“Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him.” Luke 15:1

Lately, I’ve been intrigued by a television series, “The Bible: A.D.” Despite liberties taken with God’s truth in the New Testament and some lame attempts to provide a back story for Mary and fleshing out rather insipid disciples, the shows present a fairly believable, historical picture of what Jerusalem might have been like in the first century.

What’s particularly striking are the scenes showing the multitude of people who lived in Jerusalem- Jews, Greeks, Ethiopians, and Romans, people of different races and heritages all crammed together. There are no consistent population records for the time so the estimates are anywhere from 30,00 to 80,000. During the Jewish festivals and particularly during Passover the number swelled to a million or more. In narrow congested streets, people were pushed together en masse. Jerusalem’s ordinary people eked out livelihoods cheek to jowl with their neighbors, but intrigue, unrest and undercurrents of rebellion against Rome’s violence were never far away. Rome’s brutal might was always prepared to crush Jewish dissenters. The first century was not a peaceful time. Violence and contempt for God is as old as the fall of man.

We forget the circumstances Jesus encountered when He preached in Jerusalem. The Gospels describe the multitude of people who surrounded Him everywhere He went, often crushing Him so that He had to leave for safety and preach from a boat or hill top. The multitude was a mixed crowd of the curious, the scoffers, the desperate and especially those who loved Him and believed in Him. Luke says it was sinners and tax collectors who “drew near to Jesus to hear Him.” It was the lost sheep of Israel who crowded around Christ, jostling and pushing their way closer and closer to hear His voice because He gave them hope and love. It was not the learned Pharisees who came to hear the Word because they had already rejected Jesus in their hearts. I imagine they kept a respectable distance away from Jesus, not wanting to touch Him nor the sinners pressing closer to Him.

Being in Idaho it’s difficult to imagine Jerusalem sized crowds. Here open space rolls for miles toward a distant horizon. The population is among the lowest in the nation. How can we begin to fathom Biblical multitudes, especially the unruly population pouring into Jerusalem and swelling an already overcrowded city.

I lived in New York City where 8 million people exist together. I often took the subway during rush hour and it was not a pleasant experience to be crushed up against total strangers. New Yorkers have the unique ability to avoid eye contact and become invisible behind newspapers, shopping bags and earphones. I developed a need for “personal space”on subways. But in the process something has gotten lost.

Often in church we are exhorted to press into the Lord’s Presence, to push through for the Holy Spirit and to draw ever nearer to Jesus. It’s an invitation to the believer’s heart to approach God one or two steps closer and then push through even more until there is no distance separating us.To press through means we have to get close enough to touch the hem of Christ’s garment. More than that we have to be so close that Jesus can touch us. We have to take a risk like the woman with an issue of blood. She pushed her way through the chaotic crowd , got close enough to touch Jesus’s hem and was healed for her faith.

There can’t be any “personal space” cocooning the Christian from the Lord’s presence. We resist getting close to Jesus and to one another, physically and spiritually because this idea of body space arises out of pride and control. We say to one another – and to the Lord- this far and no farther. I can hear just fine in my private space without actually being touched by You. We place boundaries on intimacy with Jesus and set ourselves at the outer fringe of the multitude, alongside the scoffers, doubters, curious and Pharisees. Instead let us position our hearts in the innermost space where sinners, tax collectors and a desperate woman pressed as close as possible. God promises us his adopted children that “nothing can separate us from His love in Christ Jesus.” It is not distance apart from but being drawn into inseparable closeness to Christ which is the most personal space of all.
Friede