Mark 5: 24:31

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, "If I touch even his garments, I will be made well." And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my garments?" And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’"

In this story, Jesus is traveling to heal a girl who was sick and would eventually die, then later be brought back to life by Jesus. In transit, Jesus is surrounded by a large crowd who is pressing up against him, attempting to hear what he might say or see what he might do.

In the midst of this crowd was a woman who was suffering from a constant discharge of blood. The physicians of the day only served to drain her finances and leave her health worse off than when she started. Discovering Jesus, she wanted to get close to him. If nothing else, only to touch the fringes of his clothing. She succeeded and was healed. But when this happened, Jesus took notice. Even in the midst of a huge crowd that was obviously pressing up against him at times, he noticed the woman who had been healed.

Do you suppose she was the only one in the crowd afflicted with something? Perhaps she was the only one who was written about. But it could also be that, though there were many other people touching him, she was healed, while their experience was irrelevant.

She, presumably unlike the others, went to touch his garment in faith that she would be healed, while the others perhaps just out of hype or personal curiosity.

For me, this reminds me that simply knowing about Christ, or being in close proximity to the truth (i.e., in church every Sunday) isn’t enough to bring significant change to our lives. We have to press up against him actually believing that something will happen.

This is hard to do. But  remembering is a good step in the right direction.

Over the the past few days I’ve been thinking about Jesus’ last hours of freedom before being delivered over the officials. Specifically his humanity in that time.

He was with his disciples at the time. But, he was also with his ‘friends’, as he calls them earlier in scripture. In Matthew, he is described as becoming very sorrowful. He leaves his disciples to ‘watch and pray’ while he goes off and prays alone. While praying we see his humanity, possibly the most clearly. He prays that it would be possible for God’s plan to pass by some other means than his death.

In the exchange, though in may not be deliberately stated, it’s hard not to hear his distress.

After praying the first time, he returns and finds his disciples have fallen asleep. I can’t help but imagine what this must have felt like: absolutely terrible.

While he accepts God’s will, however painful it may be, he has also already begun to feel the sting of betrayal. Though he had told them what was going to happen, they clearly hadn’t grasped the gravity of the situation yet. Had they, they might not have fallen asleep in his hour of greatest inner turmoil and distress.

I find Jesus’ humanity in these passages to be both encouraging and haunting. Although it is rationally astounding, It’s still somewhat easy to think of Christ as a kind-of blank God-figure in human form. Coming to earth on a mission to die for his people’s sins. Then, moving on to return to his Father’s side.

But what is not so easy is to see Christ also as completely human. Truly suffering, not only physiscally at the hands of an obstinant people. But emotionally at the hands of his closest friends.

Jesus’ sacrifice truly was just that. A sacrifice. And one of the highest order, no less. For me, recognizing that Christ was truly all God and all man, are grounds which force a great deal of respect and appreciation for what he has done for me—for all mankind. The elect and otherwise.

Above anything else, I’m a Christian. More important than any other aspect of my life is that God has given me grace in Jesus Christ. My life, in spite of all its imperfections, can never be the same. For all intents and purposes, I cannot divide my faith in Christ from any other aspect of my life. If my life were water, Jesus would be the spout that delivers it to my glass.In fact, Jesus would be the glass also.

But, along with that comes a challenging tension that I have not yet understood or learned to balance. Though I’ve heard quite a lot of ideas—none really seem to be the whole answer.

See, I am also an artist and a business man (if those two can indeed coexist). My art is photography, and my business is in the wedding and portrait industry. Both of these are highly social in nature. As a photographer, both artistically and professionally, my ‘survival’ relies on making and maintaining connections with people wherever I meet them. If those connections do not exist, neither can my business or my art.

But that is also true of my faith. I am called to be a witness to the world of God’s grace in my life. When I meet someone, speak to someone, engage with someone in virtually any capacity, this fact cannot, does not, escape my mind.

How do these two live in tension with one another? How do I run a business and create art that glorifies God without driving away those with whom I hope to engage? I have yet to hear a simple answer.

  Today, as I sat with friends, I learned for the first time how to use Twitter to grow my business. It’s a remarkable tool that puts you immediately in touch with a vast number of people talking about all kinds of interesting things. Of course, you probably knew that already. I admit, I’m joining the caravan a bit late.

After learning to use the networking tool, it took no time at all for me to discover that, here too, I would face this challenge. A major element of Twitter is simply connecting with people over everyday endeavors. Where you’re going, what you’re doing, who you’re reading.

For me, those things are almost always connected to, if not wrapped up in, my faith. If I use the tool as most do, then I keep a world of potential clients, and more importantly potential believers, at arms length. Much like wearing a t-shirt that says, “Beware, I’m a Christian”. At the end of that day I’m engaging only other Christians and doing business almost exclusively with them.

But, on the flip side, if I don’t vocalize the ins-and-outs of my faith, I essentially deny the very foundation of virtually everything I do.

It’s a conundrum to say the very, very least. I haven’t yet found a satisfying answer to these questions. But I’m eager to hear the thoughts of friends who find their own ways to strike this tension on a personal and professional basis every day.

I love Jesus’ parable of the Merchant and the Pearl. The parable goes that there was a merchant in search of fine pearls. When he found an extremely valuable pearl, he went and sold everything he owned so that he could purchase the pearl (Matthew 13:45-46).

It doesn’t say anything more, except that this is a way we can understand the Kingdom of Heaven.

Thinking about the different elements of this parable there are, of course, lots of things we could come to understand. But for me, what stands out is that the person in search of the pearls is a merchant. Not an enthusiast or collector, but a merchant. Someone who’s livelihood relies on his acquisition of fine pearls. No doubt, he would find many pearls all of which he would turnover in trade to go about living his life.

But, when he comes across this particular pearl, he finds it more valuable than everything his hard work has acquired for him and he sells it all so that he can have this one very special prize.

In this case, the pearl can be compared to Jesus, or the Gospel of Jesus. In all of our searching and working to find significance and worth in this life, absolutely none of it can compare to the value and worth we find in Christ. All of our idols and little deities we collect come to nothing when held against the Pearl.

And, like the merchant, the Church discovers that she cannot keep all her little treasures and capture the Pearl as well. We must surrender—in some form—all of these things we prize so that there is room in our hearts for the only real Treasure: Jesus Christ.

When the Passion of the Christ was released back in 2004 I don’t think I knew a single Christian who wasn’t moved by it. Christians flocked to the movie theater in groups and watched the movie together.

But since then, the movie has become something of a punch-line in the church. Especially among younger Christians.

This is probably in part because the secular world found it funny how Christians bought so hard into the commercial product. And Christians not liking being the butt of a joke joined the laughter. I’ll admit, that the slew of Passion related merchandise that hit the Christian bookshops was a bit sickening to me, and still is.

But I think another reason Christians have, over time, responded to Passion in jest is because there’s a certain and real discomfort associated with it. Just look at almost every other depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion in our culture. It’s extremely tame. When we are accustomed to movies like Saw, Jesus’ crucifixion, the way the church has painted it, really doesn’t seem so bad.

Growing up I remember thinking to myself, “Yeah, that sucks, but I can think of worse”. And certainly, there is worse. The degree isn’t the point. But we’ve brought the temperature so far down it’s barely even noticeable.

So when Passion was released, though not without its flaws, we were given the most realistic depiction of Jesus’ last day we’ve ever had in modern culture. Compared to the way we’ve grown up looking at Jesus’ death, Passion cut our hearts like a hot knife in soft butter. The difference is vast. And while we don’t seem to have a problem watching the gore elsewhere, when we see it like it probably really happened to our savior, I think we get pretty uncomfortable with it. (Perhaps even an indication of our guilt in enjoying the gruesome entertainment we do; if this were true, one would have to go).

In response, the movie becomes a joke and thus, impossible to hurt us. And I think this is tragic.

1. The Passion of the Christ was an excellent movie on it’s own. Regardless of what my faith says, assessing the film itself, it was done with real excellence. (Though I don’t recommend watching it as form of entertainment.)

2. A cornerstone of our faith is in remembering what Christ did and why. For Christians in the first century, Matthew simply saying the word ‘crucifixion’ was enough to invoke understanding in the hearer. We have no such connection to that word. Passion helps bridge that gap.

3. If we harden our hearts to the most basic realities of Jesus’ suffering to defend ourselves from discomfort, how can we have any confidence in our own belief and faith in those sufferings?

It may not be anywhere near Easter, but I think Christians—especially those in my generation—should reconsider their attitude toward this film. Perhaps even set a time and watch it alone and consider some of the realities of Jesus’ sufferings on our behalf.

For my family, Christmas eve is a busy holiday. There is a traditional meal we eat together and almost always have somewhere between 20-25 guests to join us. It may not seem like that many, but consider that we squeeze around a single table. A sit down meal for that many people is undeniably a production.

It’s always a meal our family looks foreword to, but this year it was far less than enjoyable for me. I’ve had a bit of a health scare. Apparently an unexpected cocktail of over-the-counter drugs left me with really high blood pressure, nearly losing consciousness, extremely light-headed, and seriously spaced out.

I ended up having to sleep through dinner and missing the festivities, which was disappointing, but I definitely didn’t want to get out if bed. Every so often one of my family members would come and check on me and see that I was alright, and whether I needed anything. Over the course of a few hours, my whole family had been through to see how I was doing. My brother-in-law even came and hung out with me for a bit.

It reminded me, this morning around 10 as I was getting ready for the day, I thought to myself, somewhere, there’s someone who’s already begun drinking to dull the depression. Somewhere, there’s someone who’s begun a drug bender that isn’t likely to end until the new year. Somewhere there’s someone waking up and wishing he could just sleep through the next two days. After being incapacitated and sick all night, it got me thinking what a privilege it is to have a family that really is knit together and cares about one another—especially during the holidays.

So, my prayer tonight on Christmas Eve, the night before we celebrate our savior’s birth, is that God would visit those who are hurting. Those who have no one—no comfort. That he would be their comfort, and in their misery, reveal himself as the only worthy object of their whole affection.

In Tim Keller’s book Counterfeit Gods he talks about this concept of ‘Apocalyptic Love’. A concept that says once mankind lost faith in God and thus, lost any ultimate meaning, they sought to create that meaning by intensifying the meaning of romantic love. The idea that love is the absolute end all of everything—Apocalyptic love.

That term, for me, resonates. Although perhaps for slightly different reasons.

I’ve often listened to love songs and thought to myself, “I wish love really were like that”. In music and theater, romantic love is elevated to these impossible heights. To a place which I’m sure would be a profound experience. But, in truth, there is no experience between humans quite like that.

It seems like the grand romantic view of love is in part responsible for the huge number of divorces. As Keller puts it:

“We maintain the fantasy that if we find our one true soul mate, everything wrong with us will be healed. But when our expectations and hopes reach that magnitude… ‘the love object [becomes] god’. No lover, no human being, is qualified for that role. No one can live up to that. The inevitable result is bitter disillusionment.”

Bitter disillusionment. That’s what we all finally experience when we think we’ve found that apocalyptic love. We’re left disappointed, disillusioned and divorced.

The only place to find true apocalyptic love is in the Lord, in the proven and reliable love of Christ.