns around and says WHO TOUCHED ME? No wonder, when Jesus asks the question the disciples are perplexed. Verse 31 "You see the people crowding against you, how can you ask: 'Who touched me?"
But we're told by Mark that something remarkable has happened.
Back up a bit and read from v. 24. The second part of the verse.
"..A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 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." Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
There's the hand in the crowd. A woman who's been bleeding for 12 years; a woman who nobody could help. Desperate to touch Jesus. And she does. And just a touch of Jesus clothes and she's healed. And yet lots of people were touching his clothes. Mark goes on to tell us what Jesus said to her, it's there in v.34.
"Daughter, your faith has healed you. ......"
Her faith in Jesus. Confidence that JESUS HAD THE AUTHORITY to sort things out. Her willingness to trust that Jesus could heal her, meant that she was healed. What's Jesus doing making an issue out of this women, who by Jewish law was marked out as UNCLEAN? And especially with the Pharisees and teachers of law watching on, because they certainly would have known the rules.
Here it is from Leviticus 15:25. Describes this woman EXACTLY.
"When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period or a discharge that continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge."
And it goes on to say that anything she sits on will be unclean, and whoever touches anything she has touched will be unclean, ...and must wash their clothes and bath, and EVEN THEN they'll be considered unclean till evening.
It's the LAW. She's unclean. Don't touch her. Don't let her touch YOU. Don't even let her touch your CLOTHES. Or you'll be unclean as well. And she reaches out through the crowd; and touches the hem of his robe. And somehow Jesus knows. And you know, what should have happened is he should have gone off and washed himself; stuck his clothes in the washing machine and waited until evening before he mixed with anyone else. BUT HE DIDN'T!! And somehow, it's just the opposite. By TOUCHING JESUS - she's made CLEAN.
It's at this point some men came from Jairus's house with a message.
Pick it up at v35. "While Jesus was still speaking some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. Your daughter is dead, they said. Why bother the teacher any more? Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, Don't be afraid; just believe.
Mark goes on to say that Jesus dismisses the crowd; "Go Home." And goes to the house with Jairus and some of the disciples; and there's a heap of people wailing and carrying on at the door.
To which Jesus' response is in v.39. "He went in and said to them, Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead, but asleep. But they laughed at him. Crazy. When you're DEAD you're DEAD. And they've seen death enough times to know. She's DEAD. Gone. Might have been worth having Jesus come if he'd got there sooner. But this is too late.
But Jesus goes IN. As they laugh at the fool who thinks this girl's just asleep without even having seen her. And hang on a minute. What's he think he's going to do. He goes in the room; he takes her hand; he says, LITTLE GIRL, GET UP. And at that point we need to notice something AGAIN. That DEATH is the ultimate UNCLEANNESS.
The Old Testament again. Israel's RULES. Numbers 19:11-13. Listen to this:
"Whoever touches the dead body of anyone will be unclean for seven days. He must purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then he will be clean. But if he does not purify himself on the third and seventh days, he will not be clean. Whoever touches the dead body of anyone and fails to purify himself defiles the Lord's tabernacle. That person must be cut off from Israel. Because the water of cleansing has not been sprinkled on him, he is unclean; his uncleanness remains on him".
And Jesus REACHES OUT AND TAKES HER BY THE HAND. Doesn't he realise he's going to be UNCLEAN?
And yet instead of that, the unthinkable happens. And the dead body wakes up again. And this 12 year old girl gets up and starts walking around. Just a touch from Jesus is all it takes.
And for the first time in history, instead of the uncleanness spreading from the unclean to the clean, it's like Jesus is making things CLEAN where-ever he puts his hand.
WHAT ABOUT US?
Well, the question is, what's this stuff got to do with us? Because more often than not, these days the sad truth is dead children aren't normally raised - no matter how much you might want it. It needed a TOUCH from Jesus.
The REAL LINK to the mission of Jesus comes in the issue we've been thinking about. The one who comes to make the UNCLEAN CLEAN.
And in spite of the fact we're not tied up with the Old Testament laws of Israel and we don't have to think the way they did about what's unclean and what's clean, Jesus says something over the page in Mark 7 that links right to you and me.
Because it's not the UNCLEAN STUFF on the outside of a person that makes them UNCLEAN. It's what's on the inside that makes a person UNCLEAN. And none of us have a way of escaping that!!
And in the end it's the INSIDE ISSUE that's of interest to Jesus, because until that's cleaned up you'll get nowhere. And the Old Testament laws about what was clean and what wasn't, they were always meant to be a POINTER to something deeper. What are you like on the INSIDE?
Turn over to chapter 7. Verse1, where Jesus is under scrutiny again.
"The pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were UNCLEAN, that is unwashed".
Everything you eat, wash your hands. That's the rules. Come home from the market place, from shopping down at Brookside, and you've got to go through a very special 'ceremonial washing'. And having watched the disciples do the 'wrong thing', the Pharisees and the teachers of the law put the challenge to Jesus.
v.5 "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with UNCLEAN hands."
And Jesus says to them, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you HYPOCRITES; as it is written: 'These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship in vain; their teachings are BUT RULES taught by men".
Hey, could you imagine being there, being in the crowd listening to Jesus reprimanding the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. And then he says to everyone, v. 14, he says it's not the OUTSIDE STUFF THAT COUNTS. It's the INSIDE. He says, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a man can make him UNCLEAN by going into him. RATHER, it is what comes out of a man that makes him UNCLEAN".
The disciples ask Jesus to what he means. And in frustration he says:
v.18 "Are you so dull? Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him UNCLEAN? For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body".
They just don't get it do they? And neither do so many people today, including lots of Christians! They frown on people for smoking cigarettes, or drinking alcohol. These things are health issues! Not spiritual issues!
What Jesus wants us to understand is that the things that come out of our hearts, the things that motivate us, the things that are at the core of our sinful being, the rotten things that drive us, ...come from an UNCLEAN heart, ...they're the things that make us UNCLEAN. And so we understand completely what he's on about, Jesus lists these rotten things off.
v. 20 "What comes out of a man is what makes him UNCLEAN. For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man UNCLEAN". All that stuff comes UP FROM THE INSIDE.
And the question is, where can you get CLEAN from stuff like that? What does it take to be clean? First of all, acknowledge your uncleanness; and the reach out to the one we've just seen who came to MAKE THE UNCLEAN CLEAN.
You might find that hard to do. For some people, other things can get in the road of making that shift for Jesus. Or maybe you don't think there's a problem.
But for some people, there's an awareness that there is just so much stuff in their lives that they don't see that it's possible for anything or anyone to clean up the dirty, filthy, black mess - their life is just a gigantic black hole.
Very sad if you think there's NOBODY WHO CAN DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Very sad if you're thinking there's NOBODY WHO CAN MAKE YOU CLEAN. Even sadder if you just want to keep on saying, "I'm the king of my life. And no one is going to tell me what to do, even if it is for my benefit." Or if you're saying, "I won't accept, ...that anyone might have the answers, even when I have no more answers, ...no more clues, no more strength. I'm not even going to accept God's offer of help."
A couple of days before my father died, I visited him in hospital. I was nervous. But I told him about Jesus, and my hope that he'd accept him to be his King, and his Saviour and his Friend. But my dad said no. He said, "It's too late. There's NO ONE big enough to help someone like me. Especially not YOUR GOD." The way he saw it, the blackness of his life was just too much for anyone to handle. Unshiftable stains. That no-one could help.
My father was not only wrong in his thinking, he was wrong about God. There was an angry arrogance about my father's last words, an arrogance that got in the road of him experiencing here on earth, what it could have been to be cleansed by Jesus.
There's a GREAT OFFER here in this picture of Jesus. The one who makes the UNCLEAN CLEAN. Even the real uncleanness - that's right there on the INSIDE where nobody can see it. But where it really counts. The CLEAN ONE - the one to reach out to if you want to really deal with what's on the INSIDE.