June 27, 2021 – Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
“A Gospel story just made for television – and for speaking to us today.”
Let us pray. Holy and loving God, we thank you for your presence in this time and place and within each one of us in our many locations. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Well I think it’s interesting that both the First and Second Readings this morning describe situations that actually are pretty familiar in our own day, in this sense. In the First Reading, David, who is the rising star in Israel, is publicly lamenting the death of King Saul. Now, while his feelings may be genuine, it’s also politically important that Saul’s supporters see David’s grief. For as David becomes King, he wants to bring in Saul’s camp and unite the country. In the Second Reading, Saint Paul is using his best head and heart rhetoric to encourage the Corinthians to share their financial resources to help the struggling Church in Jerusalem. Does that sound familiar? Clergy and lay leaders alike exhorting local congregations to make sure that they support their Common Ministry and Mission pledge to help further the ministries across the Diocese. Both of these situations are common in our lives today.
But I want to focus on the Gospel Reading. You can find it on page 5 if you may want to refer to it. Now if you haven’t noticed this already, in the reading, note that there are two what you might call “nested” healing narratives. The first is the story about Jairus and his daughter, and the second, which is nested inside it, is the story of the woman with the hemorrhages. You know, you and I have watched TV dramas that are structured like this all the time. The first plot is introduced; the crisis is set up for us – we read, “One of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came, and when he saw Jesus, fell at his feet 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’.” Just picture this – the camera shots that one would see on the television screen – initially of Jesus teaching with the crowd around him near the beach at the lake, and then it cuts to Jairus, the synagogue leader, anxiously pacing down the boardwalk and suddenly he recognizes Jesus, rushes over, burrows his way through the crowd, drops to Jesus’ knees and begs for help. And Jesus agrees and begins walking with him towards Jairus’s house, the large crowd following behind.
So now you and I, as viewers, are anxious to see how this turns out. But instead, the camera flips to a lone, insignificant-looking woman in the crowd trying to subtly get closer and closer to Jesus. The screenplay lets you read her mind. You learn of her debilitating hemorrhages that are going to kill her soon. She is certain that just a touch of Jesus’s clothes will heal her. And she’s trying to do this as inconspicuously as possible, because she is considered ritually unclean in her situation. In that community she shouldn’t be touching anyone. So what happens? Jesus senses the healing power that she receives and he says, “Who touched my clothes?” And the disciples, in disbelief, say, ‘well how can you say that?’, with all the crowd around him. But Jesus looked all around to see who had done it. “The woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.” What was supposed to be a subtle inconspicuous act, couldn’t have become more public if she tried. Everyone hears about her condition and about her healing. And Jesus calls her ‘Daughter’ – a daughter of Israel – part of God’s People – something that she would not have been considered to be for the last 12 years.
And then, just as we’re feeling good about the resolution of that plot, the characters from the first plot show up with the bad news. It’s over. Jairus’s daughter has died. The action shot stops and we’re wondering – is the show over? And if it was in our modern day television you’d be breaking to a commercial break at that point, leaving viewers in anticipation of what’s going to happen. But when we go back, Jesus says ‘No.’ He steps in and addresses Jairus with these words, “Do not fear, only believe!” It ain’t over yet folks! And now, what would have been a very public act of healing becomes very private and intimate - Jesus, Peter, James, and John, and the young girl’s parents – that’s it – that’s all who are present when they go to the girl’s room. And when Jesus arrives at the house, it looks like the odds of a good outcome are definitely against him. Mark says, that “when he came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion – people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went into where the child was.” Jesus then raises her to life and Mark adds that Jesus told her parents to give the girl something to eat. This seems to be common in the Gospels. If you want to prove that a dead person has become alive again, you have them publicly eat something, just as the resurrected Jesus did in front of his disciples to prove that he was not a ghost but was, indeed, a living being.
These two narratives have a lot in common, but I want to point out just a few of those things. First of all, both of the central characters are women, and in that society they are basically powerless because one of them is ritually unclean and is excluded from the community, and the other is just a child. Yet, both have rich, one-on-one encounters with Christ, and both are made whole and affirmed as part of God’s people. But both of those situations require faith that penetrates fear. Jairus needs to continue to trust Jesus even after the report of his daughter’s death. And the hemorrhaging woman has to come clean with her whole story to Jesus and the crowd, after she’s been found out. And in both cases, in a way, the turn of events is not what is expected and could not have been predicted.
So, what about us? Besides possible personal crises that some of us may be going through at this time, what anxiety-causing, fearful situations are we all dealing with? I can easily think of two – Covid-19 and the variants of concern, and the continuing discoveries of unmarked children’s graves on the sites of former residential schools. And whether you’re indigenous, in which case each one of these revelations feels like a knife stab; or non-Indigenous, in which each case is a fresh revelation of the sinister path from which your current life extends. Both of these crises can impact how we see ourselves, our self-confidence, and how we view and feel about our personal and corporate future.
How is God’s Word calling us to respond? Today’s Psalm, which we sang as a metrical psalm/hymn from Psalm 130 captures it very well. You may want to turn to that. It’s just one page earlier before the Gospel on p. 4. Here’s how the Psalmist begins: Out of the depths I turn to you on high;
Lord hear my call. Bend down your ear and listen to my cry, forgiving all. If you should mark our sins, who then could stand? But grace and mercy dwell at your right hand.
“Forgiving all” and “If you should mark our sins.” This is not about whether we deserve to be made whole, or even listened to; not that we deserve to be healed of either anxiety, but rather it is based on God’s grace and mercy. In today’s Gospel we have no idea of the moral life of the woman who was healed, or of Jairus, necessarily, though he’s a synagogue leader – clergy are sinners too. And as Psalm 130 states, they reach toward God with their cry. Verse 2 reads: I wait for you, I trust your holy word; you hear my sighs. My soul still waits and looks unto you, Lord; my prayers arise. I look for you to drive away my night – yes, more than those who watch for morning light. You sense the yearning, the waiting, the willingness to thrust oneself on God’s mercy, not really knowing the outcome. And then, finally, in verse 3 we read, Hope in the Lord: unfailing is God’s love; trust and confide. Mercy and full redemption from above does grace provide. From sin and evil, mighty though they seem, God’s saving arm will all the saints redeem.
We have no idea how these issues in our lives will be resolved. But we press on as Jairus did, as the woman did, entrusting ourselves to God’s unfailing love. Whether it is about Covid-19, or Canada’s horrific residential school legacy, not knowing how or when it will come to a good end, to closure. But putting our faith in a God that knows us – all of us great and small; and loves us – all of us of every race; and redeems and saves us – all of us regardless of our past, this is the God that Jesus in the Gospels shows us. This is the God who walks with each of us – now and forever.
Amen.
