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Christ Church + Washington Parish
Judith Davis, Rector ©
A Sermon for Proper 8 July 2, 2006
Text: Mark 5: 21-43
In the name of the One for whom no one is an outsider, Amen.
Today’s Gospel reading concerns very human needs and
responses such as love, grief, need, generosity,
sickness, fear, hope, healing and joy.
The stories of the raising of Jairus’ daughter and
the healing of the haemorrhaging woman are both about
healing of body and spirit and consequently the healing
of community.
Jairus, a
leader in the synagogue, begs Jesus repeatedly to heal his
daughter.
However, before Jesus can respond, the crowd closes
in on him and his attention is drawn to another person.
The urgent need of a person at the centre of the
community is interrupted by the urgent need of someone
on the fringes of the community.
Like Jairus, this woman is in a desperate
situation.
Her illness—bleeding that doctors have been
unable to cure for 12 years has meant that she has
been an outcast in society.
She is unclean.
Believing that by touching the healer, she
herself will be healed; she reaches out, touches
him, and is made well.
The story then turns to the effect that this has
on Jesus.
Jesus has felt power leave him.
He searches for the person who has touched him.
The woman acknowledges what she has done and
Jesus responds by recognizing her faith and by
offering a blessing.
Meanwhile, on the edge of this drama, news comes of
the other situation.
The worst has happened. Jairus' daughter has
died.
But Jesus turns to Jairus and says "Do not fear,
only believe."
He then goes to Jairus’ home where a crowd has
begun to mourn the girl’s death.
Jesus silences their lament with the shocking
statement, "The child is not dead but only
sleeping," and as he touches her, she awakens.
She rises and walks about and Jesus responds by
instructing her family to give her something to eat.
To grasp the radicality of these stories, we have to
recall the purity laws of Judaism.
That a woman, who at least at one time had some
wealth should be in a such a public place evidently
unaccompanied by male protectors and that she should
dare to touch a strange man without his consent are
extraordinary events in an ancient cultural context.
Either the degree of her desperation or, as Mark
has Jesus say, the depth of her faith makes such
unheard of actions possible.
She has had money, which suggests a higher status,
but she has now had to spend it all on useless
physicians.
They caused her to undergo much suffering while
making her condition, a constant haemorrhaging,
worse rather than better.
Her bleeding placed her in a state of perpetual
impurity that would not only have prevented her from
participating in cultic activities but would also have
infected anyone who touched her, lay on a bed on which
she had slept, or sat on a chair which she had vacated.
It is probable that this twelve-year curse of
impurity, besides having drained her finances, had also
isolated her socially from friends and family.
She would have been too much of a risk to
associate with.
In a Greco-Roman social context, her appearance in
public without companions may have indicated a "shamed"
status, but the only explanation given by the Gospel is
her disease.
Her illness, has placed her outside the
religious community and perhaps also outside the
honourable human community.
Moreover, her healing occurs completely at her
own initiative.
She has heard reports about Jesus and says to
herself that if she can only touch his garment, she
will be healed.
She seeks and claims what heals her. She doesn't
wait for permission. She is an agitator on her own
behalf.
Of course, given her unclean condition her touch
would also transfer her impurity to Jesus.
Her action would then be doubly audacious, a
violation of social codes for proper female
behaviour and a violation of religious law.
Jesus takes no action part whatsoever in
her healing, confirming the truth of his later
statement that her faith has made her well.
The moment she touches him the bleeding stops
and she feels in her body that she is whole.
Only after this main action of the episode is
concluded does Jesus cease his passive role in the
story; he perceives that something in his body has
changed as well.
Jesus words to her continue the healing:
Daughter, your faith has made you well. In
addressing her as daughter he indicates her
reincorporation into the community.
Jesus actions with Jairus’
daughter similarly contradict the purity laws:
To touch a dead body, as to come in contact with a
bleeding woman, was to be polluted.
For Jesus by his action communicated that healing by
touching, is more important than the rules of religious
purity.
The vision of Jesus makes people whole, healthy,
cleansed, and strong. It restores people’s humanity and
life. The salvation offered by the kingdom of God is not
confined to the soul but spells wholeness for the
total person in her social relations.
Jesus tells the woman: Go in peace, (shalom) that is
be happy and whole. You are healed.
In touching Jairus' daughter Jesus also becomes
ritually unclean.
Yet the power of the Kingdom of God does not rest in
holiness or cultic purity.
The girl gets up and walks, she rises to womanhood.
Both she and the haemorrhaging woman are given new
life.
Both women can go and live in peace (shalom), in the
well-being and happiness of God.
In these stories is a rich vision of inclusive community
where the rules are less important than meeting and touching
and healing and restoring to community.
people need human touch
The touch of hands in ritual action and rites of
anointing are ancient Judaeo-Christian practices
Such healing rites are a part of many churches
across a vast variety of theological stances.
Furthermore, healing touch is sacramental.
Those who practice physiotherapy, massage,
reflexology, aromatherapy, osteopathy and similar
treatments are in immediate continuity with healing
ministry,
even where they do not see their work as having a
religious dimension.
And the contrary is true
people undergoing forms of therapy that require a
certain degree of separation,
of physical isolation,
as in radiotherapy
need special human support to transcend the barrier
of this frightening aloneness.
Some people have been regarded by their societies as
untouchable,
those who are temporarily or permanently – homeless
Living and dead, they were in danger of being
literally untouchable. This week I participated in a
memorial service for a homeless man in our neighbourhood
who died of AIDS. He spent his last days at Joseph’s
House – a hospice for those with AIDS – where he was
treated with dignity and loving care. This man who had
spent decades on the streets was able in his final days
to be able to rest and to be at peace. At his funeral,
his street friends gathered around to remember him.
How many years had he spent being not only untouchable, but
invisible? How many of us fail to see our sisters and brothers
who are alone on the street, cold, hungry, and sick. How many of
us avert our glances and quicken our footsteps? These are the
great untouchables of our society. How blessed Sidney was that
he was able to be granted some dignity, care, and loving touch
in the last days of his life. And how sad that it was the lack
of visibility and touch and care that probably cost him his
life.
The stories in Mark's gospel are a vision of a world of
touch that is loving and just,
where we see our calling to heal, make whole and
restore the community,
where we enable one another to name and to seek for
what heals us.
where all this is done in response to the
overwhelming love and grace of God, which is for every
one of us, and for the entire world.
Search for what will heal you and, in loving
community, bring healing to one another and all the world.
The haemorrhaging woman sought and claimed what would heal
her. May we do the same.
Let us pray:
Generous God, you strengthen our love
to help us meet the test of others' needs.
Receive and use these gifts
so that abundance and need
may be balanced in the world.
Remembering Jesus the healer we pray.
Amen.
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