First Congregational United Church of Christ Appleton, Wisconsin Sermons

REACHING OUT

Scripture Reading: Mark 5:22-43

It was quite a scene this last week: the leaders of the two parties gathered around a square table. The President, the Vice-President, the Speaker of the House, Senators and Congressmen, important people all talking together about a very important subject – fixing the Health Care system. I don’t know about you, but I found it riveting. I heard all the cynical things folks said about it before and after, but I’m always excited when people are actually talking to one another, even if they’re only talking past one another. But that wasn’t the most incredible thing about the day. The incredible thing was when they were interrupted. Did you see it?

It happened after lunch, in about the sixth hour of their summit. Maybe you didn’t see it. A lot of folks had turned off their TVs and radios by then. I think, in fact, that most of the news networks had discontinued their live coverage by then. But there was this incredible moment when the high level deliberations of these high level peoples was interrupted, was disrupted, was brought to a screeching halt by what, at first, looked like a prank, but was actually kind of incredible. Did you see it? When that obviously ill woman burst in and, rather than waiting for them to figure out how to heal people, she just grabbed some healing for herself?

It didn’t happen, I know. No ill person disrupted the healthy deliberations of that day. But I’m not kidding by bringing it up because it DID happen to Jesus. It happened in our Gospel Reading this morning

This is a strange story because it’s the middle of two overlapping. When you read the Gospel of Mark carefully, you’ll notice that he likes to do this quite often, have two stories going at the same time, two stories, laid not quite end-to-end but one atop and beside the other, to give us the opportunity to see them both at once and therefore to do a little compare and contrast.

And there just about couldn’t be a greater contrast between these two: Jairus’ daughter and the woman with a hemorrhage. On the one hand we have the daughter of a leader in the synagogue, a young girl with high social standing and a strong advocate in her father who uses all the means at his disposal to get healing for his little girl. But on the other hand we have an older woman with no social standing – her illness has made her an outcast; it has stripped her of money, of her status, perhaps even of her family.

She is a woman alone; Biblically, the epitome of vulnerability and need. She calls to mind all those single women of the Bible who have come before her: Tamar and Hagar, Naomi and Ruth, Hannah and Mary, the mother of Jesus. She is burdened with illness and, because of the nature of that illness, burdened also with a social stigma – unclean! She has no one to advocate for her, no one to look after her, no one to share her suffering and minister to her need.

She is supposed to keep herself separate, keep her illness hidden, suffer her fate alone and in silence.

And she doesn’t. She wades into the crowd and reaches out! She walks up to Jesus and claims her healing! She strolls into the Health Care Summit and speaks up!

I’ve heard many folks comment on how loud and vociferous the so-called Tea Party crowds have been in opposing health care reform and then wonder why there is no contrasting gathering of the uninsured and unhealthy, demanding reform. Well, you know why…

In a previous parish, there was an older woman who had hip replacement surgery and missed several months of Sundays. I faithfully visited her during her recovery which went very well. But it got to be the fourth month after her surgery and she still hadn’t returned to worship, she hadn’t come back to church. Maybe the recovery was just taking longer than expected. But when I saw her at the hairdresser’s and at the grocery store, I went to see her. “What’s going on? Why haven’t you come back to church?”

You know why...

She didn’t want to be seen in church walking with a cane! Once she got rid of the cane, she told me, then she would come back. Whether or not the church would welcome her back, this woman considered herself somehow unclean, somehow unworthy of the worshipping community.

The old stigma lingers, doesn’t it? The unhealthy, the sick and the frail somehow still get the message: keep yourself separate, keep your illness hidden, suffer your fate alone and in silence. No wonder sick people aren’t showing up at church or at political rallies!

Contrast this woman with a cane to Alice. Alice was a member of my first church out of seminary. Just before I came to that church, her beloved husband of thirty-some years had died after a long battle of cancer. This battle had taken them across the country searching for the right treatments, had taken them across the border to Mexico in search of alternative therapies. Her husband didn’t want to die and battled with all the means at his disposal right up to the very end. His death had left Alice devastated. But she kept coming to church. And for the first six months of my ministry there she would sit right up front on the right side of the sanctuary and would sob her way through every one of my sermons. It really didn’t matter what I was saying – touching or inspirational, funny or intellectual – each and every one of them left her in tears. It made me wonder if I was doing this preaching thing right.

But of course it wasn’t about me. It was about this brave and wonderful woman who claimed her place in the community of Christ and reached out her hand and took the healing she so desperately needed.

And that’s what’s so strange and wonderful about this story of healing from Mark. It really isn’t about Jesus, is it? I mean, the healing of Jairus’ daughter, the twelve-year-old girl who is raised from the dead, that’s pretty much ALL about Jesus, about his miraculous healing powers, about his struggle with the forces of death, about his resurrection. But here the healing takes place without Jesus even making a choice about it: “Who touched my clothes? Who called forth healing?” This healing comes not because Jesus wills it. It’s unique among all the miracles of Jesus because here Jesus has a strictly passive role.

This healing isn’t about Jesus. It’s about the sick woman who refuses to accept her lot, who refuses to keep her silence, who refuses to suffer alone. No, she walks right up to Jesus and reaches out! In the middle of the crowd, she claims the healing that is hers. And when Jesus senses the healing power has come out, when Jesus locates who it is that brought it out, when Jesus sees this woman alone who has come in the presence of the community to claim her healing, Jesus says a word that sends chills down my spine and tears to my eyes. He says the most wonderful word in all the world that this woman or any one of us could hear. He says, “Daughter.”

“Daughter.”

You see that twelve-year-old girl that Jesus heals, she has a father, Jairus, who was her advocate in times of trouble. And everyone thought this sick woman had nobody, no family, no advocate, no help, no hope, no power. But Jesus calls her “Daughter” and now everyone knows that she is the daughter of God. She has a place, she has a parent, she has power, she has a right to be healed. She is sister and brother to you and me, a daughter of our Loving, Healing God.

So don’t tell me she wouldn’t walk right in there, right into the Health Care Summit, no matter the frowning aides and discouraging disciples of our political leaders! She would and, I’m sure, she did – right in the middle of the summit, breaking up the broadcast and perplexing the policos. They may not have seen her and they may not have heard her, but she walked right in there and she spoke right up.

What do you think she said?

You’ve heard plenty of sermons in your time and so you know the drill – this is the point in these kinds of sermons when the preacher has the Bible express some political opinions and, wonder of wonders, they turn out to be identical to the preacher’s own political opinions! And, of course, that’s foolishness. That’s a preacher using the Bible like a drunken person uses a light post – more for support than illumination.

But, of course, the opposite is foolishness too; thinking the Bible and our faith is silent in the face of the great issues and needs of our day. No, that ill and hurting woman walked right into the summit and she spoke right up.

So what is it that she said?

Well, I’m going to suggest three things she might have said and then you tell me after the service where I went wrong or what you think she might have said.

First, I think she might have walked up the President and the Vice-President and the Speaker of the House and all those Senators and Congressmen and reminded them that it wasn’t all about them! It isn’t about their talking points and strategies. It isn’t about their media exposure or their political futures. It’s about healing and that’s what they need to be focusing on.

Second, I think she might have told them that health isn’t a commodity like cars or houses or anything else. It isn’t supposed to be rationed according to wealth or standing or region or access. Health, like healing, comes from God. And every daughter and son of God has a right to it; meaning, of course, everybody.

Third, I think she might have turned away from those powerful political folk and turned to face the cameras, turned to talk to all of us. And she might have told us to stop keeping our place, stop holding our tongues, stop pretending we’re powerless, stop pretending we’re alone. Reach out, she would say to us; reach out! Reach out to Jesus, reach out to one another, reach out to be healed.

But even as I say this she interrupts me because, of course, she’s already here. She walked into the sanctuary this morning right in the midst of us. He sits right down beside us in the pews. You can tell because she’s wearing a head scarf over her bald head, because his walker rests beside him. You can tell because he’s here despite his pale complexion or in spite of the unsteady way she’s getting around. Or maybe you can’t tell because the meds are working, because depression is not easily spotted, or because so many don’t look like there’s anything wrong. But we’re here, all the men and women who are hurting and ill. We’re here to reach out for healing.

But the one real give-away, the one sure sign that you know she has come among us once more is because man or woman, girl or boy, young or old – each have the same aura: the aura of healing, the aura of power, the aura of a true daughter, a true son of God. And their faith can make us all well.

Amen.

Sermon preached by the Reverend Dr. Stephen Savides at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on February 28, 2010.