Delivered 1 July 2000, the Saturday service based on the readings for the Third Sunday after Pentecost.
Welcome
Before we get to the Gospel and the actual sermon I'd like to share a little snip of music with you.
Nun dunket alle Gott
Mit Herzen, Mund, und Händen,
Der große Dinge tut
An us und allen Enden
Being good Lutherans we all recognize that, but I would be reasonably surprised if anyone here could recite the rest of the first verse from memory. But though we don't know those words, we know the hymn, "Now thank we all our God" because of the work of a woman named Catherine Winkworth, born in 1827 at London and living most of her life at Manchester. She went to Dresden in 1845, staying for a year, and reveled in the German choral tradition of the 16th to the 18th centuries.
Returning to England, she published four sets of hymns with English words, this one came from her 1863 The Chorale Book for England. In the back of the Lutheran Book of Worship you can look her up under "Authors, Composers, and Sources of Hymns" and find 30 references, 28 separate hymns, two of them have alternate tunes.
That little bit I sang was the opening of a great hymn by Martin Rinkart set to a tune by Johann Crüger, and it's in the Lutheran Book of Worship as hymn 534 because of Winkworth's translation. Some of the others that are familiar are:
Comfort, comfort ye my people
Jesus, priceless treasure
Lift up your heads ye mighty gates,
Open now thy gates of beauty
Wake, awake, for night is flying
even Luther's "Lord, keep us steadfast in thy Word" is her translation.
In addition to translating hymns, Winkworth was a teacher and an advocate for women's rights. We remember her today because she died of heart disease near Geneva, Switzerland on this day in 1878.
The Lectionary
Look them up
The Sermon
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from his son Jesus the Christ, and from the Holy Spirit. Amen
The Gospel appointed for the Third Sunday after Pentecost is from the fifth chapter of Mark. It's two stories about two women that our Lord touched. It's a story within a story.
Gospel text read
Mark doesn't do a good job with women. Up to this point, 34 men have appeared in his narrative, mostly by name. Only two females have been mentioned, neither named, both identified only by their relationships to men, - the mother-in-law of Simon and the mother of Jesus. The first female in this story follows the pattern, it's a child, probably under twelve years, and we know her only as the son of a man who deserves a name. She's dying.
In fact, the text says "at the point of death," which is probably what broke through the reservations of Jairus. We don't know quite how high-ranking a person Jairus was, but it's broad daylight and he has been driven to consult this wandering rabbi with no credentials, no place in the synagogue, no station in life. Jesus hadn't been determined to be dangerous at this point, but it certainly wasn't easy for Jairus to come as a supplicant. He doesn't use a commanding voice expecting obedience, the man is absolutely desperate and falls at Jesus' feet.
But his words proclaim a faith that Jesus has power to heal, and apparently without hesitation, Jesus follows Jairus towards the home where the little girl lays dying. And the crowd that had gathered moves with them. No doubt some move ahead of Jairus, but you can imagine that the bulk of the crowd trails behind them. And as the crowd moved, a woman heard that Jesus was there, and worked her way through the crowd to within reach of the rabbi.
We don't know what her name was, but Mark finally identifies a female by their own circumstances in life. But what circumstances! As a guy I have no direct experience with menstruation, but you hear things. I had a sister, you know! And having a period that doesn't stop is inconvenient, it might be significant so you see a doctor. But this went on for twelve years for this woman, longer than Jairus' daughter had been alive.
We live in an era in which I can actually discuss this topic in public, women are offered choices for dealing with this time of the month, right on television, the boxes are on the shelves at Payless. Not so two thousand years ago. A woman was unclean at that time, and there were rules. For seven days after the onset each month, the woman could not touch other people, she could not prepare their food, she could not go out in public.
During that week she was better off than a leper, because it was temporary. She had a place in the home. But not this woman. The flow didn't stop, she remained unclean
There were things that could be done, but this woman had reduced herself to abject poverty by seeing the doctors, and at that time the only things the doctors were likely to have to relieve her were either irrelevant or harmful. Get this: The woman is already unclean, but one of the things that could be done for her condition was to search through the stool of a female ass for a whole grain of corn, and then to put the grain in a linen pouch and wear it around the neck. That's in Summer, the rest of the year the pouch was to be cotton. That sounds more like a way to further degrade someone whose position was all but hopeless to start with than a way to help her.
Now, Jesus is hurrying off to an emergency with a high official. They probably aren't moving too fast because of the crowd that surrounds them. The woman had heard about this man, Jesus, and needed his help. Mark just says "she came up in the crowd behind Him." That may have been clear in the first century, but we need to visualize the jostling crowd and her moving through it - remembering that she isn't allowed to touch any of the folks that she has to shoulder her way through. In fact, if this doesn't work, if someone recognizes her, the crowd might well stop following Jairus and Jesus hurrying away and instead turn to the entertaining prospect of stoning the woman who had violated such a central law of Jewish life.
She gets close, she reaches through the crowd and touches Jesus' cloak. Such faith, to propel her through the crowd thinking "If I just touch His garments, I will be healed."
And she is healed, the flow stops.
Jesus felt the power flow to her, but never saw her. He says "Who touched my garment? Who touched me."
And with the crowd stopped, probably pressing in all the more as Jesus stops and turns, the woman comes back to him, and again we have a supplicant at the feet of the Lord, spilling a story. And face to face, for I can't imagine Jesus spoke to the back of her head, face down in the dust, face to face Jesus says "Daughter, your faith has made you well." But we know from the verses before that power had flowed from Jesus to cure the woman's body, now he must be healing her soul, making public the healing of her body so that she could return to society.
And then come the servants of Jairus to announce that the little girl had died. And, of course, Jesus dismisses this news, and they proceed and the little girl is restored.
Jesus also gave strict orders that this story should not be told, orders that apparently were not followed at the time and which I can't follow today.
There are at least three major points in the story, not all of them comforting.
Obviously we are to have faith and bring our illness to the Lord. We have that part down pretty well.
It's pretty clear that once we have faith and petition the Lord for healing we aren't in control anymore. Can you imagine Jairus' reaction to stopping to deal with this outcast daughter of Israel, wasting time on this unclean woman, when his own daughter was in mortal danger? Sorry, Jairus, you aren't in control here. The second woman was so desperate that giving up all control was probably the least of her concerns, for most of us it doesn't get much scarier than letting go like this.
And we are not to hurry past, no matter the import of the task we are on. My life is consumed by interruptions, and I fight to stay on track and focused, without much success I fear, and this story says that responding to interruptions along the way, just like the children coming up to Jesus while the disciples tried to send them away, is the right way and the right time to respond.
And finally, we will be called to help, and it probably won't be by someone from our age group, socio-economic class, and racial heritage. It might be our boss, it might be an unshaven drunk on a street corner. The mighty and the lowly alike could need our skill or our witness, and we dare not hurry by, we dare not worry that our fine clothes will be dirtied, we must not worry that our reputation might be sullied by the association, nor may we think of gaining favor by service, for that's not how one who wears the name of Christ spreads the Gospel.
There is a story that is part of the tradition of the Christians in Japan that speaks to the life-giving power of helping those around us that I'd like to close with.
A man dies and finds himself in a shimmering ethereal place, and thinks, "I guess I was better than I thought!"
An angel ushers him into a great banquet hall. An immense table is laid out with an incredible array of delicacies. He is shown to a seat at the table, and a plate is put before him. As he picks up his fork and prepares to eat, the angel comes up behind him and binds a thin board to the back of each arm so he cannot bend his elbows. He can lift the food with his fork, but he can't get it to his mouth. He can't maneuver to feed himself.
Only then does he look around and see that the others at the table are all in the same predicament. Only then does he hear as they grunt and groan at the bindings as they attempt to get the food to their mouths. But they cannot, and there is a wailing and moaning of frustration.
The man awkwardly turns to the angel and says, "This must be hell!"
The angel nods.
"What about heaven?" asks the man.
The angel unbinds his arms and shows him into another huge banquet hall, with another great table filled with an equal array of food. It may look even better after the first experience. Sitting down at an empty seat, he is about to help himself once again when another angel comes and again ties boards to the back of his arms. Once again he cannot bend his elbows to feed himself. Looking about in dismay he sees that something very different is happening at this table.
There is no moaning and groaning. No one else is trying to feed themselves with the boards bound to their arms, no straining against the rigidity of the situation. Each person is holding his fork, arms extended straight out, feeding the person next to them. Each person is completely satisfied.
"So this is heaven!" the man exclaims.
The angel standing there nods, "This is heaven."
Amen.