Homily: Yr A P13, July 1 2012, St. Albans
Readings: 2 Sam 1:1, 7-27; Ps 72:1-8; 2 Cor 8:7-15; Mk
5:21-43
You might be forgiven for
thinking that today’s gospel is meant to teach us that Jesus is a great
healer. After all, in the passage that
we just heard from the gospel of Mark, we have the story of not one, but two
miraculous healings. But I don’t think
that Mark’s purpose in telling these stories is to prove that Jesus is a
powerful healer. You see, by this point
in Mark’s gospel we already know that. By
this time in his ministry Jesus has already performed hundreds if not thousands
of healings. Mark has already given us
the details of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, and the leper, and the
paralyzed man, and the man with the withered hand and the mad guy from across
the lake, and many more. If we’ve been
paying attention to the story at all so far, we know that Jesus is a great
healer. The crowd knows that Jesus is a
great healer, that’s why there’s a crowd.
Jairus and the woman with the hemorrhage know that Jesus is a great healer,
that’s why when they’re desperate he’s their last hope, that’s why they come to
him and throw themselves at his feet.
No, Mark must have another
reason for telling us this story. Did
you notice how carefully he crafts today’s passage, sandwiching the story of
the woman with the hemorrhage in between the two parts of the story of Jairus
and his daughter, linking them, drawing out the symmetries between the 12 year
old and the one who has suffered for twelve years, between the one who is
affectionately called “little daughter” by her father and the one who is affectionately
called “daughter” by Jesus.
There’s lots of interesting
stuff here for theologians to work with and they have, just check the
commentaries. But I want to tell you a
story that was told to me this past May by John Bell at a homiletics conference
in Atlanta. John Bell is a member of the
Iona community in Scotland, and he’s probably best known for his hymns and
music. One day he was invited to a
church, and was asked to lead a bible study, and it turned out that the passage
that they were looking at was the same one that we read today as our
gospel. So John asked the people at the
study what they thought of this story and whether it reminded them of any
experiences that they may have had.
Several people shared some thoughts, and then an older woman began to
speak. It turned out that a long time
ago, in her youth, she had been a medical missionary in Africa. And she told the group about how one time
when she was stationed in a remote area, she’d been called into a village
because a young girl had died.
When she arrived in the
village, she heard the sounds of people mourning, and was met by the girl’s
parents who took her to where the girl was lying. When the woman examined the girl it turned
out that she was not dead, but rather in a coma. And as woman spoke with the family and
villagers, she gradually tried to piece together what had happened. This was a tribe in which the loss of blood
was taboo, and someone who was bleeding
had to be separated from others, and there was a lot of fear associated with
all of this. And this little girl had
just had her first period, and was bleeding, and she didn’t know about
menstruation because no one had told her.
And the taboo around blood and the fear and the separation anxiety it
had provoked in this girl had been so traumatic that it had overwhelmed her,
and she had fallen into a self-induced coma, from which, thankfully, she
recovered.
When the old medical
missionary had finished telling her story, John Bell asked her, in light of her
experience, what stood out for her in the gospel passage. And she replied without hesitation that the
most important thing for her was that when Jesus went into where the 12 year
old girl was, he took her by the hand. Because
touch can be an amazingly powerful thing, especially for one who is untouchable.
Today’s gospel is about
healing, but even more so, it is about touch.
Jairus falls at Jesus feet
and begs him repeatedly “come and lay your hands on my daughter, so that she
may be made well and live.”
The woman with the
hemorrhage forces her way through the crowd and comes up behind Jesus, thinking
to herself, “If I but touch his clothes I will be made well.” And she touches his cloak, and immediately
she is healed of her disease.
Jesus turns about in the
crowd and says “who touched me?”
And Jesus goes into where
the child lays, takes her by the hand and says “Talitha cum” which means little
girl, get up.” And immediately she gets
up and begins to walk about.
What is it that’s so
powerful about touch in these stories?
For those who are the
untouchables, for the parts of each one of us that are untouchable, touch may
be the most powerful thing of all.
For the young girl who is
having her first period in a culture which treats such things as taboo, and
forbids contact, the fear of losing the touch of another human may be
overwhelming when the bleeding starts.
For the woman who’s bleeding
never stops, who is described in the greek text as “gushing with blood”, a
woman who will never know the touch of a man, who will never be able to have
children, who lives alone on the margins of society, who has endured twelve
years of this and spent every penny she had, the touch of another loving human must
seem too much to hope for.
Touch I suppose is something
we take for granted until we lose it.
And then the consequences can be devastating. You don’t have to take my word for it. You can ask people right here who were made
to feel untouchable in the 80’s and 90’s when AIDS struck, giving rise to powerful
fears and prejudices and taboos, right here in Ottawa. These people know what it’s like when others
are afraid to touch you.
Jesus went into where the
child was and touched her. In so doing
he made himself unclean, because in Jesus day that’s what happened when you
touched a dead body. The woman with the
hemorrhage broke the law when she touched Jesus. She was unclean and her touch made Jesus
unclean. That’s why she trembled with
fear when Jesus turned around and said “Who touched my clothes?”
Now we don’t have the same
notions of pure and impure, clean and unclean, that existed in Jesus day. But we still have our taboos, we have our
fears and prejudices, we have our ways of dividing people into right and wrong,
good and bad. And within us, each one of
us has our own dark place, our place of embarrassment or shame, the bit of us
that we don’t dare reveal to anyone else.
Today’s gospel is saying
that God isn’t too good to go there. We
don’t have to hide stuff from Jesus. Like
the woman, we can tell him the whole truth, the whole, risky, messy,
embarrassing, scandalous truth, and there is nothing we can say, there is
nothing we can do, there is nothing about us that will stop Jesus from touching
us, even if the whole world thinks we are untouchable.
Jesus comes to us where we
are, as we are, in our muck and in our glory, and touches us. Nothing will stop him. He will break down social barriers, overcome
taboos, ignore our rules, violate laws, become unclean, associate with riff-raff,
make himself vulnerable, and do whatever it takes to touch us, make us well and
give us life.
Come and lay your hands on
my little daughter so that she may made well and live.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment