Readings: Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15, 2:23-24 Mark
5: 21-43
We pray: May the
words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your
sight, O God, our rock and our sustainer.
Amen.
A couple of days
ago Mike introduced me to a you-tube clip that has been doing the rounds on
social media - a programme called Carpool Karaoke – where host James Corden
invited Paul McCartney to hop in the car with him and tour around Paul’s old
haunts in Liverpool singing as they went.
And there were at least two stops, one at the house where he lived as a
teenager and another at one of the pubs where the band used to play. And at both of those places, the word he was
there spread like wildfire and he came out to crowds of people just wanting to
say hi, shake his hand – there was a quick ‘named my son after you, Paul’ – and
to generally get a look at this legend that is Paul McCartney of the Beatles
whose crowd pulling ability was a phenomenon of its time and still is.
You might also,
those of an age, also be remembering the furore caused by John Lennon’s comment
in 1966 in America that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus and rock music
would outlive Christianity. Provocative
stuff indeed and still so.
Well I reckon
Jesus was the rock musician of his day – the authorities didn’t know what to do
with this disruptive phenomenon and the
crowds gathered to say hello, listen to, touch, be part of the experience that
seemed to flow out of this carpenter turned preacher, healer, rule
breaker. The crowds seemed naturally
drawn to him and followed him where they could. We remember Jesus hopping in a
boat to find some respite – but the people were waiting on the other side of the
lake. And the people were from all walks of life – Jews, Gentiles, priests and
the unclean, doubters and believers, disciples and disclaimers - they were all
there waiting, hoping to encounter this perplexing man who pulled the crowds
like no-one they had ever seen - and some of them were there because they were
in desperate straits seeing Jesus as their last hope when all else had failed
them. Remember the man dropped down
through the roof, another up the tree, the blind beggar, the leper – all pinning
their hopes for life on this man Jesus.
Tara
Woodward-Lehman[1]
put it like this when pondering who people thought Jesus to be:
There were the
curious who considered Jesus a novelty
There were the
sceptical, who considered Jesus likely a fraud
There were the
starstruck, who considered Jesus a celebrity
There were the
faithful, who considered Jesus a friend, teacher, leader
Then there were
those who were just plain desperate.
And so we hear
today about two more of those desperate people – one whose daughter was dying
and the other who was to all accounts dead to the world – two people who
reached out to Jesus in faith because they were at the end of their hope and
they saw in him something others didn’t.
To both Tabitha’s
father and the haemorrhaging woman (I am going to name her Judith for today –
she deserves a name along with Jairus and Tabitha I think), Jesus was the last
hope to their desperate need, for they knew somehow in their need that Jesus
was the answer.
Their desperation
and their faith in the healing power of Jesus shows in their approaches – a
high official from the temple, full of authority and influence and reputation,
on his knees – as one commentary said ‘..he kicks propriety to the curb, falls
on his knees at the feet of Jesus, and shamelessly begs…’ and a nameless women,
a social outcast, perpetually unclean, who braved the anger and I suspect
potential violence of the crowd to reach this man and, not feeling able to
speak to him or stand up for fear of being hustled out of his reach, she
instead reaches out her hand to touch his cloak.
Jairus and Judith
– from very different lives both seeing the beyond the hype to the very centre
of this man Jesus in their despair.
One of the most
interesting part of this scripture reading is in the way the two stories
entwine – Jairus, able and willing to advocate for his little girl, becomes the
bystander to a women who has no advocate whatsoever - and Jesus claims her as ‘daughter’ telling
the world that he is the one that intercedes for the marginalised, that she too
is a beloved child of God through her faith in Jesus, she too has someone to
speak up for her.
I wonder how
Jairus felt – impatiently waiting while Jesus responded to this random woman in
the crowd. And his fears were realised –
he hears that his daughter has died before Jesus could get there. He could be excused for feeling angry at the
delay, upset that Judith, by her intervention, has possibly lost him his child
– yet Jesus pre-empted any outpouring of outrage or grief by the words: ‘Do not
fear. Only believe!’ Come with me….
We do not hear
Jairus’ reply, only that he went with Jesus. And that Tabitha rose up from her
bed healed.
So what are we to
take from these stories of faith, of desperation, of hope and healing?
One very obvious
but often overlooked truth is that the stories of healing in the Gospel reading
would in no way overcome the inescapable fact that we all eventually die – its
one of the absolute certainties in our changing world – and there is no suggestion
that by invoking the touch of Jesus we will avoid this thing called death.
It is interesting
here to look at the passage from the Wisdom of Solomon – who acknowledges
death, but refuses to see it as a construct of God, but rather of the devil. He
speaks instead of faith as the belief that death itself does not have the last
word, that in belief the relationship with God continues past death into
recreated life. Jesus likewise does not
deny death – but speaks into the power of God to overcome it, to continue in
relationship with us beyond death and into life. Perhaps it might not be harps and clouds and
the gates of St Peter but we need to understand that God does not let us go
into death abandoned or separated from the love of the God of eternity.
And this leads us
down another thought track – we know that sometimes the bleeding doesn’t stop,
the child does die, the prayers do not halt the cancer. Our response to death can be to blame God, or
to say we have not been prayerful enough or faithful enough or good enough in
our living to have been heard by God.
That thinking is problematic on so many fronts – but let us just say for
now that the God of grace does not bow to the supposed wisdom of humankind
–that healing is not always about physical symptoms, that healing is needed
even when we don’t know we are sick, that healing is not so much about curing
but, in the words of 20th century theologian Jurgen Moltman, is
about developing “the ability to cope with pain, sickness and death”. Being
healthy is about having the strength to be human, as bringing divine love into
the place of fear and powerlessness.[2]
The hymn words of
Graham Bell gather these thoughts for me, resonate:
We cannot measure how you heal or answer every
sufferer’s prayer,
yet we believe your grace responds where faith and
doubt unite to care.[3]
And this what we
see, do we not, in the healing of Jairus.
No, he is not physically pulled back from the brink of death, yes he is
delighted at the return of his beloved 12 year old daughter when he thought her
gone, no he is not wanting fixed the scene of his complete abandonment before
Jesus, none of those. No, Jairus’
healing comes in his moment of surrender of all that he held worthy (his
authority, his influence, his reputation) before one who he recognised in this
moment of desperation as truth, love and life.
Let us be honest
about our weaknesses, accept that healing is needed in our lives in ways we
might not envisage, and remember that it is better to take our desperation
before Jesus than to perish in the limitations of worthiness the world places
on us. Let us, above all, acknowledge
the desire of Jesus Christ to welcome us in our desperation and to name us
daughter and son through our faith.
We finish with
more words from John Bell:
God, let your Spirit meet us here to mend the body,
mind, and soul,
to disentangle peace from pain, and make your broken
people whole.
Margaret Garland
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