Fourth Pentecost
Mark 5:21-43; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Lamentations 3:22-33; Psalm 30
If you could save someone from a life of suffering, would you do it? If you could see the future and knew that you had the power to save a child from suffering all varieties of pain and hardship, what would you do? Suppose that you could look on an eight year old girl from our Sunday school program and know that when she is ten she will be in a car accident suffering a broken jaw and months of oral reconstruction; at age 14 she will break a leg skiing and spend a month in traction and rehab; her dream of gymnastics and most every sport will be shattered by the permanent damage done to her knee; her teen age years will be filled with a series of misguided romances each ending in anger and the pain of betrayal; ultimately she will go to college and meet the guy of her dreams only to have him die only months before her wedding; the grief will drive her into depression which she will partially conquer when she marries and has three children only to find that one of the children will not survive childhood. And so the story of tragedy, suffering, pain and death continues until ultimately the little girl comes to the end of her life suffering arthritic and malignant diseases contributing to a lingering death. What if you could save her from all that?
Last Sunday Pastor Chris suggested that one of the core questions of faith is identified in the story of the disciples in a boat with Jesus caught in a great storm. As the boat is about to sink the disciples cry out, "Teacher, do you not care if we perish?" Giving voice to the core question, "Does God care?" Ultimately we are reminded that God cared so much that he sent his only Son into the world. And so our gospel lesson for today moves us to an even more troubling question. "If God cares so much about us, why is there suffering and pain?" Our lesson presents us with two serious medical conditions. A child sick unto death and a woman with a condition that makes her not only sick but a complete and total outcast of the religious community. It is easy to focus on the miracle working dimensions of these stories. To see them as a proof or seal of Jesus' messianic claims. But that still begs the question, what kind of caring God inflicts or allows such pain and suffering on his creation.
The attempt to explain illness and suffering for people of faith leads to many curious conclusions. We all have known or know of someone who is a good person afflicted with a serious disease or illness. More often then not, especially when the medical solutions fail and the disease or illness persists, we turn to our faith for answers and a cure. We pray to God. We may offer to make a deal with God in exchange for a miracle. Based on our lesson for today, some would suggest that all that is needed is a little more faith and healing is possible. We want to believe that faith heals. Maybe it will take a while, as in the case of a woman suffering twelve years before being healed, but even then a popular view is that God just wanted her to learn something from her illness. Certainly we believe God does not give us more than we can handle. Clearly anyone suffering twelve years must be a very strong person.
The mistake we make is believing that the miracles of Jesus are isolated displays of power. Jesus did not perform miracles just because he could. He did not call the disciples together and say, "hey, guys, look at this one"--and poof! something impossible happened. Jesus' miracles are an integrated, coherent part of his ministry--of his teaching and preaching and bringing the Kingdom of God. They are perhaps best understood more as acted-out parables, living sermon illustrations. The miracles like his teachings, were ways of saying something important about Jesus and about the Kingdom of God.
On that level, the raising of Jairus' daughter is one of the ways that Mark's Gospel proclaims that God's power is greater even than the power of death, and that Jesus has authority over both life and death. Where Jesus is, death is conquered. That's the point. But what does it mean? What does that authority over death look like, and how do we experience that power today?
In the case of the miracles in today's lesson, it is tempting to conclude that if you have enough faith, faith like that of Jairus, then your child will not die, or you will not die, or others you love and care about will not die (or will not stay dead), or at least they won't do that right now, and not for a long time.
This is the view that sees faith and life as some type of contest, where everything depends on you, on whether you have enough faith, or the right sort of faith, to win the prize of Jesus doing something good for you and yours.
This is a popular belief. It's not Christian but very comfortable. It appeals to the desire we all have for answers, for having everything in our world and our lives to make sense. In addition, this interpretation feeds a hungry but immature sense of omnipotence we all carry around from our childhood: the idea that whatever happens, happens somehow because of me. And if I had only done something different, if I had only had more faith, then whatever happened would not have happened. There is great and compelling egocentricity in this way of thinking. The miracle becomes something I can control by my faith and life and intellect. Like I said, this is a very popular and comfortable way of thinking but not Christian.
For all of its attractiveness, this is not what the raising of Jairus' daughter is all about. The story does not promise that if you have enough faith, your daughter will not die. It is not about God weighing our faith, or our goodness, against the possibility of bad events and deciding whether we, or somebody else, "gets it" or not. It is not about that at all.
We need to consider the wholeness of the stories we have today. We need to notice the last verse of our lessons where after Jesus has raised the little girl from the dead, Jesus cautions all those gathered to not tell anyone what they have just witnessed. This seems at first glance as a strange thing for Jesus to say. A child has just been raised from the dead. What a story to tell. What good news to proclaim yet Jesus says, "Keep it quiet." The reason Jesus does this is to make it clear that the meaning, the true significance, of the event could not be known or understood until later. This was an event that revealed the power of God's kingdom breaking into the world. It is miracle. That which has no scientific or even rational explanation. And it's meaning, it's real meaning, was not just to prove that Jesus could do amazing things, but to point beyond the grave. It's true meaning needed to be seen in the light of the cross and the resurrection. The miracle is but an illustration, a parable, that has nothing to do with our faith and everything to do with God's power. The real meaning of Christ's authority over death is found in the resurrection. Jesus was concerned with wholeness and healing, not just a cure.
There is an important distinction to be made between curing physical or mental diseases and seeking wholeness or healing through faith. To be cured suggests that the physical or mental disease disappears and that persons are left unmarked by their encounter with this attack on their being. In our contemporary world, we tend to think that almost everything ought to have a cure. Through scientific advances we have come to find ways to treat a multitude of diseases and illnesses that in the past were considered terminal. Yet, the reality is that there are some things for which there is no cure. It seems that part of what Mark may be helping us see and understand is that what God offers is healing and wholeness of spirit and soul. The goal may not be physical cure; rather, the purpose of the touch of God is to bring healing to multiple levels of our lives, particularly in our spirit, emotion and soul.
Healing and wholeness are about something new and alive. The strange truth of faith is that a disease that is not cured is not the end of a life if that life has found healing and wholeness. This is almost as difficult to understand as the miracles reported in our lesson for today. Yet history is filled with the stories of those who are said to have triumphed over adversity, disabilities, illness and loss. Circumstances, experiences, diseases, catastrophes that should have ended life instead are somehow transformed into the inspired story of meaningful and productive living. These are the stories of grace transforming what should have been an end into a new beginning. What appeared to be dead was raised up. What appeared to be without hope became a source of vision and dream.
We know that God so loved the world that He sent his only Son. Jesus did not lead the ideal life. He did not drive the best car and eat at the best restaurants. In the end, he suffered a painful death. That should have been the end but through the resurrection God took the death of Jesus and transformed it into a promise that takes each of us beyond the grave. God revealed to us the power of the Spirit to transform and transcend all that would limit and destroy us. In our lesson for today, Jesus takes the faith of a father who believed in healing, and pointed the way to seeing not just through the pain of illness but to a victory beyond the grave. In our lesson today Jesus transformed the power to touch the untouchable into a promise of new life in community beyond the moment. It is so easy to focus on the miracle and forget the meaning. It is so easy to try and take control of God's world on our terms.
This Fourth of July weekend we are invited to celebrate our nation's birth and the gifts of freedom. It is tempting to couch such celebrations in the language and form of human success. Look at the great nation we have created and the great people we have become. But the truth of history is that we are a nation more in spite of human effort than because of it. God has blessed us. God has taken human mistakes and frailties and revealed through them a vision of a better and nobler people. When the vote was completed in 1776 to declare independence, the founding fathers did not congratulate each other for their successful actions, rather we are told that John Hancock called for a prayer from the Congressional Chaplain. A new nation challenged what was at the time the greatest military force in the world. Only by faith in a vision beyond reason could there have been any hope of success. We will create the fireworks and celebrations for another Independence Day but we need to remember that they are but poor approximations of God's creative power that brought forth our nation and this world. Our bright rocket flares pale when compared to the sunlight of day. Our too human aspirations often pursue our ideals while the real miracles of God's grace are missed.
Most of the congregation knows that I strive to regularly visit with a member of the congregation who has been a quadriplegic for some 15 years. There was a time when I remember Bill struggled with the question of continuing to live when he had no control over any part of his body from the neck down. It would have been easy for him to with draw into the nothingness of existing without a body. But Bill learned to use a voice activated computer system and became the membership secretary for the United States Triumph Sports Car Motor Club. He has witnessed both of his children's confirmations and his oldest daughter's graduation from high school and college. Miracles are measured not in cures but in gifts of life.
What if you could save someone from a life of suffering, would you do it? If you could see the future and knew that you had the power to save a child from suffering all varieties of pain and hardship, what would you do? Jesus stood by the lifeless body of Jairus' daughter. He could still hear the laughter of those outside who did not believe him when he said she but slept. He knew that if he touched her, her life would never be the same. All the pain and trials of life would return. But so would all the other moments and possibilities that make life meaningful.
A little girl had died.
To bring her back to life returned her to a world where she was hungry, tired, vulnerable to new diseases and pains. To bring her back to life was also to return her to the loving presence of her parents, the beauty of the sunset; the joy of tasting the first fruits of the field, the excitement and possibilities of life. To be alive is to be in danger of dying. To the person of faith, to be alive is to know the power of God's triumph over death. To be truly alive is to know God's power moving in and through and around us.
Miracle is not a matter of faith. Faith is the miracle. God's gift that we celebrate this day in ritual, symbol, music and word. The power of faith that brings forth life. And Jesus said, "Little girl, get up!"
Amen