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Pentecost 4, Proper 8 Lesson: 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
June 28, 2009 Psalm 130
The Rev. Karen Evans Epistle: 2 Corinthians 8:7-15
St. James’ Church, Marietta Holy Gospel: Mark 5:21-43
I speak to you in the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to lead a number of retreats and conferences. One of the things I use as an ice breaker is to invite the participants to tell me and each other about the summer when they were twelve. For Bill, for instance, it was his first summer in a new home. They had a creek that ran by the house, and he and his new friends had a great time jumping in the water, looking for frogs and things like that. That summer for me was the summer my grandmother died. I had taken my sisters to the neighborhood pool when the neighbor came to get me. She watched the little kids while I went to the hospital with my grandmother. The hardest thing, in some ways, was having to remember the phone number at our new house because that day was the day we moved in.
What amazes me is that other people have similar stories. Somehow it is an age when things happen, or at least when we remember the events more clearly. For most of us, at the very least, an age of transition.
In Jesus’ time, twelve was the age when girls were considered to be old enough to be married. For them it was a major transition. While they were still in their father’s house they were considered children. When they had moved to their husband’s house they were considered to be adults.
So the girl in our Gospel story today is on the brink of adulthood. But the summer of her twelfth year was much more memorable than that. We do not know her name, but we know that she was from a wealthy and influential family. Her father, Jairus, was a leader of the synagogue. That means he had been elected to be in charge of the local synagogue, I imagine it to be sort of a cross between Senior Warden and Mayor. We know that she got very ill when she was twelve years old.
It was her father who came looking for Jesus for help for his daughter. This man, powerful and respected, fell on his knees and repeatedly begged Jesus to make his daughter well, literally to save her.
Mark loves to put one story inside another. So it is at this point in today’s lesson that he tells about someone else who desired to be saved, someone who approached Jesus while he was on his way to Jairus’ daughter.
If girls under twelve were low on the totem pole, women with hemorrhages were even lower. So when we are introduced to a nameless woman who has had a hemorrhage for twelve years (as long as Jairus’ daughter had been alive), we immediately know something about her. She has been isolated and ostracized for a long time, because bleeding would have made her and anyone who touched her, ritually unclean. Besides that, Mark tells us, that she was poor because she had spent all of her money on doctors trying to find something that would cure her. They not only did not cure her, they made her worse, and understandably, she was desperate.
Can you imagine what went through her mind when she saw Jesus and the crowd that was following him coming down the street? I wonder if she did not think, “Do I dare go out? What will the crowd do to me if they notice me? If I touch him, what will he do to me? If I touch just his clothes, will I be saved? If he really does have the power of God in him, would it be for the likes of me? Why not?”
So she touched Jesus’ robe. Now it was crowded and lots of people touched his robe, but this time it was different. She touched him with a purpose. She touched him seeking to be made well; that is, to be saved. And God saved her. Jesus was aware that the power of God had gone through him, or gone out of him, whichever reading you prefer. He said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Whoops. We forgot about Jairus and his daughter. Even those few minutes while Jesus dealt with the woman were too many. The girl was dead. But Jesus had agreed to save her. He knew what God had intended him to proclaim – that is the power of God to heal and save. So he told Jairus that it was not all over yet. “Do not fear, only believe.”
When they got to the house, the mourning rituals had already begun. Being a man of wealth, there were probably professional mourners wailing and crying to indicate the depth of the distress of this death, but Jesus would have none of it. Throwing them all out of the house except the parents and three of his disciples, Jesus simply, quietly and gently spoke to the girl. “Talitha cum. Little girl, get up!” She did, and she started walking around. Jesus had them get her some food (because remember, ghosts do not eat). The twelfth year of her life was going to turn out all right after all. She was brought back from the dead and was saved to live the life that God had meant for her.
A few years ago, a woman who was diagnosed with cancer came to see me. Her question was, “How will I know if I have faith enough to beat this cancer? I keep praying for more faith, but I just don’t know if I have enough.”
What a horrible burden that must be on top of the cancer itself, if you feel that it is your fault that you are sick or if you feel that you are inadequate in your faith and so you will not get better. As my daughter would say, that is wrong on so many levels.
First off, Jesus was not a faith healer, nor was he a magician. It was and is God who heals, and we cannot make God do anything that God does not intend to do.
Second, the word that is translated “heal” in your bulletin is really the word for “save.” I have pointed that out in several places. God wills and intends to save us. Jesus died that we might be saved. But that does not mean that we will always have everything the way we want it, or that we will never face hardship or illness or death. Salvation is in spite of these things, not the way to get out of them.
Finally, the point of the Gospel is to encourage faith. What saves us is not belief in miracles, or the confidence that God will take away whatever is wrong in our lives. Faith, as Jesus taught it, is total and complete reliance in God. It is trusting that God is all about life and about the good. If we live that faith, we trust, we rely on God, we are saved. Saint Paul says, “Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s,” and that is really all we need. Amen.
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