Jesus Sees Us--July 1, 2024
"When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came, and when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, 'My little daughter is at the point of death. Come lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live'. So he went with him. And a large crowd followed and pressed in on him." [Mark 5:21-24]
There are two wonders here in this opening scene from the story many of us heard this past Sunday morning: the first is how many people always seem to be drawn to Jesus like a field of sunflowers turning toward the morning light. The second is how Jesus can still care about a single person, an individual life, within that massive, pressing crowd. Jesus cares about people, not simply as statistics, but as faces. Over against a time like ours that obsesses (and inflates) numbers tallying "likes" on social media, or the number of eyeballs that have watched the latest viral video, or how your preferred candidate is doing in the polls, it is a life-giving difference to see that Jesus still sees us as actual people, and that our personhood is not lost like a drop in the vast ocean of humanity.
That's what makes Jesus worthy of entrusting our lives into his care. He isn't just interested in using us as pawns to make himself seem more important or more popular. He doesn't just see us as warm bodies to fill out a crowd for the photo op in the paper or the evening news on TV. In a time and culture like ours, all too often the insecure and needy demagogues need to puff up the numbers of size of their crowds at rallies or the number of fawning supporters they have, but don't really care about the actual lives of the people they brag about. And Jesus doesn't do that. You don't see a single story where Jesus brags to the Pharisees or threatens the Roman governor with the numbers of people he can mobilize. You never hear Jesus boast, "I must be the Messiah, because so many people flock to my sermons! Did you see how many people we had with the loaves and fishes? It's very special, what I'm doing--and you can tell, because so many people come out to my events..." He doesn't use people as props that way. People are drawn to Jesus, to be sure, but Jesus doesn't need them for the sake of his ego. He sees us--each of us.
On the flip side, Jesus doesn't lose the ability to care about each of us in that gathering crowd around him. He doesn't just love the "idea" of humanity in the abstract, but still has compassion for specific people with real stories, real needs, and real quirks. I'm reminded of a passage from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamozov, where one character confesses what is likely true for all of us from time to time:
“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”
That is to say, it's relatively easy to have a generic fondness for the collective idea called "humanity." At a distance you don't have to see runny noses or angry scowls. You don't have to hear whiny voices or petty grumbling. You don't have to get to know the quirks and failings, the flaws and the cracks, that are a part of each one of us if you only ever have to deal with people in the abstract or as an anonymous crowd. Loving specific people, with real and messy stories and complicated personalities, that's difficult. Up close and personal, we show our peccadillos and our problems; our jagged edges and rough spots are visible when you see us face to face. And yet, of course, that's the real wonder of Jesus here: he still sees us as our individual, real selves, and he still is here to help.
That's one of the things I love about the way Mark tells the story of Jesus going to help Jairus' daughter. It's clear that Jesus is his usual magnetic self, drawing in a large gathering of people around him like usual. But in the midst of that crowd, Jesus listens and can hear the particular voice of one desperate dad over the roar and commotion. And he responds. He cares, not just about "humanity" in general as an abstract concept, but each of the people in that crowd, and each of us in our particularity.
Remember that anytime we talk about (or sing about, or pray about) how God loves "the world." It can be easy to think only in generalities or abstractions when we use a term like "the world," as if God can only see Earth from the remote vantage point of a heavenly throne room. Like the old 80s ballad crooned, "God is watching us... from a distance," right? We might imagine that God, being the Creator of the whole universe, can't be bothered to care about one little person's needs, or even to see individual lives and faces. How does Humphrey Bogart put it at the end of Casablanca? "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." And of course, that's so often the way the world works--individual people get lost in a sea of statistics and the power of percentages and polls. But a moment like this from the Gospels reminds us something important about the character of the God we know in Jesus. Jesus sees faces. Jesus hears individual voices. Jesus has compassion on actual humans, not merely some abstract notion called "humanity." Jesus sees you. He sees me. And he sees the people on the margins that both of us have failed to recognize or listen for, as well. That's our hope.
Maybe one of the things that happens when we reflect on a story like this one is that it will help us to learn to notice people and to actually stop to listen to people the way Jesus does. Maybe we will pay attention to the face in the crowd with the sunken eyes or the desperate catch in their throat as they fight back tears. Maybe we will learn to love people as individual and unique persons from Jesus, because we will see the way he loves and knows each of us, too.
Lord Jesus, help us to see that you see us; help us to know that you hear each of our cries. And help us recognize the faces of others rather than lose them in an anonymous crowd.
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