A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter at Centenary United Methodist Church Metuchen, New Jersey June 28, 2009

Text: Mark 5:21-43
This week’s gospel reading contains an unusual literary style—a miracle story within an-other miracle story: the healing of the woman with the issue of blood while Jesus was on the way to heal the daughter of the leader of the synagogue.
The passage begins with the plight of Jairus, a presumably well-respected synagogue leader. His daughter is at the point of death, and Jesus is his last hope. After repeated requests, Jesus consents to come home with him to see about his only child. But Jairus’ story is interrupted by the story of a woman who has been chronically ill with bleeding for more than 12 years.
The woman is ritually unclean (Leviticus 15:25) and her condition has, up to this point, been incurable. In fact, she has run out of resources to seek further healing. Jesus is also her last hope. In a daring act of faith, she reaches out and touches his clothes!
By the time this “interruption” is resolved, the synagogue leader’s daughter is dead.
Jairus had access to everything anyone in that society could hope for, yet his daughter was beyond recovery and lay at the point of death. The chronically ill woman had exhausted all her resources and had been ritually unclean for years, and still she was not healed. Sickness, ca-lamity, natural disasters, war—all seem to bring us to the same point of need. Note that for both of the sick people in the passage, Jesus was their last hope. This is a message for all of us. Jesus is our first and last hope.
When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physi-cians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disci-ples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. —Mark 5:21-43, NRSV
The title of this Message seems a bit out of place on the final Sunday in June. Just to re-assure you, I am well aware that Easter is over…although several Easter hymn-writers and theo-logians remind us that every Sunday (if not every day) is a “little Easter.” As Richard Avery and Donald Marsh expressed it in song back in the 1960’s:
Ev’ry morning is Easter morning from now on!
Ev’ry day’s resurrection day, the past is over and gone!
Good-bye guilt, good-bye fear, good riddance! Hello, Lord, Hello, sun!
I am one of the Easter People! My new life has begun!
Ev’ry morning is Easter morning from now on!
Ev’ry day’s resurrection day, the past is over and gone!
And in 1979, in his hymn text “Easter People, Raise Your Voices,” the beloved African-American Pastor of Salem United Methodist Church in Harlem, the Rev. Dr. William M. James declared, “Every Day to us is Easter, with its resurrection song. When in trouble move the faster to our God who rights the wrong. Alleluia! Alleluia! See the power of heavenly throngs.”
As if to underscore this Easter theme on the cusp of July, I noticed yesterday that many of the Easter lilies planted in the Meditation Garden several years ago, after our Easter services, are about to burst forth in full flower.
So yes, I know we are beyond Easter Sunday. Indeed, we have moved through the Great Fifty Days of Easter and four weeks past the Day of Pentecost. Yet the Church never gets over the oddness of Easter. We still keep being surprised by the truth that, whenever the resurrected Christ shows up, the dead don’t stay that way.
I am also well aware that there isn’t much of an Easter story in the Gospel of Mark. You heard it back on April 12. Mark’s Gospel just ends—abruptly—with no resurrection appearances at all. There is a promise by the young man at the tomb that the resurrected Jesus will appear (Mark 16:7), but Mark has no actual resurrection appearances. And in the last sentence of Mark, what is the response of the women who have come to the tomb to the good news that Jesus is raised from the dead? Fear.
Well, today we’re not at the end of Mark’s Gospel, but rather more toward the middle. Jesus has been working outside the familiar boundaries, out there in Gentile territory; but now he crosses the border back home to Galilee, back among the faithful—one commentator says he’s come back to “the real Bible-believers, to us.”
And as he approaches home, Jesus is encountered by Jairus, a church official—sort of like the clergy—a leader of the Synagogue. The man’s 12-year-old daughter is near death, and he falls at Jesus’ feet (not a typical posture for an ecclesiastical official!), begging him to come help. “My little girl is going to die!” says the frantic father. Jesus starts to go home with Jairus.
But on the way, a woman, a bleeding woman—a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years and who has used up all of her life savings on medical care (because she didn’t live in Canada or Sweden, one commentator conjectures) —reaches through the surrounding crowd and touches the tzitzis on Jesus’ tallit.
“If I could just touch him, I’d be healed,” she says to herself. And she is healed. And Je-sus praises her faith.
However, having been delayed, by the time they get to Jairus’ house, it’s all over. The be-loved little girl is dead. The weeping and wailing tells the sad news.
“Why are you making such a fuss?” Jesus asks. “Mr. Lord of Life is here!” The crowd turns from mourning to mocking laughter. “Sure, like she’s only asleep!”
And Jesus touches the little girl, saying, “It’s time to get up, sweetie!” And she arises and walks out of her room of death. And Jesus’ disciples, and all who were with them in the death-house, are “astounded.”
We still are.
Here is the Church, so well accustomed to and adjusted to death. We Methodists are among what used to be called mainline Protestant Churches…these days, some have started to call us the “sideline Churches.” Like the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Reformed, Episcopalian, Amer-ican Baptist churches and others, our denominations have collectively lost millions of members over the past half century. Often we console ourselves with, “Everybody’s losing members.” Death seems to be the accepted order of the day.
We encounter friends and family who are in the grip of various forms of addiction. Re-covery? Cure? Do you know the statistics on that sort of thing? Few get over their enslavement to the pills, the butts or the bottle. Death is the order of the day. “Get real,” helpful friends tell us. “You must face reality, face facts.”
What they mean is, you must adjust to death. So when this desperate father presses in upon Jesus, when this poor, harried woman reaches toward Jesus, he responds by offering them new life, hope, a future. He doesn’t settle for their having to simply “face the facts” of their situation. He doesn’t say some magical incantation over their problem. He doesn’t use some eso-teric technique. He just shows up at Jairus’ house, he just allows the unnamed woman to touch the hem of his garment.
But that is enough. Wherever Jesus shows up in some situation of death and defeat, some place of despair and hopelessness, there is going to be a resurrection. That is the promise of the gospel for you.
True, Jesus didn’t raise every dying person he encountered; he didn’t heal everyone who was sick. Yet there is something about Jesus that proclaims everlasting life. In him was life, and light, and it was for all.
It’s for you too. I don’t know, on this summer day, where there is a shadow in your life. I don’t know what dead end, what situation of enslavement you are dealing with. But I do know that Jesus is the Lord of Life, that he is master, even over death. Therein is your hope.
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PRAYER
Lord Jesus, in your resurrection you defeated death and came back to us to give us ever-lasting life. You disarmed the principalities and powers and triumphed over them.
Lord Jesus, keep doing that for us. Defeat our defeat, overcome our enslavement, break the bonds of our oppressors, and raise us from the dead.
Give us the grace to dare to reach out to you and in reaching out, to live the new life that you give us. Forgive our deadly acceptance of the boundaries that the world attempts to impose upon us. Forgive our willingness to be mastered by forces that are set against your coming reign. Forgive us our mocking laughter in the face of your promise of eternal, abundant life. Amen.
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