Lois Lane Got It All Wrong

Mark 5:21-43

An almighty father sends his son to Earth.

He puts him here for a purpose.

“They can be a great people,” says the Father. “They only lack the light to show them the way. For this reason, above all – their capacity for good – I have sent them you, my only son.”

On earth, the son fights hard for truth and justice. He displays amazing abilities and incredible insights, but sometimes feels that his power is being drained out of him.

After a dramatic battle with the forces of evil, he is killed. But then he is resurrected and ascends into heaven. He returns in a second coming.

This is the story of Jesus, right? Sure it is.

But it’s also the story of Superman![1]

A few weeks ago when Diane and I went to see Mission Impossible 3, we saw the preview for Superman Returns and I was amazed at the parallel themes in the movie trailer for Superman and the life of Christ. But you judge for yourself. Watch the trailer and look for the similarities…and differences…between Superman and Jesus.

(At this point in the service, I show the movie trailer.[2])

So what do you think? I know I’m intrigued enough that I’ll go to the movie and look further for those parallels. Some may say I’m pushing the comparison too far but there seems to be a lot of theological parallels here. Jesus and Superman! This would give a whole new meaning to the expression, “Dynamic Duo.”

In 1933, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster published the first Superman comic strip and Americans have been captivated ever since. We are nuts about our superheroes! Superman Returns opened this past Wednesday and people have been flocking to the theatres. I’m optimistically hoping that the Church will reap some of the benefits of this phenomenon. How? Well, perhaps we can be drawn deeper into the life of true superhero – Jesus.

There’s one powerful line in the movie trailer I showed you. Did you catch it? Lois Lane says to Superman, “The world doesn’t need a savior, and neither do I.”

But we do, Lois! We do! We only have to look at our text today, and plug ourselves into the story, to realize how wrong Lois was with her statement.

Mark’s Gospel moves at the pace of a movie trailer. Mark gives us fast-paced action moving from scene to scene. Jesus cures the sick, casts out demons, cleanses lepers, and heals a paralytic with more power than a locomotive. He calms a storm and calls his disciples faster than a speeding bullet. Sometimes, as in the case of our text today, Mark weaves two stories into one. Wouldn’t you like to see Mark’s Gospel in movie trailer form…with Hollywood graphics and in surround sound? Mark’s Gospel is full of people looking to be saved by a superhero…a real superhero. Consider two in our text today. Maybe as we hear their stories, we’ll find some of our own.

Jarius and the woman with the hemorrhage are so different yet so alike. Jarius is a well-off respected leader in the synagogue. People clear a path when he walks down the street. He’s got a powerful name in the community and a comfortable house in the affluent sub-division. He’s got it all, yet even he and his family are not immune to tragedy. His young daughter gets sick and it doesn’t look good for her. She’s not supposed to get sick. She’s so young and this is a religious, God-fearing, church-going, moral family. We don’t know how hard it was for Jarius to go to Jesus, but when you’re kid is sick, you’ll do anything and that’s exactly what Jarius does – he pleads with Jesus to do something.

On the other end of the spectrum is the woman with the hemorrhage. She is as far from being well-respected and leadership as one could get in her society. She was considered unclean because of her physical condition.[3] Mark doesn’t even give her a name. She’s a nobody. What little money she had has been spent on empty procedures. She’s been bleeding for twelve years and her condition leaves her so far on the fringes of society she’s as good as dead.[4] Yet when Jesus walks by, she touches the fringes of his clothes and for Jesus, it was like Superman getting too close to kryptonite – he felt power going out of him and wondered who touched him.

For both of these individuals, their faith made them whole. The way Mark shapes this story, the emphasis is not so much on the power of Jesus, but on the faith of the people being healed. Jarius had faith in Jesus even when his daughter seems in the final stages of hospice care. She was healed even after it seems she died. The woman with the hemorrhage had tried so many medical options, no one would fault her for just giving up. But she doesn’t! Jesus tells her that her faith has made her well.

Should we conclude from this story that reaching a certain threshold of faith flips on the wholeness switch from Jesus? Cancers go away, marriages get healthy, bounced checks are covered, and life has a story-book ending. Is the goal to get the attention of Jesus like people who cry out for Superman from thousands of miles away? We just have to hope that Jesus hears us in time with his superhero hearing?

Many people of great faith have beat themselves up when their loved one doesn’t get well, or the marriage still falls apart. Not everyone who prays gets cured. In the Gospels, for every person who gets well, there are many who don’t that we never hear about. I don’t believe the message is, “Just acquire a certain quantity of faith and then things will be OK.” If that were the case, then Lois Lane would be right. We don’t need a savior. We just need certain quantity of a slippery religious commodity – faith.

The message of this story is that there does seem to be a relationship between faith and wholeness. Faith can give us the courage to try one more procedure. Faith can fuel our hope for new life in our relationships. Faith can keep alive our expectation for a miracle because yes, they do happen.

But faith can also sustain us when we suffer. It’s a means of grace when the cure doesn’t come. The women at the graveside in the movie Steel Magnolias wisely say, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”[5] In each moment when our faith is called to the frontline, we either become better or bitter. We either say like Lois Lane, “The world doesn’t need a savior, and neither do I,” or we keep trudging through the swamp of being faithful.

So which will you choose? I pray you don’t give up and that you keep pushing against the crowds to get to Jesus.

Amen.

[1] Some of the ideas and connections between Jesus and Superman came from a list serve email I received from Timothy Merrill, the Executive Director of Homiletics. I then downloaded a movie trailer for the movie and showed this trailer in the service.

[4] Charles E. Powell, “The ‘Passivity’ of Jesus in Mark 5:25-34,” Bibliotheca Sacra, Volume 162, Number 645, January-March 2005, pp. 70-71.

[5] Some of the content in this paragraph is re-worked from Hope Morgan Ward’s “The Healer’s Presence,” Pulpit Resource, July-September 2006, p. 6.