In the name of the God of all healing, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
This morning’s “Gospel sandwich” is a really compelling one. The story of the woman with hemorrhages is sandwiched between the beginning and the end of the story of Jairus’ daughter. As an aside, Mark uses this technique pretty often in his Gospel and, naturally, the technique has a name. So, next time you’re at a cocktail party and want to impress someone with your bible knowledge, tell them that Mark is known for his use of intercalation. The intercalated or interpolated stories this morning are both very powerful. When they are read together, they can lead us to a belief that God can bring healing to any illness, no matter how long lived or severe.
Mark tells us that the inserted story is about, “a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse.” Twelve years of near constant bleeding is unfathomable for me. But twelve years of bleeding in a society where touching or even getting close to blood was taboo is even more difficult for me to come to grips with. Because there are many levels to this short story, there are multiple messages that can be pulled from it. But the one I would like to concentrate on this morning is this: it does not matter how serious the illness may be nor how long it might have persisted, it is not beyond God’s healing power.
Jairus’s daughter is one of three people Jesus raises from the dead in the Gospels. This story, the raising of the widow of Nain’s son (in Luke), and the raising of Lazarus (in John) are each distinct from the other, and each has a particular message to impart about the love of God in Jesus Christ. But they all have at their core the message that there is nothing that is beyond the healing power of God … not even death. That incredible healing power of God in Christ is something that I have personally witnessed throughout my life as a priest.
Several times, in years past, Donna, Taylor and I have gone to a family camp for people with special needs, run by a national organization called Joni and Friends. Every year we attended, for five days, we were surrounded by something on the order of 170 “campers,” who ranged in age from about 4 or 5 years old, up to some in their 50s, all of whom had something that our society refers to as a “disability.” There were plenty there who, like Taylor, were born with Down Syndrome; some high functioning, others not so much. There were many in wheel chairs – paraplegic; quadriplegic and those who, while not catastrophically paralyzed, simply had no control over their limbs because of some neurologic problem. And there was almost every shade of autism that you can imagine – from those who, when you meet them, seem just slightly different from you, all the way to those who are led around by hand wherever they go, and who have no ability to verbalize their thoughts at all. Each of these campers was accompanied by family members and “STMs” or “Short Term Missionaries,” people who volunteer their time and talents to be one-on-one buddies to the campers for the week.
One hundred and seventy people of all shapes, sizes and diagnoses – most born with whatever makes them differently abled, but some who had gone through a traumatic event that changed their lives forever – all gathered at a Christian camp where they ate, learned, played and worshipped together. So what’s the deal? Why are these folks the way they are? Do these people – or the people around them who love them deeply – not have “sufficient faith” for them to be healed? Because I’ve got to tell you, I met some people at that camp who have incredible faith; people who really live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ every day.
One year, Taylor’s partner (as she referred to her) was an eighteen year old named Jacqueline, whose entire family paid their own way to camp. And who each had their own camper for whom they were servants for a week. The light of Christ shown so brightly in and through this family that sun glasses would have been helpful when we were around them. These disciples of Jesus Christ – and almost 200 others like them – prayed for all of the campers every day. Was their faith insufficient to bring about miraculous healings?
Unfortunately, there are many people who are taught (and who teach) that it is a lack of faith that keeps people like those campers from being healed. If you take nothing else away from this sermon, please remember this: the size of your faith does not dictate how God treats you! Every one of us is a beloved child of God. And God does not love one child more than another – rather God loves us each individually in the way that reaches us best. But God does NOT make us earn God’s love. We could never earn God’s love or favor in 1,000 lifetimes.
We are broken humans in a broken world, who have been offered the gracious gift of God’s love. So when someone tells you, “If only you had prayed harder,” or “If only you had more faith,” something might have turned out differently – you have my permission to think about hitting them. DON’T hit them, but you have permission to think about it. Believe me, they deserve it!
The size and depth of Jairus’ faith and the woman’s faith were important aspects of this story. These details are there to inspire us to seek deeper and broader faith – not to indict us when things don’t turn out the way we would like. For every miraculous healing in the Gospels, there were hundreds and thousands of people who did not receive the same sort of healing. That does not make those people unfaithful. And it does not mean that God does not love them. The reason that some are miraculously healed and some are not is a mystery – I am not capable of answering that for you. Trying to figure that out is trying to understand the mind of God, and that is so far above me that I do not even attempt it. Instead, I try to look in different ways for what healing might look like.
At Joni and Friends camp, one of the big highlight events is the talent show that takes place on the last night there. Anyone can do something for the show. There are no auditions and no one says, “People don’t want to see that.” Instead, a few hundred people sit enraptured while they watch acts that vary from singing and dancing to reciting the alphabet. And every act gets a standing ovation from those in the audience who can stand.
One year there were two acts that really stuck out to me. The first was a dance act. A twenty-something year old paraplegic man and a similarly aged quadriplegic woman (who communicated by blinking) danced together in wheelchairs, to the song Never Die Young. There was a beauty and grace to their careful choreography, as two motorized chairs moved back and forth, spinning and gliding together and apart, while James Taylor’s voice admonished us to: “Never give up, never slow down. Never grow old, never ever die young.” It was beautiful. It was heartfelt. It was inspirational.
And there was a young woman of indeterminate age who was – to all outward appearance – not engaged with the world around her. She could walk, but had to be led wherever she went. She does not speak and I do not believe that she can see. She came on stage with her mother and her teenaged brother and sister. While she stood in the middle of the stage, they projected words on a screen. Her brother played the piano and he and the sister sang the words to the poem that this young woman wrote on a special communication device she has. The poem was entitled, A Song of Praise, and it sounded much like a Psalm, written by someone who had a deep and abiding gratitude to God for all of the gifts they had been given in life.
The song was plain; the words not flowery or ostentatious. It was the simple and straightforward expression of a love of God and an amazing statement of appreciation for life. Wherever I looked as this song ended, I saw people wiping tears from their eyes.
Why hasn’t Jesus brought healing to all of these faithful people? He HAS! Everywhere in that room there was wholeness. Every face reflected the love of Christ for all of God’s creation. Nowhere was there judgmentalism, hatred, discord or enmity. There were only God’s children – in every color, size, shape and ability – loved, cared for and … perfectly healed in God’s eyes.
Amen.
[Proper 8 Sermon 062721, 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Psalm 130, 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43]
