June 28, Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
The Second Sunday after Pentecost – June 28, 2015
It’s the hands that I notice.
There are so many pieces to the story inside of a story that is today’s gospel. It takes place on Jesus’ second return from the other side of the Sea of Galilee, showing that he spends time with both Jews and Gentiles. The story draws our attention to Jairus, a leader of some stature in the synagogue who comes to find Jesus in the midst of his entourage, falls down before him, begging Jesus to come and heal his daughter before she dies. Jesus goes, and the crowd follows, and he knows – he knows when the woman reaches out her hand to touch the hem of his garment, he feels the power she claims from him. After acknowledging her before everybody, he goes on to Jairus’ house, together with his friends, together with her parents. The people say she is dead, but suddenly she is not. He takes her by the hand, says, “Little girl, get up,” and she does. “Give her something to eat,” he tells the girls’ parents.
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It matters, that Jesus spends time on both sides of the Sea, blessing Gentiles and Jews alike. It matters that Jesus goes, when he is asked – when he is begged – by a frantic father who gives up any assumption of status for the hope of his child. It matters that both people healed in this passage are female, and as such are themselves without status in that world at that time. And it matters, as well, that both are ritually unclean – the adult woman because she is hemmoraging, the girl because she is dead; that matters, because under normal circumstance, ritual law means that people should not touch them, that they should not touch anyone else. It matters that the number twelve factors in on both counts – the woman has bled for twelve years, the child is twelve years old (think of twelve tribes of Israel, think of twelve disciples of Jesus…). It matters, that both are called “daughter.” And again – those hands matter. Because it is that act of touch, forbidden according to laws and traditions – it is that hand, reaching out, that heals and raises them.
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One of the great privileges of my work is your invitation into moments in the midst of illness we do not understand, into moments at the brink of life and death. I have been with you, hands folded in prayer, hands held together, my hands anointing, your hands clutching a shawl knit for you by the hands of another, one who prayed for you while she made it.
This piece of scripture raises difficult questions: Why was the woman cured, but I am not? Why was that child raised, but mine was not? What is prayer for? Am I doing it right? Am I faithful enough?
I don’t know any more about the people in today’s story than what this text tells us. By that account, these were pretty normal people – whatever that means. Jairus was a leader in the local synagogue, and his daughter was a not-quite-teenage kid. The woman who reached out had been sick for more than a decade and had blown all her money on health care that had not only not worked, but now she was even worse than she had been.
My guess, there were plenty of other ordinary people, other normal people – whatever that means – while Jesus sailed between both sides of the Sea of Galilee, people who were not cured of their diseases, whose loved ones he did not raise from the dead. Were their hands not folded tightly enough in prayer? Did they not reach out insistently enough from within that crowd of people to touch his garment?
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Does healing only mean the cure of disease? Does resurrection have to mean not dying?
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One of the writers I read in recent days talked about a friend of his, diagnosed as a relatively young man with a disease that would kill him by inches.[1] On his diagnosis, the man and his wife grasped their hands together and prayed that he would be healed. Now, two decades later, that man is in the final stages of his disease. And he describes himself as healed – not of the illness itself, but of his fear of it.
Dabney Smith is the Bishop of Southwest Florida and was a candidate for Presiding Bishop in yesterday’s election. He is also a longtime friend of the Lee family. Bishop Lee preached the funeral of Bishop Smith’s wife three years ago. During the candidate interviews at General Convention this week, when he was asked about his view of resurrection, Bishop Smith said this: “I am a lifelong Episcopalian. I know the creeds. I know what the church teaches. But when my late wife became ill and died in six months, I was confronted with finding what I really believe. She was buried during Holy Week. The scriptures during Eastertide became very real for me. I am absolutely convinced that the resurrection is the truth. That Jesus is alive. That we are honored to be here as leaders in his name. He sends us into the world to tell people that they don’t need to be afraid of anything, because God loves them and wants to show them that in this life.”
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And she came up behind him and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be well.”
And he took her by the hand, and said, “Little girl, get up.”
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These past days, the face of our nation has seen healing that didn’t look like cure. We have caught a glimpse of resurrection, though too many – too, too many – have not been spared by death.
We saw hands raised in healing joy that hands might be joined, in the words of justice: “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were…. (The petitioners) ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. It is so ordered,”[2] justice says.
We saw hands grasped together, in defiant commitment to the miracle of resurrection, as a people with every right not to, showed again that forgiveness is not something that faithful people feel, but something that they do. Even while their throats were filled with tears.[3] And hands pulled down a symbol over a statehouse that too long served as the reminder of a tradition that enslaved and divided. And a people, who together are more than the sum of their parts when they are alone, raised their hands, and stood on their feet, to sing about God’s Amazing Grace.
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And she came up behind him and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be well.”
And he took her by the hand, and said, “Little girl, get up.”
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Sometimes healing doesn’t look like cure. And sometimes we catch glimpses of resurrection, though too, too many die, though our throats are filled with tears.
Does prayer work? This is what I believe: as we grasp our hands together, we become something greater than we were, when we were alone. And as we ask something of God, we grow into nearer relationship with God. We bind ourselves, reaching our hands toward the God who is always reaching out toward us: the God of healing, the God of resurrection.
[1] Michael Lindvall. “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary Year B, Volume 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. 188-190.
[2] Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015
[3] Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2015