|
|
“The Priority and Power of the Poor”
Mark 5:21-43
A sermon preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Mark’s Gospel doesn’t let us get away with much. It’s not preachy like John’s Gospel. It doesn’t proof-text like Matthew’s Gospel. It doesn’t spiritualize things like Luke’s Gospel. Mark tells stories. And in those stories we find our own stories, our own truth. And we are constantly asked to embrace the truth of the Gospel: to be the good soil, to no longer be confined by the demons that once controlled us. And through the Gospel story interacting with our story, we are to come to some kind of healing in our own lives. That’s how we live the good news. More on that later.
Today’s Scripture juxtaposes two stories of healing and it is in this juxtaposition that we get a further clue into Jesus’ life, ministry and message. Maybe it will give us a new insight to our own message, our own ministry.
As today’s scripture opens, we meet Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue—a person of nobility and place. Jesus had previously snubbed the synagogue leadership, but Jairus was desperate. His daughter, one of two unnamed women in this story, was deathly ill. In fact, in Matthew’s version of this same story, she had already died. But Mark is more deliberate and more interested in pointing out God’s priorities. Mark is more interested in the creative drama. The girl is still alive. But she is deathly sick and Jairus knows that if Jesus would lay hands on her, she might be made well. Jairus had, we can assume, seen or at least heard about Jesus’ healing powers. A desperate father, as a last ditched effort, called on Jesus. “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.”
So Jesus went with the man to do as he had been asked.
Now, Jesus had made quite a name for himself. And now that he returned from his jaunt across the sea in the land of the Gerasenes, The people were waiting. The scripture says that a whole crowd of people followed him. Perhaps there was a whole crowd of people who wanted healing. Perhaps the people were seeing that Jesus paid a lot of attention to the leaders of the synagogue and had ignored them and that made them mad. Have you ever felt ignored when you are in need? It makes you mad, doesn’t it?
Our government is great at sending troops all over the world to solve problems out there, but what about the abuses and addiction, and lack of healthcare and hope here at home? As we prepare for another war in the middle east, we are cutting back again on basic services to the poor and marginalized. There are those of us who feel mad. We want healing now! Sure Jesus listens to the ruler of the synagogue, but what about us?
Well, among the crowd was a woman who had a flow of blood for 12 years. She had been bleeding for as long as Jairus’ daughter had been alive. Not only that, but doctors had misdiagnosed her, overcharged her for medications and told her that there was nothing more that could be done for her, especially since her health insurance had run out. And to add insult to injury, Jairus himself had banned her from the synagogue for 12 years. He had done so by righteously quoting the book of Leviticus, chapter 15, which said that a woman with a flow of blood was unclean and therefore unworthy to reap the benefits of the synagogue. They feared they would be contaminated by contact with her.
This unnamed woman, however, was desperate. She was at least as desperate as Jairus. She had been put off and had experienced enough delays and insults, thank you very much. The problem was, she couldn’t get Jesus’ attention. That was until she got herself close enough to touch just the hem of his garment, to contaminate Jesus.
You know what happened. She touched just the corner of his garment and she was healed. Her bleeding stopped.
So many of us have pain in our lives. We need that healing, that sense of calm, that shelter from the storm. We need the hem of that garment!
Jesus, we know, stopped when the woman touched his garment. Perhaps he realized that he was more concerned with Jairus and his daughter than he was with all of these other people.
The woman came to him and told him it was she that touched his garment. The scripture then said that she told him the TRUTH.
Perhaps she told Jesus of her previous therapy at the hands of the medical establishment and the way the religious establishment not only disregarded her, but condemned her.
Perhaps she reminded him that all of God’s people need and deserve healing, not just the rich and powerful.
Perhaps she reminded him that his mission was to bring justice and mercy and love to all of God’s people.
Perhaps, like the Syrophoenecian woman, she reminded Jesus of his own calling. Whatever she said, Jesus was moved. He told her that it was her great faith that made her well.
Now, Jairus, we can assume, watched all of this in horror. Not only had Jesus touched someone who was a known sinner in his eyes, making Jesus ritually unclean himself, Jesus was wasting time and was delaying the healing of his daughter.
It turned out that by the time Jesus and Jairus got to the girl, the paid mourners had already begun their wailing.
“We’re too late”, cried Jairus. But Jesus said to him, “Be not afraid, only believe.” In other words, “O ruler of the synagogue, have the faith of the one you have banished for a dozen years. Have the faith of the woman who just touched my garment and then told me the truth.”
You know the end of the story. Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead and father and daughter were reunited.
Commentators make a big hullabaloo about this, because it foreshadows Jesus’ own resurrection.
I am more concerned, however, with the fact that God is there working out God’s purpose in God’s own time. God is healing both the poor and the rich. All that is required is faith. God has not forgotten about anyone.
Let’s look a little more closely at this story. Sure, one of the points Jesus makes in this scripture is that the poor have power and even priority in Jesus’ mind. Jesus stops his pursuit of healing Jairus’ daughter to hear the truth of an anonymous, abused and tormented woman. He gave her priority. Jairus did everything right. He addressed him properly, as an equal. He knelt at his feet. He humbly asked Jesus to heal his daughter. But the woman with the flow of blood did not even address Jesus. She spoke to herself, “maybe if I touch him, he’ll heal me,” They were at the opposite ends of the social spectrum. But when Jesus called her daughter, he affirmed again that the poor and the outcast are sons and daughters of the family of God. As Ched Myers puts it: “Only when the outcast woman is restored to true “daughterhood” can the daughter of the synagogue be restored to true life. That is the faith the privileged must learn from the poor.”(Say to This Mountain, p. 66).
The woman is physically healed, and also socially restored.
A woman on the bottom of the honor scale intrudes upon the mission of Jesus on behalf of a young woman on the top of the honor scale.
Jesus is advocating a new social order where all are treated equal: where race and class and even gender do not matter when it comes to getting health care, respect and dignity.
Who is today’s hemorrhaging woman?
Is it the people in the middle east, so torn by war and poverty that they will turn to anyone to bring them order?
Is it the immigrants who have no home and no hope for freedom and dignity as we deny them rights?
Is it the people with AIDS here and especially abroad who have little money or hope for a cure let alone treatment?
Is it the
Apache people in
Is it the
people of
Is it the glbt communities that fight for dignity and hope against a powerful religious machine that wants to keep them down?
Is it the twin evils of racism and sexism that continue to keep white men in positions of domination while others have to tow the line to get by?
Is it the millions of people without healthcare?
How have even we been the hemorrhaging woman?
Where is the hem of that garment so that we can just reach it and have some Jesus power to heal us?
The healing was physical and it was social.
The physical happened when the woman touched his garment. The social and spiritual and emotional healing happened when she told Jesus her truth. Then and only then did Jesus call her daughter.
What is your truth?
Jesus called her a person of faith after she told him his truth.
I’m so glad we take the time to share our joys and concerns as a church family. It’s one place where we dare to tell our truth. And we become like daughters and sons as the community surrounds us and acknowledges our truth. We open up the possibility of the community to aid God in the healing process.
What truth do you need to speak in order to be set free.
If you were here last Sunday, you may have taken the opportunity to rid yourself of a demon that had been tormenting you.
This week it is the time to speak your truth.
And when you do, Jesus may just come alongside of you and say, “daughter, son, your faith has made you well.”
Let me close with a story of a grieving woman. Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People tells of a woman who had lost a family member. For months she grieved and she wondered if she would ever find happiness again. She finally consulted a sage who told her to fetch a mustard seed from a home that had known no sorrow. He would use it to drive the sorrow out of her life. So she went to a rich family with well-manicured lawns, but they had plenty of sorrow behind that stately fortress. They were grieving the death of a family member themselves. Money could never replace that person. And so she ministered to them through listening and grieving with them.
She then went to a park and found happy children playing, but as she talked with people they shared their truth, that the public park was safer than the home.
She went to an office building where people pulled down big bucks, but she found people depressed who dealt with their depression by resorting to drugs and alcohol.
She went among the poor in the streets and while many people had faith, many others were filled with despair and their living conditions were sub-standard and rat-infested.
After two months of looking for happiness, she returned to the sage without a mustard seed. The sage asked, “Did you find true happiness?”
“No,” was her reply. But I did find out that I do not suffer alone. I also found out that other people’s suffering is at least as bad if not worse than mine. And I found out that they tended to feel better after telling me their story. And I find I don’t think about my own sorrow anywhere near as much.” The sage said, “then you are on the road to happiness and fulfillment.”
Sisters and brothers, God cares for you, even the poor and the outcast. God cares for the happy and mostly the sad. The good news is that the garment is just an arm’s reach away. Telling and hearing the truth will set us free. And we will live as sons and daughters of God.
Maybe you can be the ears of Jesus to someone in need of healing who is itching to tell their truth. Maybe you can listen with new ears to a hemorrhaging woman among you. Maybe you can welcome them back into the family.
When we do that, they are never the same, we are never the same, and the world takes one more step toward never being the same. For we have recognized the priority and power of the hemorrhaging woman around us. God wants her bleeding to stop, physically and emotionally. Let us be a part of that healing ministry. Let us tell the truth, hear the truth and be the truth so that we might one day be free.