This week’s sermon text is Mark 5:21-43, the healing of the bleeding woman and Jairus’ daughter.
There are a lot of credits for this weekend’s sermon – sources for all the refugee anecdotes are in the text below. Cláudio Carvalhaes’ imaginative reading of this text at WorkingPreacher was also inspirational, as was Erin Coleman Branchaud’s reflection in the ELCA World Hunger Sermon Starters email – sorry, I can’t find a link for that one. Here’s the sermon:
Today’s Gospel story is about two people who are desperate, two people who have nothing left to lose. It’s about the question, “What do you do when you’re desperate?”
First, a woman who has been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years. She’s an outcast, someone on the margins of society. She doesn’t even get a name in the story. It’s not just that she’s physically sick, it’s that by the standards of the law, she’s unclean – and again, she’s been that way for 12 years.
Leviticus 15:25 says, ‘When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period or has a discharge that continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge, just as in the days of her period.”
Under no circumstances should this woman be in any position to reach out and touch a rabbi. She should be outside town, alone, away from where she can contaminate other people.
If that’s not enough, she has a problem all of us can related to – healthcare costs too much. I love our translation’s word for her experience – “She had endured much under many physicians.” Unsurprisingly for the state of medicine in the ancient world, it hadn’t worked. She’s spent everything she has, she’s endured much, and it’s only gotten worse.
But she understands something the legalists don’t, and she still has hope. She understands that Jesus is proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom breaking into the world. She understands that when Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love your neighbors, he doesn’t give any exceptions. She understands that this good news about God’s never-failing love includes her.
Or, if she doesn’t completely grasp that, she’s so desperate that she’s willing to risk it. She’s willing to risk violating the rules telling her where she’s supposed to be, the rules keeping her outside of society. And she’s willing to risk failing.
What if this doesn’t work? What if this is her opportunity that she’s waited for, what if she’s built up her hopes, waited for Jesus to come to her town, fought her way through the crowds, and it doesn’t work What if Jesus is no different than any other celebrity preacher or Pharisee? What if he takes offense and condemns her too? She’s willing to risk it.
Perhaps that’s what faith is. Perhaps faith is so great a trust in Jesus that you’re willing to risk everything for the possibility that he might be the one to heal you. Perhaps faith is getting to a point so low that you have no other options, a point where you recognize that nothing else in this world can satisfy your needs.
“Your faith has made you well,” Jesus says. “Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Jairus’ situation is different, but he has the same kind of faith. His social situation is the opposite of hers. She’s an outcast in society; he’s a leader in the synagogue, a man with an important social position. She’s used to suffering, to being excluded, to being an outsider. He has more to lose. But his daughter is in danger, close to death. How desperate are you?
Jairus waits until his daughter is at the point of death – and that’s not an exaggeration, because by the time Jesus gets to the house, she has died. For whatever reason, it’s not until he’s out of options that he can bring himself to go to Jesus.
I’m not a parent. I don’t have kids, so I’ve never been in this kind of situation. But for those of you have children, what would you do for your child? What would you give up? If you knew your son or daughter was sick or starving or dying and there was a chance you could save them, what laws would you break?
Would you care about your job, or your place in society, or the boundaries of right behavior the world has set up? How far would you go?
Jairus is willing to risk his position as a temple leader by coming to Jesus. Remember, the Pharisees are already plotting to kill Jesus. He’s willing to give up his dignity, publicly falling at Jesus’ feet and begging him.
Most profoundly to me, by leaving his daughter to look for help, Jairus is willing to risk missing her last breath, her last moments. He’s desperate; he’ll try anything to save his daughter.
This desperation to save a son or daughter is the story of so many parents around the world today. We can understand this story. It’s the story of British parents in World War II London sending hundreds of thousands of children out of the city to avoid German air raids.
It’s the story of Faez, who fled from his hometown in Syria after being confronted on his way to work at gunpoint and accused by Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers of being a terrorist. He and his wife were nearly hit by a missile as they fled first to a refugee camp in Jordan. (Source: Time)
Our own Lutheran World Federation provides hygiene kits and heaters at the camp. LWF also runs the Peace Oasis youth center, where they teach young refugees conflict, communication, and decision-making skills. After over two years in the camp, Faez, his wife, and his infant daughter were given refugee status in Dallas.
It’s the desperation of Claudette’s parents. Claudette was seven years old on April 12, 1994, when a grenade hit her home in Rwanda and her family fled from the genocide. Her family spent 8 years at a refugee camp in the Congo, then four years in Zambia, then in 2006 they were settled by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services in Rhode Island. (Source: LIRS)
Without getting into the political hyperbole that’s all over the news right now, can we appreciate the kind of fear and desperation motivating asylum-seekers and refugees today to leave their country, their community, everything they know to flee to another country?
Imagine what it’s like for Lucia, who sought asylum at the US border with her husband and two youngest children, who are U.S. citizens, after gang members tortured and killed their extended family members as punishment for their refusal to allow the children to join the gang. Her husband appeared at the border with injuries from the gang targeting them. (Source: LIRS)
In the Bible, Mary and Joseph had to make their own desperate decision to flee as refugees. Christmas programs usually end before that part of the story, but after the wise men left, an angel told Joseph to take the baby Jesus and his mother and escape to Egypt, because King Herod was searching for the child to kill him. For up to two years, they stayed as refugees in Egypt, until Herod died and it was safe to return to Israel. (Matthew 2:13-23)
I don’t have a solution to our current refugee crisis. There are complicated political and legal issues way beyond my expertise. Laws should not be made from anecdotes, and I don’t know any political party or Christian who wants children or parents to suffer.
I appreciate the ELCA’s work focusing on working with local church partners in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala to provide opportunity and assistance so people don’t need to take dangerous journeys to other countries. We believe Jesus cares for all these people in their desperation. (Read more about the ELCA’s AMMPARO strategy)
As we look at the story of Jairus coming to Jesus in his desperation, ask yourself, how desperate are you as a parent to take care of your child?
The richness of a parent’s love for a child is one of our primary metaphors for trying to grasp the depth of God’s love for us. God loves you enough to give His only Son for your sake, for the sake of a sinful world, a broken creation. That’s how desperate God is for you.
Although he certainly didn’t have children himself, Jesus listened to Jairus’ plea and agreed to go to his house to heal his child. On the way, he healed the bleeding woman, then he stopped to talk to her, even when the disciples urged him to move on. He saw her as a child of God, not an outcast.
Mark doesn’t say how Jairus reacts when he learns his daughter has died. We don’t know if he lost faith at that point, or if he continued to cling to the impossible, because Jesus jumps in, and listen to what he says: “Do not fear, only believe.”
How desperate for hope do you have to be to have that kind of faith?
Martin Luther described faith this way: “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times.”
Where do you need hope in your life? Are you desperate enough to let go of everything holding you back from that living, daring confidence in God’s grace?
The woman’s faith is not in vain. Jesus is indeed the one who can heal her, and he does.
Jairus’ faith is not in vain. Not even the hopelessness of death stops Jesus’ work.
Nor is your faith in vain. No matter what is going on around us, no matter what the crisis of the moment is, Jesus is still with us, working among us, healing, comforting, and proclaiming good news. May God stir up in you the faith to believe.
Amen