Pentecost 6 Christ Church St Lucia 30th June 2024
The Venerable Rod Winterton
– Healing the Woman and Raising the Dead. Mark 5.21-43.
One of the beauties and simplicities of Mark’s Gospel is how he lets the Good News unfold. Over the last few weeks we have journeyed from concepts of the Kingdom of God to watching the Kingdom unfold as we follow Jesus on his travels. We have moved from Jesus the preacher to Jesus the calmer of storms and now the ultimate proof of his identity – Jesus the Son of God who has power over death.
The two central figures in our story from Mark this morning are both Jewish and from the same village and yet from opposite ends of the spectrum. Jairus is a leader of the synagogue, a powerful man in his community. The other is unnamed and is an outcast from society, unclean because of her continual bleeding. These two characters are linked by fate. The girl is twelve years old and the woman has been bleeding for the same length of time.
Jairus humbles himself by calling on Jesus and putting the fate of his daughter in Jesus’ hands. The unclean woman doesn’t have the luxury of being able to make a request such as that. Instead, she prostrates herself to touch the hem of Jesus robe. Both break boundaries and both have their prayers answered.
A couple of weeks ago I commented to the folk in another parish that, when contemplating the Kingdom of God, it is foolish to attempt to put limits on God’s grace. Today’s stories are prime examples of God breaking boundaries and how God calls the most unlikely of us to be participants in God’s mission. But what happens when God seems to be deaf to our calls for healing and help?
I remember many years ago going up for communion at the midday Mass in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. At the communion rail in Notre Dame is a book in which people can write out prayer requests for the community to include in their prayers. I ran my eye over it and amongst the ones written in English was a request that someone had made that one of their loved ones would have a long and happy life, free of trouble and pain. When I read this it troubled me a bit, because I have come to recognize those things as part of the human condition. The good things of life are enjoyed all the more when weighed up against the not so good. But sometimes pain and suffering can seem endless, as if God has turned his back on us. After twelve years of bleeding, of being unclean and a social outcast, that woman who touched Jesus’ robe could well have been crying out to God in the words of the psalm Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord. Lord hear my voice.
Continuing to explore the particularly Jewish aspects of this story I would like to share a story told from the 18th century Jewish renewal movement -- the Chassidim: "After Yom Kippur the Rabbi of Berdichev sent for a tailor and asked him to report on how his disputes with God had gone the previous day. The tailor said, 'I told God: You want me to repent of my sins, but I have only committed slight transgressions. Maybe I have stolen a little leftover cloth or eaten in a non-Jewish home without washing my hands after working there. But you, Lord, You have committed great sins: You have taken away little children from their mothers, and mothers from their little children. Let us call it quits: You forgive me, and I will forgive you.' Later in the story, the Rabbi of Berdichev says to the tailor: 'Why did you let God get away with it so lightly?'"
Of all the issues confronting humanity, there is probably none that is more challenging to our finite minds and hearts than the question of how to reconcile a good and all-powerful God with the mystery of evil and suffering. Not Job, not Jeremiah, no, not even Jesus have articulated a definitive answer; nor will I attempt to do so. But the question remains: How does a Christian cope and deal with suffering? There is no one who will escape this universal experience: physical or mental suffering, suffering from loss, suffering from poverty or loneliness or fear, addiction or abuse, suffering from watching a loved one suffering; so many living who want to die; so many dying who want to live. Some people try to cope with the mystery by responding: "God wills it," or "God is trying to teach us something," or "God is punishing us." The God revealed to us in Jesus, however, forces us to search for another option, a different approach.
Years ago Anthony Padovano wrote: "It is not a love for suffering which Christ reveals, but a love which prevails in suffering. It is not the physical death of Jesus which is redemptive, but the love of Jesus for us even unto death." It is this thought that sustains me in the sacred space that is the bedside of the dying. I cry to the Lord but the Lord seems deaf, but in reality it is often I who am deaf to God.
The God revealed in Jesus has a heart that is filled with compassion in the sight of suffering: a woman bent over; a man born blind; a woman suffering from haemorrhage; a man who is paralyzed; a widow burying her only son; a man who is hearing and speech impaired; a mother at the foot of a cross. But nowhere does Jesus say, "God bless you; grin and bear this, for this is God's will for you." Instead, his aching heart reaches out with a healing touch. Our God, revealed in Jesus, longs for our wholeness and our happiness.
We live in a world full of suffering, but we also live in a world full of hope. That hope is in us, is us. I remember on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his consecration as bishop Archbishop Phillip reminded us that love of Jesus and service are intrinsically connected. You cannot truly love God if you don’t put that love into action in the world in which we live.
The late Jonathan Sacks was, until September 2013, the Chief Rabbi of Britain and the Commonwealth. “In his book To Heal a Fractured World, he wrote about the ethics of responsibility. Reflecting upon the word he makes the point that it is made up of two words – ‘response’ and ‘ability’. What is my ability to respond to the fractured world in which I live?
Rabbi Sacks also refers to a psychological phenomenon known as ‘The Genovese Effect’ named after Kitty Genovese, a young woman who was stabbed to death by a serial murderer and rapist in a New York suburb in 1964. Many people heard her cries but no one came to assist her. Also known as the Bystander effect it was researched by two social scientists in 1968. They staged a number of emergencies and then measured how long it took before participants did something about it, or if they intervened at all. These experiments have been frequently replicated and showed that a lone bystander was far more willing to intervene than a group of bystanders. People in a group all think that someone else should act. ‘Why me? Why should I intervene?’
Jesus sent out the disciples to preach and heal, just as you and I are called and sent. Why me? Well, as Rabbi Sacks points out, there is no life without a task; no person without a talent; no moment without its call.
God calls us out of our weakness and not our strength, remembering that it is his grace working in and through us, and as Saint Paul said, that is sufficient. Jesus and his disciples experienced rejection and scorn, just as his message is rejected and scorned today, however we still have our hope in him and our faith in his love and so we continue to pray and to reach out to all who cry in pain or distress.
As Jesus experienced the totality of our human condition, and therefore, the mystery of suffering, I assume that possibly the words of the Psalm 130 were on his lips often. As he knew the pain of rejection by his own friends and family, knew the loss of a friend, Lazarus; knew the so called "failure" of his life's work; knew fear; knew betrayal; knew the anguish of Gethsemane and the torture of Calvary; and the feeling of abandonment by his God in the midst of it all, we have one who understands when we cry:
Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord. Lord hear my voice.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in God's Word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with the Lord is great the power of redemption.
Amen.