“Can I just have 15 minutes?” is my request, delivered with more edge than I expected. Sometimes, I just don’t want anyone touching me — which is to say, my body hurts, I’m tired (or busy), and I don’t want anything else asked of me right now.
I used to imagine Jesus’ relationship with the crowds like that of a speaker with an audience: They’d listen to him in large numbers like a sold-out stadium, then gather around as people might surround a guest lecturer after a talk. Even with a sizable group, listeners instinctively wait their turn and respectfully give the famous person some breathing space. Being a mom of 4 has changed that perception.
As long as I’m at home, there is no escaping our little crowd. I could be sitting on the mat in front of the stove and somehow it’s now their new favorite hangout. Not only am I no longer alone, but the kitchen floor also becomes strewn with books and toys. Case in point: Since I wrote that last sentence, a metal bowl has been placed on my left arm and two kids now flank me, holding clementines for me to peel. Another has pointed a large stick in my face.
“Please don’t sit on my arm.”
“I’m not sitting on your arm!”
“Yes, you were. You were JUST sitting on my arm.”
“I’m not sitting on your arm now.”
Maybe I used to picture how tired and busy Jesus might be, constantly surrounded by crowds. Now I feel it in my body.
I opened the Scriptures this morning, and I watched Jesus walking by the sea, then making his way up a mountain. He sits down. And that’s when the crowds come.
“The lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others,” the text says. “And they put them at his feet, and he healed them” (Matt. 15:29-31.)
This week, my husband served our church in a way he always has. For some reason, it caught my attention differently this time. And when I paid attention to how he interacted with the church members around him, gratitude for my husband swelled.
That same interaction was what I had noticed when I saw this crowd surrounding Jesus. I saw my King with fresh eyes.
In an earlier chapter, the moment the crowds recognized him in town, people “sent around to all that region and brought to him all who were sick and implored him that they might only touch the fringe of his garment” (Matt. 14:35-36).
All the sick in the region?
I look across the street at my neighbor’s house and imagine what it’d be like to see homes empty out in Staten Island if everyone chronically or critically ill went to seek healing all at once at the same place. Who would they bring? Would I go for my back pain? How uncomfortable would it have been to be among those pressing in to touch him? To hear people yelling out for help, their voices so persistent that the disciples would plead with their Master to tell them to stop?
Then I saw Jesus, literally surrounded by the broken.
The lame.
The blind.
The crippled.
“And many others.”
I saw him bending down to speak, to listen to a request, to touch, and to be touched.
What kind of Love must this be to not only acquiesce to, but also welcome, such a crowd? What power would stoop so low? What humility to heal and then, unwilling that the weak would faint on their way home, in compassion prepare a meal for thousands? How tenderly, how kindly, and how joyfully he serves. What a sight it was to behold, even if only in my mind’s eye!
In the future I may remember this scene in the context of motherhood, of Jesus as an example to follow. (Like how to treat my little flock which, at this very moment, is talking to me about June birthdays, pushing me off the couch, and pulling my hand off the computer keys. “I’m hungry, I’m hungry!” says the arm-tugger.) But right now, I’m just marveling at my King. He is the God of the broken, who welcomes the weak. The God who serves the crowds.
We answered this question after church on Sunday: “What difference would it make for you to see the church as a hospital for sinners and not as a waiting room for a job interview?” This morning the Lord answered for me: Seeing the sick, I’d behold the Physician among them, and having seen him, my heart would love him so.