Myth and Physicality

"Without Purse or Scrip" by Liz Lemon Swindle

Have you considered the flesh-and-blood Jesus lately?

Mark chapter 1: Jesus took the hand of Simon's mother-in-law and helped her up. Jesus reached out his hand and touched a man with leprosy. 

Mark chapter 2: Jesus walked along the lake. He ate dinner at Levi's house. 

Mark chapter 3: Jesus was jostled by crowds. He climbed a mountain. His eyes scanned the faces of those sitting around him.

Mark chapter 4: Jesus got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake. He slept on a cushion in the stern of the boat. He got up in the middle of a storm and rebuked the elements.

Mark chapter 5: Jesus felt power go out of him. He looked around the crowd, trying to see who had touched his clothes. He took a little girl's lifeless hand in his own hand, telling her to get up.

Mark chapter 6: Jesus laid his hands on sick people, healing them. He looked up to heaven when he gave thanks for bread. He broke bread and divided fish, handing out the pieces to be passed along to five thousand people. He walked on the lake. He climbed into the boat at the end of his walk on water.

Mark chapter 7: Jesus walked miles and miles to Tyre and Sidon. He put his fingers in a deaf man's ears. He spit and touched the tongue of the man, who also couldn't talk. He looked up to heaven and sighed ... sighed ... deeply.

And he spoke, and taught, and prayed.

"Lord, I Believe," by Liz Lemon Swindle

I am reading through the gospel of Mark in my morning devotions. I've only finished the first seven chapters, but over and over I notice indications of the physicality of Jesus. He touches. He climbs. He talks. He eats. He sighs. He looks, and looks, and looks again. 

Visiting Israel when I was eighteen years old, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of amazement that it all really existed. The holy land was not a myth, like Hansel and Gretel or Aesop's fables or Cinderella. Here were the places I had heard about and read about since I was too young to speak, here were the hills that Jesus had looked at, the lake he crossed so many times, the river in which he was baptized. It was all real. It was all physical. Jesus existed here, in this place, nearly 2000 years before I arrived on this piece of earth.

Again, reading the book of Mark, I'm struck by the physicality of the text. As one of my Bible study group friends pointed out last week, it's the details of the story that remind you that it wasn't a myth. It really happened. No one makes up stories with this kind of detail, no one else has fabricated a man who delivers anything like this collection of teachings. It comes alive all over again as you visualize it: you watch Jesus pick up the lifeless hand of a little girl; you hold your breath watching him look around and scan the faces of the crowd for the telltale expression of the one who touched his clothing; you hear the rocks roll under his footfalls as he walks the dusty paths; you see his chest heave with a big, full-lung sigh and his face turned up toward heaven before he tells the deaf man's ears to "be opened."

Children around the age of five or six are concerned about what is make-believe and what is real. Is that a real story? Is Santa Claus real? Are angels real? In some way, I think, we continue to negotiate that question throughout our lives. I admit that I do, reading these old familiar stories and looking for the real flesh-and-blood Jesus. The story doesn't amount to a hill of beans unless you settle the question of his physicality, his real 3-D existence in a very real world inhabited by you and me.

"No Man Knoweth the Hour" by Liz Lemon Swindle