Take A Number!
A great crowd gathered around him . . . Jairus came and begged him repeatedly,
"My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her,
so that she may be made well, and live.” So (Jesus) went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.
(Mark 5:21-24)
A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, July 23, 2006
First United Methodist Church, 605 West Sixth, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653
Reading Mark’s account of the sick pressing in on Jesus during his Galilean ministry invokes the image of a busy, modern-day Emergency Room. Overcrowding can translate into prolonged waits to see a physician. A recent (May 31, 2006) USA Today article, written by Ken Fuson, reports on results of a questionnaire completed by 1.5 million ER patients in 2005, representing 1% of the 115 million visits to the ER last year which were reported by the American College of Emergency Physicians. With such overcrowding, the average ER wait to see a physician in the United States is 3.7 hours (222 minutes). In the For-What-Its-Worth department, Idaho had shortest average wait, while taking the prize for the longest was Arizona with 297 minutes, nearly five hours. “Take a Number, and we’ll get to you as soon as we can.”
Wrote Fuson, “There is not a hospital in the country that has not, in some way, focused on waiting times in their ER.” One of those is Michigan’s Oakwood Medical Center of Dearborn, which responded in a way similar to Dominos Pizza, promising anybody would see a doctor in 30 minutes or receive a written apology and two free movie passes. A cheap marketing ploy, to be sure, but it’s working. Patient satisfaction levels have soared. Only 0.9 % have asked for free movie passes, and the hospital has achieved a 17 minute average, better than some restaurants!
It occurred to me that Jesus’ disciples must have felt the same frustration which hospital administrators know today. “Everybody wants to see the healer. We’re doing triage the best we know how. We’re sorry, but you’ll have to ‘Take a Number’ and wait.”
Don’t you love those "Take a Number" contraptions? Let me tell you about one of my Take-a-Number experiences, 20 years ago while waiting at the Secretary of State’s office in Ann Arbor to renew my driver's license. True to my procrastinating form, I had waited until the last, busiest day of the month. I was disheartened when I entered the waiting area and saw it teeming with people. When I tore and looked at my number, I fully expected it to read, "Everybody in creation, plus YOU." Actually, it wasn’t quite that bad. I was number 68. Still, I grimaced when I glanced up at the little red neon sign announcing, "Now serving number forty-one."
So I settled in for the hour and a half detainment. For that 90 minute wait, I reflected later, I was reduced to a mere number. All my personal identity was absorbed into Number 68. For those 90 minutes, I was no longer Siegfried Johnson; husband, father, pastor, teacher, writer, scholar of Ancient Near Eastern literature. Vanished were all the ways in which my family, friends, and colleagues had known me. During that next 90 minutes I was merely -- Number Sixty-eight. Nothing more. Nothing less. Sixty-eight am I. So, holding my Number in my hands, I meekly sat, waiting to be called. By name? No. Called, rather, by Number.
Time to hone my people-watching skills. I observed other Numbers. Number 47 was visibly disgusted with the whole affair, shuffling his body, mumbling something about how idiotic this all was. 52, oddly, had a charmingly carefree outlook, entertaining herself and seemingly, quite happy with her license tag detention. I can’t imagine she would have been any more relaxed had she been sipping coffee on her back patio. 65 clearly had somewhere to be, glancing nervously every few seconds at his wristwatch -- tap, tap, tapping the arm of his chair.
I turned my attention to the staff -- those sporting Name tags instead of hand-held Numbers. A sad lot they were. Occupied and busy. Weary and spent. Bearing the responsibility for dealing with pressing crowds can do that to a person. Workplace tension and stress can produce frowns and sour faces. I smiled with a bit of sadistic pleasure. “You’ve assigned me number 68,” I thought. “Perhaps I will be, for one of you, Excedrin headache Number 68.”
I became a mind-reader, wondering what they were REALLY thinking, behind those plastic smiles. "I can't believe how busy it is today! Won’t we ever get to relax? Where did all these people come from? My word, I wish there were no more Numbers to serve today! I just want to go home and soak my feet. And that guy over there – yeah, that one -- that tallish fellow with a smirk on his face. The one holding Number 68 so proudly. I've certainly got no time for him.”
Technology tends to reduce us to a mere set of Numbers. An inescapable by-product of the Information Age is that we lead multi-digital lives. We are numerical diversity. I was born the second child of my parents with no more numbers to call my own than a birthdate and a birthweight. But somewhere over these five decades a computerized explosion has invaded my life with digits. I’ve collected and am the proud owner of a highly esteemed assortment of personal Numbers which, to a large extent, define who I am.
To be sure, the basic numbers have long been around. Social security. Telephone. Zip code. I wonder if my disenchantment with Numbers began when we were assigned the Zip Plus Four? Out of curiosity, I wonder how many of you have memorized your four digit sorting code? If you have, I might suggest therapy. Most Americans have adamantly refused to memorize that intrusive digital quartet.
Nor will a simple telephone number do these days. I recall as a boy our number, JE4-8932. JE stood for Jefferson County. That was the only communication number we needed at the Johnson house. Today we supplement our inventory of communication numbers with cell numbers, beeper numbers, voice mail numbers, fax numbers. Add our bank account numbers, credit card numbers, ATM PIN numbers. The list of Numbers packaging us for functioning in our technological world goes on and on. We’ve come to know the word PIN as an acronym for "Personal Identification Number." If you ask me, there's nothing “personal” in this invasion of Numbers necessitated by the Information Age.
Modern techno-communications do their best to disguise what is a necessarily impersonal enterprise. I’ve had a few recent experiences, having to change my address to Mountain Home. Just this week I dialed a number and heard a pleasant voice inviting me to spend the next hour trapped in a kind of electronic purgatory. It’s called IVR, “Interactive Voice Response,” a way for you to feel like you are talking to some One without actually doing so. While on hold, I began to imagine what the company is REALLY thinking. “Hello and thank you for calling XYZ Corp. Your call may be monitored for our future entertainment. Your call is important to us, but not nearly as important as it is to you. If you’re calling from a rotary dial phone, well, that’s just sad. How can those antiquated phones still be in existence? Still, our automated voice system will allow you to answer by voice, without pushing buttons, making it SEEM like you’re talking to an actual person. Now, we know you’re not REALLY fooled by this, but this way we don’t have to pay another employee. Nor need we give the computer a coffee break, health insurance or vacation, so it works great for us. And for you. You can scream at it all you want, but it will still be pleasant. Are you ready? Speak your Social Security number, your 32 digit account number, and your eighth grade locker combination. Even though you enter these Numbers now, we might ask for them again, because even though you send us a truckload of money every year for our services, we still have no idea who you are.”
In a crowd, it’s hard to know who everybody is. On this exhausting day in Jesus’ ministry, described by Mark, "A great crowd gathered around him.” People needing help were stacked deep. The disciples, no doubt, were growing weary. They couldn’t know everybody, couldn’t know their needs. They craved rest. They were tired of unexpected interruptions. "I wish there were no more Numbers today. Please come back tomorrow. Our master is too busy. We just want to soak our feet. Take a Number, please."
In the midst of this busy day of sudden ministerial spins and whirls, an emergency arises. Jairus, whose daughter was gravely ill, pleads with Jesus, "come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live." Jesus responded to the man’s urgent plea for help. No sooner had he turned to go with Jairus, than a woman with a chronic bleeding problem made her last ditch effort to be noticed. She wanted to discard the high number she held, and move to the front of the line. Sensing the power of the Spirit which, she suspected, flowed through Jesus’ prayer shawl, she reached out to touch the hem of his garment. “Perhaps just touching Jesus will help,” she thought. Her doctors had been unable to remedy her problem. Mark makes the intriguing comment, "she had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse."
This low view of medicine was not at all uncommon in ancient days. In the Mishnah, a passage by Rabbi Judah describes various occupations. His summary of physicians rings a bit odd in our ears, since today we hold physicians in high regard. "The best among physicians,” the rabbi says, “is destined for Gehenna."
Considering what passed for medicine until relatively recently, who can blame the people for such a low view of doctors? Doctors weren’t always very helpful. For example, here is an actual clinical report from the last days of England’s King Charles II. "A pint of blood was extracted from the royal right arm, and a half pint from the royal left shoulder, followed by an emetic (to induce vomiting). The royal head was then shaved and a blister raised, then a sneezing powder, and a plaster of pitch on his feet. Finally, forty drops of extract of human skull were given -- after which His Majesty gave up the ghost!" No kidding! Who wouldn't give up the ghost after receiving treatment like that!
Medicine has made a few advances since then. The late Jacob Bronowski chronicled the cultural evolution of humanity in a television documentary called “The Ascent of Man.” Bronowski told how in medieval times the doctor did not touch the patient. He was the expert, but the task of cutting was done by another, usually the town barber, the one person in town who knew how to brandish a razor with precision. The art of medicine, Bronowski notes, did not get off the ground until physicians took the daring move of actually touching the patient.
Jesus touched others. He touched the fevered hand of Peter’s mother-in-law. He touched the scaly skin of lepers, first among the untouchables of his world. He touched the cold coffin of a sorrowing widow’s son. He touched the severed ear of the high priest’s slave. He touched little children as they were brought for blessing, overruling the “Take a Number” attitude exhibited by his disciples on that day. Jesus touched them all. And why not? Had not God become flesh in order to embrace his creatures with love? “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us,” says John 1:14. Through Bethlehem’s miracle, God himself enjoyed the beauty of human touch.
A minister in Ft. Lauderdale was visiting a church member in a nursing home. They talked about aging. “It’s almost the same as any other age,” the woman told her pastor, “only my worries get narrower. Even aches and pains become commonplace, and reminders that you are there. But not so bad,” she chuckled, “when you consider the alternative.” Then she added, “The worst thing of all, the saddest part about it, is that nobody hugs me anymore.”
Thursday night was my first clinic night at the Mountain Home Christian Clinic, for which Mountain Home and this church, among others, should be rightly proud. When I looked in the waiting room, I saw some people who, in their life situations, may be holding some pretty high Numbers. Much of the world would have no idea who they are, and may not want to know. I watched them, and especially the volunteers, who didn’t wear plastic smiles born of stress and tension, but rather bore smiles infused by spiritual energy, joy in the opportunity to give these people a different Number than they might now be holding.
A favorite story of mine is that of a 16th century beggar taken desperately ill. Perhaps due to his low status, doctors gave up hope quickly. They saw a chance for surgical experimentation. One of the doctors said (in Latin, so that the uneducated beggar would not understand), “Hagiamus experimentum in anima vile.” Translation? “Let us experiment on this vile fellow.” Cold and frosty. Icy and detached. “Take a Number,” they were saying, in a very real sense, to this beggar – and your Number is way high.
The beggar, who was actually an impoverished student who later would become a world renowned scholar, startled the physicians when he replied -- in Latin, “Animam vilem appelas pro qua Christus non designatus mori?” Translation? “Will you call vile one for whom Christ did not disdain to die?”
Let’s rejoice that God knows us by Name, not by a Number, however low or high. “The Good Shepherd calls his own sheep by name.” (John 10:3). Nothing icy and detached about that. Perhaps nowhere do we experience this touch of the divine more clearly than in our sacrament of Holy Communion. That’s why I think it important for the bread not merely to be grasped or picked, but to be pressed into our open hands, exciting the sense that the Word was made flesh, broken for us. God has touched us, embraced us. Thanks be to God.
Sources and notes:
Nobody Hugs Me Anymore, a sermon by Dr. Donald B. Strobe, preached at First United Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 3, 1987.
How Touching, a sermon by Rev. P. Thomas Wachterhauser, preached at First United Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan on June 11, 1989.
Four Words That Shook The World, a sermon by Dr. Donald B. Strobe, preached at First United Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan on August 8, 1982.
Jesus Doesn’t Use IVR!, a sermon in HOMILETICS, Volume 18, Number 4 (July – August 2006).