"Draw Near" Mark 5:21-43
June 28, 2009
Metairie, LA
The question to ask of these miracle stories is NOT: "But did it really happen that way?" because there is simply not enough information to answer that question. Rather the question is: "How does this miracle inform our faith today? How do these stories transform observers into disciples?" Those are the questions to bring to the 2 healing stories that Mark offered his collection of followers and the questions those who seek a transformed life could well ask again today, 2 thousand years later.
Today's gospel is so strong and pointed that I cannot imagine trying to compete with it's narrative power and so I thought I might approach with an old preacher's trick, the three point sermon. Seems to me that three main point do assert themselves for exploration:
1. Jesus is a powerful healer
2. Jesus is a compelling personal presence
3. Jesus disrupts social norms and expectations
Those three points determine Marks' conclusions and mine too! Don't pay too much attention to the sermon title as a clue since I gave it to Noreen on Monday and prepared the sermon on Friday.
Point 1: Jesus is a powerful healter. This is so obvious that one is tempted to respond, "Yeah, yeah,yeah, move on to the next point." But let's pause and draw near to these twin healings, one interrupting the other. The woman with the bloody issue which plagued her for a dozen years interrupts the healing of the girl who has lived a dozen years. Neither has a name and both are identified as daughters. The bleeding woman has no family there to advocate for her. She has expended all her money to doctors, seeking a cure, to no avail. ( I might mention that of all people in the U.S. who go bankrupt, medical expenses is the leading cause, according to today's newspapers). Jesus claims her as his daughter.
The little girl is the daughter of Jairus, the high official. Both daughters, one adopted, the other one biological, are amazingly healed in the presence of Jesus. Even the hem of his garment, when you reach for it, radiates health. Many of our favorite hymns testify to healings.
"Amazing Grace", for instance. "I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see" proclaims a total transformation of a slave merchant into an abolitionist. "Precious Lord, Hold My Hand" was written by Thomas A. Dorsey after the death of his new born child and his wife, Nettie. Thought he was crushed by this loss, he experienced a spiritual transformation and switched his profession from blues hall musician to gospel writer. Consider the hymn we will sing next, "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour", by Fanny Crosby. who also penned, "Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine". In almost 95 years, Aunt Fanny, though she was blind from birth, created over 8,000 gospel songs.
All this makes me wonder- where are these people today?- the lost, the blind, the grieving, the burdened? Why are they not begging, pounding on the church door to come into the healing presence of Jesus? We say we are Biblically based but do we expect healing any more? Do we push through barriers to touch the hem? Do we tell stories of our own healings?
I can tell you that my grandmother believed deeply in the healing properties of a relationship with Jesus. Her son, Bob, was diagnosed with Hodgkins disease, a form of cancer, in 1942, a time when everyone without exception died of this disease. My grandmother begged on her knees for her son's life; do we do that anymore?
I an sure that her prayers played a role in the healing of her distress and provided deep comfort fot the young man, who lived to be 63 and produced half a dozen children. He was not "cured" but he was healed. These things do happen frequently enought to be recalled for the purpose of hopeful living, as long as life lasts.
Point 2: Jesus is a compelling personal presence- the woman literally pushes her way through the crowds to come close to him. Crowds surround him wherever he goes, hoping for a healing word, touch, encounter. Friends lift their pal, remember, down through a roof on a makeshift bed, for healing. And Jesus, though exhausted by these encounters, makes himself available wherever he goes. And he does go- to the market places, to the seaside, across fields, to his hometown, to the city, to new locations.
Jesus is not a captive of the temply; he is out and about. If the church wants to share the good news of the Kin-dom of God and share a ministry of healing and reconciliation, whay are we so confined in our sanctuary? What about bringing the presence of Jesus to the ball parks and farmer's markets, to concert halls and festivals, to My Space and Facebook? Or even just a weenie roast in our back parking lot to invite the neighbors over? Seems to me that everyone of us who knows Jesus as a healing personal presence could share that experience with one other hurting person and pray them into the presence of the healer.
In my church in New Iberia, Teche U.C.C., we sang a song called "Somebody Prayed for Me" and the song testified to the power of being prayed into the transformative presence of Jesus. And people were touched and were healed.
Point 3: Jesus disturbs the status quo, ignores the rules of his day when he strides about healing.
How do you supposed Jesus would react to the current political manoeverings of certain dentists with the Louisiana State Legislature. Have you heard it in the news? A collection of dentists are lobbying hard and effectively to close done mobile dental clinics that offer reduced cost services to children in poor neighborhood schools. The argument is that the mobile clinics do not provide as fancy services as do those dentists in offices. One third of our children receive no dental care whatsoever and the mobile units provide care that otherwise is unavailable to them. Do we really believe that what is labeled "inferior care" is better than nothing, which is what the children receive now. Do we really believe that these dentists who would deny children care from mobile units, have the children's best interests at heart? I think not. I think these dentists are benefitting from a monopoly and do not want their incomes threatened.
I won't walk us through the current national debates about our U.S. health care system except to say that as Christians we should be in the debates. Jesus, who had a radically inclusive approach to health access, ought to be our model. As we debate possible alternatives, Christians ought remember that Jesus promotes healing for all regardless of gender, age, financial wherewithal. He is not restrained or contained by social norms or purity codes.
The woman who was hemorrhaging for 12 years was a social outcast, condemned as impure, as literally polluting, in the way A.I.D.s patients were originally treated. Or the way lepers used to be approached. Jesus called her "daughter" and welcomed her as family.
Jairus, according to the customs of the day, had no business seeking out Jesus. As a high official in the religious hierarchy, it was scandalous to go outside the sacrificial temple system and seek an uncredentialled upstart to heal his daughter. It's as if a Bishop took his neice to a voodoo practitioner.
Jesus breaks down barriers of exclusion- he treats the outcasts and the successful careerist. But it is clear that you must draw near, you must fiercely desire the healing presence. Social structures like the caste system, the medical system, the religious system apparently are not very effective for those who seek healing.
What does seem to be effective is encounter with the personal presence of Jesus. And we as church, the body of Christ would do well to take that to heart.
Point 1- Jesus is a powerful healer
Point 2- Jesus is a compelling personal presence
Point 3- Jesus breaks through barriers that would exclude in order to bring healing.
Conclusion- it's all about Jesus
Today's texts are an invitation to bring wounded bodies and wounded spirits into the presence of Jesus for healing. Your own woundedness and the woundedness you encounter as you go about your daily existence.
We offer a prayer list and I pray we are engaging that list with the determination fo the woman with 12 years of bleeding and the persistence of Jairus on behalf of his daughter.
Again, the question is not- did these things happen, really happen. Rather the question is- how does the narrative empower, persuade, invite us right here, right now, to be disciples of the one who comes to heal?
Amen.
