GRACE AND SCANDAL
Mark 5:21-43

Maybe you saw the movie The Godfather Part II.
In that film,
the Mafia godfather, Don Corleone,
goes to Rome to negotiate a business deal
with the Vatican.
He is not interested simply in business;
he wants to gain respectability.

There in Rome
he meets with Cardinal Lamberto,
who asks him
if he would like to make his confession.
At first Corleone refuses.
He makes a little joke
about how it would take too long.
However, he wants the cardinal's help,
and senses something redemptive in his presence.
So Corleone begins his confession.

First he tells of his marital infidelities.
Then he admits ordering the murder
of his own brother.
Overwhelmed by the burden of his guilt,
he breaks down and starts to sob.
Cardinal Lamberto pronounces the words of absolution,
then says,
"I know you don't believe this,
but you have been redeemed."

Some may find this story scandalous.
Here we have a career criminal, an adulterer,
cold-blooded enough
to plot the killing of his own brother,
and yet he's said to be forgiven, redeemed.
Some may say that what's called for here is not mercy,
but retribution, revenge, a settling of scores.
Let the Mafia man taste some of his own medicine!

Yet if there's a scandal here,
it's the scandal of Christianity.
Behind Cardinal Lamberto's words
is the blood of Jesus, God's Lamb,
who takes away the sins of the world.

And the Holy Spirit is hard at work
in this encounter with Don Corleone.
The Holy Spirit cracks open
the hard heart of the Mafia man,
and gives him tears of repentance
for the horrors he has committed.
The scene of confession
becomes a resurrection morning.
Don Corleone is raised from the death
brought by his sins
into the new life Christ offers him.

Some may still call this a scandal.
But I would suggest to you,
something of a scandal always happens
when grace is at work.

Consider today's Gospel.
Jesus raises from the dead
a twelve year-old girl.
We're not given her name,
but she's the daughter of Jairus,
a big man in town.

Jairus makes a fool of himself in public,
begging Jesus to help his sick child,
insisting that he can restore her to health.

Jesus goes with Jairus,
but on the way
they encounter people coming to meet them
who report that the girl is dead.
In the face of this terrible news,
Jesus invites Jairus not to fear,
but simply to believe.

When they arrive at the house,
the professional mourners are there already,
doing what they do when someone has died:
they wail, they beat their chests,
pull out their hair, and rip their clothing.
They ritualize the final separation
that death brings.
Their frenzied actions
are void of hope.

The crowd laughs at Jesus
when he insists
that the girl is not dead.
He goes to where she is lying,
accompanied only by the three disciples that are with him
and the girl's parents.

There Jesus takes the girl by the hand
and tells her to get up.
She gets up immediately
and starts to walk about.
Jesus tells them to give her
something to eat.
After all, she is twelve years old--
still a growing girl.

Do you hear scandal in that story?
What Jesus does seems to be
nothing other than a compassionate response
to the girl and her father.
But those around Jesus must be shocked.
For what does he do with the girl
everybody believes is dead?
He takes her by the hand!
He touches a corpse!

According to God's law in the Hebrew scriptures,
touching a corpse renders a person unclean.
The people around Jesus are shocked,
much as some people today may be shocked
when Cardinal Lamberto absolves Don Corleone.
The people around Jesus believe
that purity must be maintained,
and they have Bible texts available to quote in their favor.

Today's Gospel ends
with Jesus giving some orders.
He tells those with him
to get the girl something to eat,
and he commands them, strictly orders them,
not to let anyone know what has happened to Jairus' daughter.

We can be confident that the girl gets to eat.
We can be equally confident
that the other order is not obeyed,
and that the story of Jairus' daughter
spreads like fire through dry tinder.
Would you keep such a story to yourself?

Why then does Jesus issue this order?
Why does he follow up many of his miracles
with the insistence that people keep mum about them?
Does he really expect to be obeyed?

It seems to me
that he doesn't want to be labeled
simply as someone who comes into town
and does a bunch of neat miracles.
He doesn't want to be known
as simply the go-to guy when somebody's sick,
or when you need bread and fish multiplied.

Instead,
he wants people to know him
because of something yet to happen,
that work of grace more scandalous than any other,
when he will die on a cross of shame
and be raised in glory by the Father.
This scandal will bring grace,
not just to one person or a few,
but to all creation.
It will mean not only new life for Jairus' daughter,
dead from some illness,
but new life for Don Corleone,
who, spiritually speaking, has been dead for a long time,
a walking corpse.

We are here today to celebrate
the greatest of all God's scandals:
the cross and resurrection.
Some people simply cannot stomach it.
They want a world more orderly, more fair than that,
and in a way their desire makes sense.
But we are given instead
a world of undeserved mercies,
where fear gives way to belief,
and small decencies are scandalized by the generosity of God.
Yet in this world
we quite easily become fixated on scandal
and we overlook grace.

*** We see a hapless victim drying on a cross.
God sees the lamb victorious over evil.

*** We see a lawbreaking rabbi who touches a corpse.
God sees a once-dead girl now dead now longer
and now restored to her father's arms.

***We see a Mafia godfather, a man of steely heart and vicious life.
God sees one of his children, hard heart now broken,
tears flooding forth, now dead to his past
and given a fresh start.

So often what we see is scandal; what God sees is grace.

Can we learn to recognize grace when it happens,
sometimes in front of our faces?
Can we be party to scandal
that may shock the decent,
but release the power of resurrection?

Each of us is on the receiving end of reconciliation.

*** Christ always addresses us through words
like those of Cardinal Lamberto:
"I know you don't believe this,
but you have been redeemed."

*** Christ always risks ridicule and misunderstanding
by lifting us up from death like Jairus' daughter,
and restoring us to life and to relationship.

*** Christ always dares to make present to us
his most audacious scandal,
the cross and the empty tomb.
His grace comes to us free,
but its price for him is the cross.
For us he bears
shame, abandonment, and death.
He does it for us.
He does it for all.

One further scandalous demonstration of grace
to add to these others:
Christ makes each recipient of grace
also a minister of reconciliation.
His audacious expectation
is that those who have been forgiven will forgive;
those who know new life will offer new life to others.
Christ's expectation is audacious
because in this world,
grace appears as scandal,
mercy appears unjust and leave us uncomfortable.

The time comes for reach of us
when we can be a minister of God's audacious grace
if we are willing to weather the scandal.

*** It may be a matter of defiling ourselves,
appearing to others as impure
by society's standards.

*** It may mean announcing to a hardened reprobate
that his sins, her sins,
do not exceed God's ability to forgive.

*** It may mean making room
for undeserved mercies for ourselves and for others,
understanding that all are sinners and all are redeemed.

May we recognize the opportunity when it is placed before us. May we see past scandal and welcome grace.