Pentecost 6B
June 30, 2024
Mark 5:21-43
INTRODUCTION
All of our texts today speak hope and joy into the grief and despair life sometimes gives us. The book of Lamentations, as you might guess from its name, is almost all lament, in particular over the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians and the subsequent exile of the Israelites. But this one chapter that we’ll hear in a moment is a light shining into that darkness. I’m always caught by the parenthetical statement halfway through: “There may yet be hope!” It is emblematic of all our readings today.
I also love the Psalm that follows it, Psalm 30, and its insistence that wailing will turn to dancing, that weeping spends the night and joy comes in the morning. Personally speaking, these verses have gotten me through some tough times of life.
The Gospel reading is a classic example of one of Mark’s narrative tactics: the Markan sandwich. He starts telling one story, interrupts it to tell another, then gets back to the first. The reader knows that these two stories are meant to interpret each other. There are lots of comparisons to make in these two stories – one of a 12-year-old girl on the brink of death, and the other a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years (see, there’s one of them – 12 years for both women!). Notice the similarities and differences. But also hear the stories from the balcony: they are both stories about how nothing – not ritual uncleanness, death, age, gender, wealth, nothing – will stop God from reaching out to us in relationship, healing and love.
As you listen today, notice how that line in Lamentations plays out in today’s readings: “There may yet be hope!” Where do you need to hear that in your life? Let’s listen.
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| Christ heals the bleeding woman, as depicted in the Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter. Photo: Wikimedia Comms/Public Domain |
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Both of these stories today in Mark are remarkable. A desperate father, begging Jesus for help for his dying daughter. A desperate woman, who has been bleeding for 12 long years and has paid doctor after doctor and been left only sicker and poorer until she has nothing left – no money, no health, no hope for a family, no future. A healing that no doctor could provide from the mere touch of Jesus’ hem. And a girl thought to be dead, resurrected by Jesus taking her hand. Both women restored to community.
It's good stuff. But, we could easily be so wowed by the impressive, miraculous bits, that we miss some of the quieter miracles. One sentence in particular comes to mind: “But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before [Jesus], and told him the whole truth.”
In this sentence, several things jump out at me. One is how in tune the woman was with her body, that she immediately recognized what had happened. “She knew in her body that she was healed,” Mark says. Maybe first century people were more in tune with their bodies; today, I don’t think we are, by and large. We trust our heads more than our bodies, often trying to explain away things we are feeling. I frequently get muscle spasms in my shoulder, and I used to just say, “Oh, I must have slept on it wrong.” That makes sense. Only recently have I connected the dots that when my shoulder spasms, it almost always happens when I am stressed. And my body has finally decided to speak up about it.
Not so with this woman. She knows things, not with her head, but with her body. She feels Jesus’ power leave him and enter her. She notices that she is healed by this encounter. Our Christian faith is built on a story about a God who cared so much about bodies that he became one, walked the earth, ate, drank, defecated, and finally died, and then rose again, in body, not just spirit. So, we might do well to follow this woman’s lead and listen to how God might be speaking to us through our bodies. Maybe we too might know healing, know God, in these incredible bodies that God created.
The next bit that captures my imagination is that she comes “in fear and trembling, falls before Jesus, and tells him the whole truth.” That phrase, “in fear and trembling,” is such an evocative one. It is often used in response to holiness. The fear is something like awe or respect, an awareness of something far greater than ourselves, even greater than our imagination, and yet here it is before us. And her physical response (again, to the point about bodies!) is to tremble.
What sorts of things cause us to tremble? There are certainly some physiological or emotional things – low blood sugar, alcohol withdrawal, neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and MS, intense anger, stress, anxiety, cold. But here is another time I often tremble: when I am having a really important, vulnerable, and perhaps difficult conversation with someone. When I have put aside a layer of protection, the layer that tells me to keep my cards close and avoid things that might hurt my heart – when I put that aside, my body literally shakes. I enter these moments of vulnerable truth-telling and authenticity in literal fear and trembling. And I think the reason I do (again, speaking of listening to our bodies), is that my body understands that these vulnerable moments are holy moments.
That is why we need to read this women’s response in relation to the next part of the sentence: “and she told him the whole truth.” Certainly, Jesus’ holiness and the miraculous healing she has just experienced is reason enough to tremble. But I also suspect that her telling the whole truth added to her tremors. Here is a woman who, due to her bleeding, has been considered ritually unclean and untouchable for 12 long years. She may have once had means, but no longer – now she lives in poverty, having spent everything she had on ineffective medical treatment. And now this renowned rabbi has taken a pause in his busy day (even while he’s on his way to heal the daughter of an important person!) to listen to her, to connect with her, to hear her whole story. How long has it been since someone truly cared enough about her to listen? He had already healed her body – but now, in listening to her whole truth, Jesus has healed her soul, her spirit. That moment of sharing and listening and seeing is truly a holy moment, and she trembles in it.
This phrase, “holy moment,” came up this past week. Our council and a few other leaders met for the second time with Pastor Imani, our synod’s Director for Evangelical Mission. In preparation for making some decisions about how we will use the large Keymel bequest, we are doing some visioning work with her, discerning who we are, what are our core values, what mission drives us, etc. It is exciting work that takes a lot of heart and reflection, and I’m excited to see where it goes. At one point in our gathering Wednesday, a couple of people shared things that were very vulnerable and difficult about their personal experience coming to Pittsford, and to St. Paul’s. They spoke about how difficult it is to get connected in a community that is so close-knit, that has long established roots, how difficult it is to move from outsider to insider. Others connected with that experience, saying they had experienced or heard similar stories. Another person said their heart was pounding as they shared something similarly vulnerable. There was a definite weight and energy in the room. And Pastor Imani started to sing, “Every time I feel the Spirit moving in my heart I will pray…” She said, “These are holy moments – this sharing and listening and truth-telling. It is holy.” And I thought of the women who bled for 12 years: sharing her whole truth with Jesus, in the presence of a crowd, and doing so in fear and trembling – heart pounding, no doubt.
This level of truth and honesty is hard, my friends, but it is holy. How remarkable that Jesus stood there, with all those demands pushing and pulling on him (a girl was literally dying while she waited for him!), and he listened to her tell the whole truth. Her whole story. How long did it take, I wonder? How long did they stand there, in fear and trembling, in that holy moment? Did she share about her physical suffering? About the friends and family she had lost? About her loneliness, being unclean for so long? About her poverty, and her frustration that no one could help her? About her grief that she had been unable to bear children because her womb was inhospitable to life? About her decision, finally, to take matters into her own hands, and find Jesus? How long did that moment last?
But then, amazingly, once she has shared her whole truth, in fear and trembling, Jesus makes a life-giving observation: “your faith has made you well,” or as some translations say, “your faith has made you whole.” I’ve often assumed Jesus is referring to the faith it took for her to come out and find him that has made her well, made her whole. It is clear that Jesus’ power healed her body. But now I wonder if what made her whole was her sharing her whole truth, her whole self, with Jesus, making that intimate connection with him, letting herself be truly heard and seen for the first time in 12 years – or maybe, all her life.
These holy moments are terrifying. Keeping silent and allowing the status quo to continue is often easier than coming forward with the honest truth. Sometimes such whole-truth moments cause us to tremble, tremble, tremble. And yet this woman teaches us what healing can come from them. She teaches us that we can be healed, and also how we can become healers, who can make space for authentic truth to be shared, who stop and listen, who strive, in Martin Luther’s words, not only to see Christ in our neighbor, but to be a Christ to our neighbor. By this, I believe we can, with Jesus, heal the world.
Let us pray… Healing God, we need healing not only in body, but in spirit. Whatever healing we may need, please grant it, and help us to recognize these experiences as the holy moments that they are. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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