Would you shout for Jesus?

2^nd Week OT: Hebrews 7.25-8.6 and Mark 3.7-12
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, University of Dallas

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Would you be one of those pressing Jesus on the lakeshore? Would you be one of those clamoring to touch him, to have him glance at you, speak to you? Could you throw yourself into the mob and ride the rushing bodies to Christ? I think most of us would say that we wouldn’t be part of an adoring herd chasing Jesus all over creation. We wouldn’t toss our dignity and decorum into the wind so easily and become squealing groupies! But then again, we have 21^st century medical science—surgeries, MRI’s, CAT scans, medicines, bone replacements, organ transplants—we have the advances of technology and social psychology to comfort our herd-fears, our pack anxieties. However, we still fear death. We still grow unsteady and weak in the face of debilitating disease and injury. The human need for care and healing is as fundamental to our nature as speech or touch or passion—perhaps this need, this desire for wholeness and health is basic enough, powerful enough to rush Christ and risk crushing him; desperate for comfort or cure, we find that dignity and decorum are luxuries for the healthy, the well-cared-for and that leaping and pushing and crying aloud are the necessities for the diseased and the neglected.

What do the diseased and neglected recognize in Jesus? They see what the unclean spirits see: the Son of God come among them. Inhabiting the ill and malformed bodies of the sick, the unclean spirits know who Jesus is and announce his coming. But the time is not right and the Christ cannot be heralded by demons, so Jesus warns them to silence about his identity. Regardless, they recognize that he is the wholeness and health that comes to destroy their broken and ailing lives. That he has done this repeatedly during his ministry only lends credibility to their demonic fear and it should lend strength to our faith, our trust in God’s promise of Final Healing.

Who can bring about this Final Healing other than the one High Priest, Jesus Christ? Who can intercede for us more faithfully before the throne? Who can offer a more efficacious sacrifice for our sins than Christ Jesus? No one. Hebrews reads, “He has no need to offer sacrifice day after day[…]he did that once for all when he offered himself.” We have a high priest who is at once Priest and sacrifice, priest and altar. He is the one who sacrifices and the one sacrificed—“a death he freely accepted.” He is the mediator of a better covenant put into practice with better promises. And knowing this, yes, we would chase him to the lake’s edge and jump for his attention.

We were not made for death but life and the fear of death is the best sign we have that life, abundant life, is our greediest desire, our most aching want. And at the same time we know that disease and injury and anxiety mark us as mortal, temporary—for now—temporary creatures of frail stature and limited ability. Leaping and shouting for Christ is what any us would do when faced with the chaos of illness or the devastation of injury. We would cry to our High Priest for mercy, for help and healing. And why not? Christ is always able to save those who approach the Father through him. He lives forever to make intercession for us. So, leap, shout, shove, press in, reach out, clamor away for the Lord, calling to him in your need, “You are the Son of God!”