Middle School.

I found it harrowing. Actually, when I was a kid, they called it “Junior High”—short for, “Junior High School”—a designation that, I guess, lost favor because it seems a bit condescending. You know, a small, miniature version of the real thing.

Anyway, I remember moving to a new school between my 5th and 6th grade year and again in the middle of my 7th grade year.

It’s tough to be thrust into new situations among a whole new crowd of unfamiliar faces—being singled out, afraid people are secretly talking about you, or worse, laughing at you.

It’s especially tough for kids to make those kinds of social and psychological adjustments. Heck, it’s tough on everyone.

But when you’re going through puberty, you’re already so excruciatingly self-conscious. Every time you walk into a room, you’re convinced that all eyes are on you, judging you—what kind of clothes you wear, your haircut, how you walk, whether you’ve got something gross caught in your braces or you have a new Vesuvian-size zit in the middle of your forehead that makes you look like a volcanic cyclops.

All of which is bad enough in front of people you know. But to have to make that trek in front of a group of strangers, who are also supposed to be your new peers? That’s terror of a new and unspeakable magnitude.

When I walked into a new school in a different state for the remaining part of my 7th grade year, it was, all things being equal, awkward enough. But apparently, I didn’t get the memo that the folks in Michigan had moved beyond the Brady Bunch fashion era and the early 70s infatuation with bell bottoms and love beads in ways that people in northern Indiana had not yet done.

So, when I walked into the new school and immediately saw that everyone looked different from me, I felt like a miscast character from a Cheech and Chong movie, a time-traveling retro love child.

Even though humans are communal creatures, we maintain social boundaries. Those boundaries let us know any number of healthy things. Things start going badly when I’m convinced that I’m responsible for how you live your life or that you’re responsible for how I live mine. Healthy boundaries are necessary to sustain good mental health. As my old Pastoral Care professor used to say, they let us know where we end and other people begin.

But some boundaries aren’t neighborly picket fences to help me know which grass is mine to cut. Some boundaries are rigid, firm, and topped with razor wire. They’re meant to clue us into who’s in and who’s out. In other words, they let us know who we must pay attention to, who we must take seriously, and who can be harassed and ignored. Almost immediately. No lengthy investigations are necessary.

Do they look right? Do they talk right? Do they know the customs that mark them as part of the clan? Are they one of us?

That’s how it works among humans as much wildebeests and orangutans. We need to know who poses a threat to the herd or the pack.

But whereas that kind of threat-detection system is a necessary part of survival among animals, it no longer serves us humans as it once did. The danger we fear has less to do with being eaten than with being asked to care about “those people.”

Jesus crosses just this kind of unhealthy boundary in our Gospel this morning. If you recall from the time we spent in Mark some weeks back, Jesus has been making new fans left and right… but for all the wrong reasons.

In chapter six, Jesus fed the 5,000, garnering the buzz of “potential candidate” for Messiahship. The crowds were convinced that Jesus could do for them what they’d been unable to do for themselves, and they were prepared to crown him king immediately.

Jesus took off by himself, not particularly eager to throw his hat into the political ring. After some time spent decompressing in isolation, he eventually stumbled across his disciples … out in the middle of the sea—them panicking and him walking on water.

After he and the disciples finally made it across, the crowd Jesus had escaped hours before found him again and started hounding him to do more miracles.

Apparently, the religious leaders got wind of Jesus’ new popularity and decided to check him out for themselves. When they found him, they saw his disciples, who were blatantly not following certain customs about hand-washing.

Jesus saw what was happening. The Pharisees were doing what the rest of us do upon meeting new people: They’ve put their highly trained sense of smell to work, attempting to determine just who’s part of the herd.