SERMONS > June 30, 2024

Jesus as a last hope

I begin in the name of Jesus Christ + and proclaim my faith and trust that the Holy Spirit is among us to give us ears to hear and hearts to know God’s living and loving Word for us in this place and time.

Amen

The two main people in Mark’s reading today are both desperate and despairing:

The Woman is wearily desperate from twelve years of a suffocating despair over her severe bleeding disorder and the crushing social isolation that goes with it.

The Father is frantically desperate in his acute despair over his twelve-year-old daughter’s imminent death.

Their desperation compels them to seek Jesus out in the midst of that crowd. Each one takes great risk in pursuit of fixing what to many eyes and hearts would seem impossible to fix.

The Father is a leader of the local Jewish synagogue. As a person of influence and means, he has privilege enough to physically push his way through the crowd already surrounding Jesus. Then face to face, the Father begs Jesus, falling at his feet. Jesus immediately agrees and they turn to follow the Father through the crowd, presumably heading back to the synagogue.

Meanwhile the Woman, who is also someone’s daughter, has also been pushing through the crowd. However, her actions are in direct violation of the religious and cultural laws that prohibited her from coming into any kind of contact with people because of her hemorrhaging. She was the polar opposite of a person of influence and means; she was ritually unclean and therefore an outcast. Which meant she was also cast out of her faith community; barred from entering the synagogue … perhaps the very same synagogue that Jesus was heading toward.

Until she touched him.

Or at least touched his cloak. But that was all she needed.

Verse 29: “Immediately her flow of blood [hemorrhaging] stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.”

And in that very same instant, Jesus also feels the power. Or loss of it. Verse 30: “Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who has touched my cloak?”

Everything stops in that instant. Jesus stops following the Father, whose heart must also have stopped in disbelief of what was happening before his very eyes while his daughter’s life was about to stop (if it hadn’t already).

Jesus wants to know who touched his clothes. His disciples can’t believe he would think that was even possible to know in the middle of a crushing crowd. But he persists… and waits… and the adult daughter who was healed from that momentary touch comes forward. She confesses what she has done … which, under Jewish law, was defilement because of her hemorrhaging. She has now defiled Jesus with her touch… and yet was immediately healed… because it was Jesus that she touched. Yet Jesus blessed her, calling her “daughter” and assuring her she was indeed healed.

In the very next moment the dreaded news arrives that the 12-year-old daughter has died. Imagine the Father’s heartbreak.

But Jesus insists they continue on. He reassures the Father “Do not be afraid; only believe” (v36b) And so the Father goes. What else can he do?

When they arrive, Jesus tells the people who are already mourning her death that the child is not dead, but only sleeping. But they laugh at Jesus. They laugh at him!

Imagine this Father. What is the depth of his despair at that moment? How much more can he endure?

But it wasn’t long before all of that must have vanished in the instant he saw Jesus take his daughter’s hand and say to her “Little girl, get up” … “and immediately she did and began to walk about.” (v41-42)

As a leader of the synagogue, it took more courage than faith to push through a crushing crowd to ask Jesus to come heal his daughter.

As a faith leader he surely had relied on his faith and that of his rabbi and colleagues and community for his daughter’s situation. Imagine the prayers that had been prayed. And as a person of means he surely had found the best medical care and consultants. Imagine the care she had received yet to no avail. Traditional faith and means had not succeeded.

It had been in frantic desperation that the Father put his reputation on the line for the life of his daughter. He went seeking the renegade itinerant preacher Jesus, whose ministry had been upending long standing Jewish law. Despite the risk, he saw Jesus as his daughter’s only remaining hope.

In fact, both daughters had that in common: Jesus as their last hope.

So of course desperation compelled them – driving two very different adults to find Jesus in a precarious crowd and somehow lay their burden at his feet in public, hoping… even praying … not to be denied.

And they were not. Jesus acknowledged and then delivered them all… literally… back to wholeness. Make that three delivered, for surely we must count the Father as also delivered that day.

As a religious leader, the Father was delivered into a whole new understanding of the God he already knew.  A whole new understanding of healing and grace made real before his very eyes in the itinerant ministry of Jesus… who not only restored his own beloved daughter back to life, but also completely restored the other Woman’s personal dignity and place among her people.

That Father and leader was given a new understanding when Jesus said to the woman in v. 34: “go in peace” Something that a religious leader of that time would never have said to any woman in the same situation… not until he saw Jesus do it.

That Father went looking for Jesus to save his daughter’s life, but came away with more than one life restored. I want to believe that man became a new kind of religious leader from that moment on. I don’t mean he must have become a Christian. He was a leader of a local synagogue, and I hope he continued to be.

But I also hope his compassion increased for the other women in his synagogue and community suffering from hemorrhaging. I hope he became someone they could approach and trust. Someone who would listen without judging. Someone who would advocate for them and work to change the laws that excluded and shamed them. Just as one example.

We know that over the centuries and in our lifetimes much has changed in so many ways around not only this but many other things people once denounced or feared or considered taboo or could not cure. There are still many things in need of change… God knows. And as The Christian Church we continue to persist and work for good change… working with people of all faiths and even no faith. Amen?

I can’t say I know this congregation very well, but I know what it feels like to come here. It feels like a place where stories are invited and heard. It feels like a place where strangers are encouraged to not only come in, but to become known. It feels like a place where the people are not only open to being stretched and inspired the way the Father in our story must have been, but have already been transformed in some ways.

I know you are in transition again after your wonderful Pastor John Polk retired. And I imagine you have a vision and a plan to continue to build on what you have, as well as seek to develop and grow where God continues to lead.

I offer heartfelt blessings on your journey and your dreams and aspirations for this Congregation, its ministries, and its future. May you all continue to be of good cheer, love one another, and always give God the Glory.

Amen.

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