I have to admit that I had trouble writing this sermon for
today. Not because we just returned from vacation, rather because of what
happened prior to my vacation—and how it made me react to today’s reading.
A couple of days before I left, Charity and the boys went to
Florida so that they could spend some time with her family. She and I would
obviously keep up with one another regularly. One day, she calls and tells me
that one of her cousins had been in a near fatal car accident, and had been
taken to the hospital. Apparently she had damaged some of the vertebrae in her
neck, and they were afraid if they moved her too much, she would have stopped
breathing.
So, she spent the next day or so in ICU, and her family,
including Charity and her parents had gotten the prayer chain working.
Apparently, somehow, within the 48 hours that followed,
Charity’s cousin was released from the hospital with nothing more than a
plastic neck brace and probably some pain meds… Later, a couple of the people
who had been in the room with her reported seeing an angel enter the room and
cradle her head before she came to and soon after released…
I have to say it’s an amazing story, and I really have no
rational explanation for what happened. Obviously something divine—but what
troubles me is that while I am happy for this woman, it leaves me with far more
questions than it answers. Specifically, I wonder about all of the other people
in the world who are wishing and hoping for healing, but don’t seem to ever get
it.
Today’s Gospel reading, then, seems to only complicates
things further for me. And I’m sure I’m not alone in this sentiment.
Here we have Jesus returning from this tour of the Decapolis,
these Gentile lands. He’s just cured people and exorcised demons, and here he
has returned to his own people.
Right away, this man, Jairus comes to Jesus and begs him to
come to heal his daughter, because she has been ill. All around him, Jesus has
a number of people—perhaps also begging for healing of their own—pressing in on
him and his disciples.
Agreeing to help Jairus, who we’re told was a leader in the
synagogue, Jesus and his disciples begin pressing through the crowd.
Along the way then, a woman who has been dealing with a
hemorrhage for years, sees Jesus. And she knows that if she can just touch him
or even his clothes, she could be healed.
So, she pushes her way to him, touches his garment and she
knows suddenly in herself that she is healed. But Jesus, even in this crowd,
knew something had happened, and asks who touched him. His disciples think he’s
ridiculous because the crowd is so thick—but the woman (who would have been
considered ritually unclean) comes to Jesus and tells him that she had touched
him. And this is where we get the completion of this particular healing, as
Jesus pronounces her to be whole as well as healed.
Now, in the meantime, while all of this has happened with the
woman, Jairus’ daughter died while Jesus was interrupted by this woman. But in
the end, Jesus even resurrects the girl, and everything seems to be alright.
In the Gospel writer’s usual style (in Mark), we have a story
which interrupts a larger story—and each of them work together to highlight a
particular aspect of who Jesus is and the meaning of his ministry to the world.
In this case, of course, he’s already spent time with
Gentiles, healing and preaching, and he even returns to heal a woman and
resurrect a little girl. All of them, technically, were ritually unclean, yet
all of them receive healing from Jesus. So, we can see that by his very
presence, Jesus supersedes political, social and religious norms—not to mention
his supernatural authority and power.
In this particular story, we see commonality in the
desperation of these people. Jairus, the leader of a synagogue, is desperate
enough to beg this strange faith-healer and teacher (who has been with ritually
unclean people, I might add) to come to his house to heal his daughter.
Likewise, this woman is willing to press through a crowd of people just to
touch Jesus in hope of healing.
These are obviously powerful witnesses to the authority and
love of God in the person of Jesus. These are accounts which were meant to give
the early followers of Jesus, and all the rest of us hope.
But as all of us know, hope can be as dangerous a thing as it
can be beautiful.
Hope can be the very thing that helps us through some of the
toughest times in our lives—it can give us purpose to endure some of the most
heartbreaking things in life. Hope can shed even the faintest light in the
darkest places of this world.
But this same hope can be dangerous if it is a false hope.
And I think that at times we might feel this way—fear that the thing for which
we hope most might be in vain. We might wonder if the hope that we have is
really self-delusion.
And sometimes, what can be harder, is seeing something hoped
for come to pass for someone else, while we wait as nothing seems to happen…
This is the sort of thing that went through my mind as I
began working through the lessons for today. It honestly bothered me enough
that when I met with my colleague group, I almost felt like a bad person for
failing to really celebrate such a miraculous recovery as the one seen in
Charity’s family. Like I said, I was left with more questions than answers.
The next day, however, one of the people in my colleague
group sent me a link to a blog that discussed this very same issue in light of
today’s Gospel reading. The author of the blog referred to a scene in the movie
Shawshank Redemption, where the main
character played by Tim Robbins has just come back from spending time in
solitary confinement. After his friends ask him how he made it through, he
tells them he just listened to Mozart the entire time. At first his friends are
confused, but he explains that the music was in his head, and he kept hold of
it because it gave him hope.
Red, the cynical and experienced character played by Morgan
Freeman, warns him that hope can be dangerous…
Of course, not to ruin the movie for anyone, in the end hope
does in fact come through—and it becomes clear that hope can be dangerous, but
somehow beautiful at the same time.
This pushed me to look a little closer at the Gospel
reading—but more importantly, it made me look a little closer at my own heart.
And, after quite a lot of prayer, and soul-searching; a few things came
together.
First off, in the story about the woman who touched Jesus’
clothes; she might have gotten a physical healing when she touched Jesus, but
the true turning point of the story happens when Jesus speaks to her. Because
it’s then that she receives a blessing from Jesus and a pronouncement of
wholeness.
It’s my sense that often we confuse healing and wholeness as
being the same things. That’s not to say that in seeking healing that we aren’t
looking for wholeness—rather that wholeness is a much deeper thing; and it may
be very possible that some of us receive wholeness without healing.
Also, I think for anyone who has been with a loved one before
they pass away, they’ve experienced how the person who is dying has a kind of
peace. Even if there might be some fear, there is often still a sense of
wholeness that can’t be easily ignored.
Secondly, I believe that even if we do not receive the
physical healing that we ask for—for ourselves or another person—I believe that
somehow being with people who are hurting, or suffering (and sharing with them
in their experience), somehow it makes us all more whole. It somehow makes us
more human, and challenges us to understand ourselves and our relationships
with God as well as others.
The truth is, however, that there really are no easy answers.
Perhaps the more that we read about and hear about all that Jesus did in the
Gospels, we may begin to feel as if we’re missing out on a lot.
But what we forget, is that even in the Gospels, there were
people who were not healed, and people who did not always have an easier life
for having known Jesus and believing in him. Ironically, this is the reason
that the Gospels were written—so that those of us who don’t have an easier
life, yet still believe, could have some hope.
It may very well be that hope for healing (which may come to
pass). It may be hope for a better life—who knows. But what the Gospels are at
least honest about, and continue to remind us, is that our hope is never in
vain. Even if we doubt, or feel that what we hoped for has failed to come to
pass; we are still encouraged to hope. Because what we hope for may be much
more short-sighted than what God has in mind for us.
Hope may be a dangerous
thing, but the alternative of hopelessness seems that it would render life
barren and unbearable. After all, to hope is to look beyond circumstance and
trust that there is something far better. In light of that, hope for all of its
possible dangers seems no less an incredibly beautiful thing.
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