Mark 5:21-43

Pentecost +4 – Year B

Mark 5:21-43

Continuing the parabolic nature of actions as well as words, Jesus again crosses to "the other side." That would seem to make this side the other side. Once the disorientation settles a bit we see that folks are bound here as well as there.

A Gerasene demoniac; a woman with a twelve-year-long hemorrhage; a girl bedridden to never arise again. Bondaged, one and all. Ched Meyer's ground-breaking work – Binding the Strong Man – could also have been titled Releasing the Other Side.

The demonic from the other other-side is privileged to deal directly with his experience of blessing and mercy. Folks on this other-side seem to always have to filter it through faith language and in so doing distance themselves from their experience (individually to go in peace; communally to be silenced).

Yes, different occasions require different duties, consistency is not all that great a virtue, but note how the energy drops when "faith" enters as a primary way of engaging life. It turns life over to someone else, ordinary life is returned to as the end-all and be-all of our engagement.

A storm erupts for the disciples on the way to the other other-side. A storm is set up to erupt for Jesus after returning to this other-side and will commence immediately hence in Nazareth.

If you have experienced a blessing of freedom arrived, tell it. Life is not just a matter of "our" faith and if it is strong enough we'll get what is desired and be satisfied until a next moment of crisis. To cut the faith talk and go with the experience base is to re-create the joy and energy of finding ourself in G*D's image (healed and released, whether cured or not – imprisoned or not).