Homily for Sunday, June 28, 2015 Graves Chapel
Lessons:
Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15: 2:23-24
Lamentations 3:21-33
Mark 5:21-43
What the next
world will be like in the life after this life is the greatest of mysteries. Speculation
about a heaven with streets of gold and pearly gates is really just
that--imaginative speculation. In the complicated gospel story for today,
however, we are given a pretty clear glimpse of the relationship we will have
with Jesus in the life to come. This story illustrates that the boundary
between life and death we imagine as an impassible wall is, for the Lord,
permeable. Certainly, we can see
that the loving compassion of Jesus is equally present on both sides of that
boundary. When Jairus is told that
his little daughter has died, Jesus says to him, “Do not fear; only believe.”
Lately, death is
something we have had too much of here at the chapel. Most recently, we lost
our beloved Dreama Travis. Then, suddenly, we learned of the death of Nelson
Lamb. In late December, our neighbor Ken Deavers passed away. And in early January, our ardent
supporter Joseph Rowe, having lived a marvelous 92 years, died peacefully. We have been saddened and diminished by
all of these deaths. We miss our friends and loved ones.
Listen
again to these words from the Book of Wisdom: “God did not make death, and he
does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so that
they might exist.” For all who
grieve, these words may be perplexing.
If “God did not make death,” why have we lost someone we love? We prayed for healing for our loved
ones, and those loved ones are no longer with us. Why weren’t our prayers for
healing answered if God did not intend anyone to die?
Is
it possible that our understanding of death is the issue—and not death
itself? When I say “understanding
of death,” I know that must sound a little crazy. After all, what is to “understand” about the cessation of
life? However we may define it, the finality of death is the wall we
unavoidably run up against. Most of us are at stages in our lives when we have
lost a significant number of people we have cared deeply about to the finality
of death. Death is death, and the void it creates is enormous. And
heartbreaking.
Even
so, I think we may agree that all deaths are not equal in their enormity. My mother died shortly after her 71st
birthday, an age that now seems very young to me. I was thirty-seven when she
died. Mama had begun to show symptoms of the rare neurological disease that
killed her about ten years before her death. She fell often, from a stiff,
upright position, bruising herself badly. Ultimately, she lost the ability to
speak and to swallow, and in the last six months of her life, she had a feeding
tube in her stomach. Although many of her acquaintances thought she had
something like Alzheimer’s that had affected her brain, Steele Richardson
Syndrome does not affect the cognitive function of the brain until the very
end. Mama was aware the whole time she was ill that she was losing the
functionality of her body. She knew.
My
mother was a woman of great faith, and some of those closest to her wondered
why she had been afflicted with such an illness. I guess some may have thought
it was God’s will that she suffered as she did. Believing as I always have that,
as the lesson from Wisdom tells us, “God did not make death, and he does not
delight in the death of the living,” I never blamed God for my mother’s illness.
I never thought it was God’s will that she suffered; after all, who has more
compassion for suffering than Jesus? I believed that her death was nothing but
a blessing. She had suffered enough. As a mother and a kind and generous
person, Mama had lived the life of an angel here on earth. I was grateful that
God had taken her to be with him in the life after this life. In my mother’s
case, death was its own kind of healing.
Today’s
Gospel lesson from Mark includes two stories of healing, deliberately interwoven
in a way that calls for deeper interpretation. The frame story is the one of
the man named Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, who comes to Jesus to seek his
help when his little daughter is gravely ill. Jesus goes with Jairus to heal
his daughter.
The
story within the story is of a woman who has suffered for twelve years from
hemorrhages. She is one of many in the crowd of people Jesus walks through on
his way to the house of Jairus. As
the Lord passes her, the woman reaches out to touch the hem of his garment, not
daring to ask Him for help. She believes that by simply touching Jesus, she
will be healed. And she is right!
As soon as she touches his cloak, she feels herself to be free from her
devastating disorder. Sensing that someone has touched him in a way that caused
power to transfer from his body to hers, Jesus asks, “Who touched my
clothes?” The grateful and
frightened woman steps forward, acknowledging her act and the healing she has
received. Jesus blesses her before continuing on to heal the little girl.
Before
they even arrive at the house of the leader of the synagogue, a messenger comes
to meet Jairus and tells him that his little daughter is already dead. The
messenger suggests that Jairus should trouble the teacher no further. Jesus, however, is not ready to be
dismissed. He says to Jairus, “Do
not fear. Only believe.” Arriving
at the house, they find a commotion of people weeping and wailing over the
death of the child. Taking a few of his disciples and the child’s parents into
the room where the girl lies, Jesus takes her by the hand and tells her to get
up. Mark says, “And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she
was twelve years of age).” We are told the parents are overcome with amazement.
They must have also been overcome with joy.
So,
what are the reasons why these two descriptions of Jesus’s healing power are intertwined? What is the underlying message of each
that is best illustrated in connection to the other? For one, the subjects of the healing are both female. In a
time and culture where women and children had no consequence at all, no rights,
no independence, we see the Lord Jesus demonstrate loving consideration for a
woman and a girl-child. Even more significantly, the affliction of continuous
hemorrhaging suffered by the older woman would have made her perpetually
“unclean” to her neighbors. As an
“unclean” woman who could never be purified, she lived a half-life in the
shadows of her community. In her social isolation and degradation, she was an
embodiment of the walking dead. Knowing how some of the elders might react with
disgust to any contact with her, she demonstrates great courage (and great
faith) when she reaches out to touch the cloak of Jesus. And what happens? Are her fingers
burned or broken by the power they encounter? Does the Lord scream at her in
rebuke for her impertinent behavior? Absolutely not! He acknowledges her, blesses her, heals her. He treats her like a human being,
worthy of love and mercy. We are
specifically told the woman has suffered from these hemorrhages for twelve
years. That is an awfully long
time to live as an unwelcome outcast. Imagine her great joy when Jesus not only
heals her, but also treats her with respect and kindness.
Now we change
settings and meet a man who, as a leader of the synagogue, would have been in a
position to declare the hemorrhaging woman unclean. Jairus may or may not have
known the woman, but as the father of a dying young girl, he feels his need of
the Lord. Once again, we see the Lord fulfill not only the faith of the person
who needs him, but also the hope.
When the daughter of Jairus is reported to be dead, Jesus says to him,
“Do not fear, only believe.” Hold
onto hope.
And
what are the details we are given about the young daughter of Jairus? We do not know the illness that
causes her death. We are not even told her name. We know that Jesus speaks to her and
says, “Little girl, get up!” And
she does get up and begin to walk about, to the amazement of her parents and
the disciples who are witnesses to this resurrection. We are also given the very precise detail of her age: twelve
years. For a girl, twelve
years of age is the symbolic time of her transition from childhood to womanhood.
It is the time of a girl’s life when she begins to experience what it means to
be unclean in her culture.
Why?
Why do we have these wonderful
stories of healing and resurrection involving women? Can the answer really be as simple as this: God loves everyone. Always. In the eyes
of the Lord, there are no outcasts, no second-class citizens, no failures, no
sinners beyond the reach of love and mercy. There is no such thing as “uncleanness” in God’s kingdom.
And
in God’s kingdom, death does not have the final word. For the unclean,
hemorrhaging, and outcast woman, her life must have felt like living death. In
healing her, Jesus gave her back her life. In the story of the little girl,
Jesus enacts His role in the passage all of us will make as we transition to
the life after this life. He says,
“The child is not dead, but sleeping.” He takes the hand of the “sleeping” girl
and invites her to join Him in his kingdom. She awakes in answer to that call.
These
words from the Book of Lamentations beautifully speak of the eternal love of
God, no matter which side of the dividing line we are on when we experience
that love: “The steadfast love of
the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.”
Or, as Jesus says, “Do not fear;
only believe.”
AMEN.
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