When the diagnosis is harsh, it’s tempting to go online or run through the stacks at the Library or ask a friend or neighbor and others in the waiting room as to what might work.
It’s no surprise that Jairus, one of the big shots in the synagogue, walks right into our story and says: my daughter is at the point of death. Come and fix her so that she will live. So off he goes and a large crowd followed. You can almost overhear someone in the crowd say “Boy, I’ll be able to tell the grandkids about this.”
But the story got interrupted with a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years. Isn’t that just the way life is? You’re off to do something really important and the phone rings, or is it the doorbell?
Jesus gets interrupted and he doesn’t seem to mind.
This woman had seen many doctors, tried every health plan and now is broke, so why not try Jesus. She touched his clothes saying; “if I but touch him, I will be healed.” The text says the bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was healed. Jesus asked, “Who touched me” and eventually she comes forward, and says, “It was I.”
I know it’s summer and not Easter, but there is a bit of Easter in today’s lessons. Things that are dead around Jesus, don’t stay that way for long. Remember Mark doesn’t really have an Easter story; the disciples are left with an empty grave. In fact at the end of Mark, the women who come to the tomb on Easter leave in fear.
But now Jesus crosses back home to the faithful Bible believers. But now Jesus is back in his home territory, where people are sick and dying. Home, where this poor women is suffering from a hemorrhage for 12 years. Home where a Synagogue leader’s daughter is near death and she is also 12 years old.
What’s with the number 12? Twelve tribes of Israel hum. Jesus had 12 disciples. Twelve years old, 12 years with a hemorrhage. Is Jesus challenging the inner circle?
Her sickness has named her, or taken away her real name. Sickness can dominate you; consume you, which is what dying can do. It can take your name away, whereby people sometimes introduce you along with your tumor and the tumor can become your identity.
She has no name outside of women and hemorrhage, for her sickness has moved in and stolen her name. And she is healed. All we know is that she reached out to touch Jesus and she touched resurrection instead, just by touching. Jesus calls her “daughter” making an outsider part of his family. Jesus calls her “daughter.” Guess what’s happening to the status of women, whenever the Kingdom of God walks by?
Now Jairus comes back saying, now please come, for my daughter is dying.
I am intrigued by the use of daughter. People now belong to each other.
I was listening to a social scientist from Stanford University talk about how the enlightenment that gave rise to super individualism is no longer the only story for America. The future we are moving toward asks us to see how we are all connected. You can go off thinking you can do and be anything. But the better question, Powell says, is to see how we are all connected.
He calls her daughter, now she belongs. Now she has a connection that she can see being a Daughter of God. Now this healing is great, so much so someone wrote a hymn “O He Touched Me.” Howeve,r by the time Jesus gets to Jairus’ house, it’s all over. His beloved daughter is dead.
Notice the use of daughter belonging to God as a daughter of God. Jairus’ daughter is disconnected; she has died. The weeping tells the story. Unfortunately Jesus is too late. Why all the fuss Jesus asks? And so the Lord of life touches her and announces, “It’s time to get up.” Wonder falls over everybody. Astonishment creeps into their minds. Even though it’s the last Sunday in June, wherever Jesus shows up, its Easter. She now belongs again.
So here we are, church all adjusted to death. We heard the names read at the start of the service, all shot and dead. We get use to death. That expression namely “get real,” translated back into the text says accept death, adjust to it. Mocking laughter of the crowd is the way a sophisticated, stoic disposition refers to Easter.
So when this desperate father presses in upon Jesus, when a poor harried women, reaches toward Jesus, the homefolk react with that knowing sardonic laughter. Jesus responds with new life, a new hope, a new belonging, a new future. Nothing spectacular is done, he lets the women touch him and he speaks to the girl. And there is resurrection. Jesus commands “little girl get up.” Why didn’t he raise all the dead he walked by? Why here? Why her?
Of course the reasons are known only to Jesus, but maybe he is not just another doctor with a cure, unlike the doctors that drained the money and energy out of the women. Rather, Jesus is a revolutionary, a teacher who teaches us how to transform and overturn the world. Jesus is this subversive, who has invaded the deadly territory that happens to be his own homeland, to take it from the grip of death and hold it out for God’s yes.
Wherever Jesus shows up, even here in the fifth chapter long before Easter or long after Easter, you see Mark just can’t wait to the end to tell it. Because with Jesus the time is always right now, right here for resurrection.
We see it now in Charlestown at Emmanuel AME church, as that church is saying we are all in this together. You are my son, my daughter. To see the connection is to see tomorrow. Right now, in that South Carolina State legislature deciding on the confederate flag. Some see, some don’t. To see that we all belong to each other is life, not to see is death.
I know that flag has a history outside of the civil wa, but come on, it has been co-opted by so many and for so long to put people in their place. It’s a symbol of racism. To pretend otherwise is daydreaming.
Right now, the Governor of Illinois and the democrats are dancing and blaming each other over a budget impasse; money that for many represents a lift up and out of death. Bring free enterprise; bring new economic zones into the poorer places to give a hand up, folks need a hand up. They need good jobs.
By telling these stories here, resurrection gets political. It’s a political challenge to the bystanders and to the superficial disciples. It’s a challenge as to who gets to name what is real, what’s really going on in the world and when?
Jesus this morning isn’t waiting for anyone. Whoever Jesus commands with “get up” or allows someone to “touch him” it’s not just a last Sunday in June anymore, its Easter. Some might ask, why do you need a supernaturally resurrected body of Jesus to make your faith work?
Paul Tillich said somewhere, that the grave is the symbol for the ultimate forgetting. But the heart of faith is not a forgetting, for God’s grace enfolds the whole person, all the good or bad or what is more likely the whole confusing mix of the two that rings true for most of us. God sees it all and loves you.
Death and resurrection are no abstraction - true for everyone, yet true for no one. I know how people can abuse resurrection and make it all about themselves. But when we look at the baby in the arms of a mom in Syria or Yemen, when we visit a museum and see pictures of the vacant eyes of six million Jews murdered in World War 2, as we hear the names and cherish the nine who died in Charleston, I find that I can’t talk about the love of God in this life without in some way addressing what happens to the last enemy death.
When the rumor that something’s afoot becomes a reality, then we see why the women in response to the empty tomb in Mark were filled with fear. Mocking cynical laughter is the way that death keeps control and attempts to keep Mr. Life at bay.
During these summer days I don’t know what you may have lost, or where you’re hemorrhaging. I know that our cities often hemorrhage from violence.
I do know that republican trust in free enterprise and the democrats concern for programs that get people up, have to come together with some creative new solutions. I wonder if Jesus is here, to bring life to you. Even on a June Sunday. Because the end of it all is not withering away into a no. The end of it all is God’s Yes. Let’s wear that yes today. Let’s stay connected.