HOLY DESPERATION

Mark 5:21-35

She is homeless. In her culture people are repulsed by her condition of unceasing menstruation. Long ago she used up all her money, and now no doctor will treat her. Nobody in the crowd knows her name. She carries almost nothing with her. The pieces of the world that she once counted on have been stripped away from her. Health. Money. Home. Family. Community. Everything she knew is gone. Except maybe one thing. Her body. Her bleeding, painful body. Twelve years of serious illness have brought her into intimate acquaintance with her own body. She has become its doctor, nurse, caregiver. She knows exactly how much strength it will take to walk to the next street corner. If she wakes up already feeling the piercing cramps, she knows that this will be a bad day. The woman's relationship with her body has taught her much about pain and isolation, and now her bodily suffering drives her toward Jesus in a last-ditch scramble to find wholeness.

She makes an unlikely heroine, doesn't she? But this person is at the very heart of the text Tom just read from the Gospel of Mark. The gospel narrator sees her, tells her story, spotlights her out of the faceless crowds thronging around Jesus, the reputed miracle worker. And we see she's an interloper. Jesus, after all, is already on an errand of mercy. He's making his way to the home of an important religious leader, Jairus, whose sick daughter hovers near death. As Jesus moves away, pushing through the crowded street, the woman lunges desperately to grasp his cloak.

"Immediately her hemorrhage stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease." Her body--her one companion and her source of knowledge--now announced to her that she was healed! She knew in her body that she had been saved. And here's where the story gets even more fascinating. It turns out that like the woman, Jesus also shows keen awareness of his embodied self. "Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him," Jesus halts in his tracks. He scans the crowd looking for someone who touched him with purpose. But imagine how Jairus feels at this point: his daughter is dying, this miracle worker might be her only hope, and now he's stopping in the street to ask stupid questions! "Who touched me?" The crowd is fifty people deep in every direction! Still Jesus waits and looks around carefully.

The homeless, healed woman steps forward in terror. She blurts out the truth about why she touched Jesus, tells him her bleeding has stopped. She knows what happened to her, but will the healer be angry with her for "stealing" his power? Or will he despise her for making him ritually unclean, since he has now been touched by a woman having her period? Jesus doesn't seem to worry about any of that. Instead he looks her in the eyes and warmly addresses her as "Daughter." He treats the messy homeless woman like family. He wants to speak with her, to hear her tell her story. And that's not all. That desperate drive she had to seek healing from Jesus? He calls that faith. Jesus sends her away not only healed in body, but also blesses her with shalom: a sense of wholeness, abundance, connectedness, deep peace. Jesus gives her back her life.

Jairus barely pays attention to this scene. His own frantic hurrying melts into numb grief when a messenger arrives to tell him his daughter has died. Jairus had been desperate to save his beloved daughter. So desperate that he had made a public fool of himself, falling in the dust to beg for help from an itinerant preacher. And all for nothing because now his worst fear had come true. But Jesus keeps doing the unexpected. He ignores the apparent finality of the messenger's statement. He tells Jairus, "Do not fear, only believe." It's like he's saying, "You know the faith that woman just showed? You could use some of that!"

When Jesus gets to Jairus' house, he takes inside the girl's father and mother, and Peter, James, and John. All of them had some idea of what Jesus was about: the disciples spent every day with him, and Jairus at least had hoped that Jesus had the power to restore someone from illness. But in that room, Jesus takes the hand of the dead little girl--once again making himself ritually unclean, if you're keeping score--he takes her hand and says "Little girl, get up!" When she actually does so, we read that "they were overcome with amazement." Our English Bible translation is trying to give a grammatically smooth rendering. But to picture the actual jaw-dropping in that room, you've got to know that the original Greek text reads "Immediately they were amazed with great amazement!" Mark is trying to tell us that something outrageous happened.

So where does this startling set of healing stories leave us? Are these just magic fairy tales from the Ancient Near East? Do we look skeptically at reports of God healing someone? Is it just the stuff of charismatic revivals and fundamentalist tent meetings? I'd like to suggest three things for us to consider.

First, it's okay to be in desperate need. Both the woman and Jairus came to Jesus in holy desperation. Their real-life pain broke down their internal barriers and allowed them to take serious risks in coming to Jesus. The more we understand our own fragility, the more we are freed to seek Christ's healing presence for ourselves. Physical or mental illness can inspire this kind of faith, a version of self-knowledge that can drive us to seek God's healing. Of course we would never wish such pain on anyone, no matter how much spiritual growth might result. But human life is often painful. When have you felt the most desperate for healing? In my pastoral associate role here in this church, I have started to know many of you, including those who live daily with pain or grief or uncertainty. Our gospel text shows us that Jesus meets people where they live, and where they suffer. Jesus met the bleeding woman and the fearful father at their points of deepest need. And the living Christ is already seeking our healing. Jesus does not wait for people to get their theology correct, or to make the right choices, or to improve their church attendance. These stories remind us that God simply welcomes our cries for help. That in itself is faith! The wonderfully honest writer Anne Lamott says that her two favorite prayers are "Help me! Help me! Help me!" and "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

Second, I think it's important that Jesus' disciples were present for both of these healings. Like they were, we are called to join with Christ in his ministry. We are invited to take part, as Jesus did, in healing the suffering of people around us. We are, after all, the Body of Christ! Some people here have obvious gifts for healing: medical expertise, training in therapy, the ability to mediate disputes, and so on. One way each of us can be involved in Christ's healing ministry is through compassion: simply being present with those in need. Our deacons in this church have a program called Friends and Visitors, which matches up sick or homebound people with a church member who will visit sometimes, pray for them, and stay in touch. That's a ministry I would like to see us expand. Jesus modeled compassion like this when Jairus begged in desperation for Jesus' help. Jesus didn't question Jairus about his daughter's illness. He didn't test Jairus in any way. He simply went with him, walking with Jairus along his road of sorrow and fear. Later, of course, Jesus would walk his own sorrowful road to the cross.

Finally, a third practical lesson from these gospel stories: we may or may not receive the kind of healing we ask for. But God may bring about other kinds of healing. And faith in Jesus Christ may bring us to the shocking surprise that Jesus' healing power goes way beyond what we think is possible. The woman hoped to stop her bleeding, and she tried to receive that kind of healing without anyone knowing about it. Jesus surprised her by seeking relationship with her and restoring her to community. And Jairus learned the astounding lesson that Jesus Christ has saving power even over death. Our Christian hope is that God's healing care for us does not stop at the end of our lives. As the apostle Paul writes, "Neither death, nor life, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

 

July 2, 2006