July 1, 2018 - Sixth Sunday after Pentecost - At this they were overcome with amazement...

Pastor Ron presided while Pastor Ray was at the ELCA Youth Gathering in Houston. Today's liturgy was Marty Haugen's Tree of Life. Pastor Ron preached on today's Gospel reading, Mark 5:21-43, which contains two healing miracles, one interrupting the flow of the other. Both of the miracles speak to and amplify one another.

There are differences in the two stories:

• The socially and religiously prominent Jairus in contrast to the unnamed woman. 
• The one is made by formal request for Jesus to touch his daughter while the other sneaks a touch. Jairus sets aside his authority to make this request. The unnamed woman asserts her authority by becoming part of the crowd. 
• The hemorrhaging is an illness about the unnamed woman losing too much blood. In contrast, a twelve year-old likely is on the verge of reaching puberty and may have never had an issue with losing blood in her life.

There are similarities:

• The role of the crowd and of the disciples.
• Issues of fear and faith.
• A twelve year-old girl and a twelve year sickness.

There are also continuations of subject matter from last week's Gospel:

• Something extraordinary and outside of normal, daily life is recounted.
• Once again telling the truth is involved. Here the unnamed woman came in fear and trembling and told Jesus the whole truth.
• The amazement and awe of the witnesses. 

This continues the invitation to discover where this story intends to lead us. What will it be like to follow this Jesus on a journey of discipleship? What are the specifics of balancing fear and faith?  Why does Jesus give sporadic commands to secrecy or perform miracles out of public display?

Pastor Ron focused a majority of the sermon on the unnamed woman and the community support for Jairus' daughter and ended it with a story about Archbishop Desmond Tutu that centered around both the healing of the unnamed woman and Jairus' daughter.

The past Gospel readings have prepared us to understand the background circumstances of these miracles. A great crowd follows him because they are “hearing all that he is doing” (Mark 3:8); he escapes to a boat because of the crowds; the unclean spirits hail him as “Son of God; but Jesus orders them to secrecy in a passage not included in this or last Sunday's readings (Mark 3:7-12).

Dylan Mortimer

The sea and the crowds stalk his “doing” in this section, and now at the beginning of today’s reading, they are still with us. Five times the crowds are metioned in this story. The crowds do not necessarily have faith in something unseen or hoped for, they simply want to witness something that is happening that is astonishing to them.

Jairus' request may not be so much from faith as one more attempt, like the unnamed woman past attempts at cures, to heal his daughter. The unnamed woman appears to be acting from faith. Jarius asked for his daughter's healing, the unnamed woman did not ask for hers. Yet faith or no faith, asked or not, the power of God heals both the woman and the daughter.

What is striking to me in this reading, however, is Mark 5:33, "The woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth."

What is the whole truth for this woman? Is she confessing something about her plan and her confidence in Jesus? Is she telling the truth about herself? Imagine her saying something like, "I was desperate, and you were my last hope." Is that the faith that saved her - that healed her of her disease or did she say "I knew with certainty touching your clothes would heal me"? Is that better faith?

Our lives are built around actions and predictable results that spring from those actions. Do this and that happens. Sometimes we don't know what action to take for the results we desire. We may choose to act when that happens or not. Then God may heal, miracles may happen.

Jesus, today for me, is snapping us out of this action and result causality cycle. What is good happens outside of individual action perhaps more tied to our actions as the body of Christ. Jesus reaching the daughter physically before she dies does not, in the end, matter as a particular action  bring about a desired result.

Yet Jesus also knows we will snap back into the causality cycle of thinking. Again, observing an individual's great or little faith by action does not seem to be the point for Jesus. Individual persistence in choosing to engage might be closer but still with the needed emphasis that God's kingdom coming (or a miracle beyond our everyday world) is not dependent on the actions we take as individuals but through Christ's body on earth.

This could be the key to the secrecy and performing miracles out of public display. The action and result causality cycle stresses the importance of results, and does not address faith or God directly. Think of the crowd. What do they say immediately after hearing Jesus say to the unnamed woman "Daughter, your faith has made you well"? , They give Jarius the news "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?". And what do they do after the second miracle, "At this they were overcome with amazement"? The crowd is amazed by the results and not necessarily converted to believing in Jesus.

Pastor Ron concluded his sermon with a story about the Archbishop Desmond Tutu during the apartheid era in South Africa. This story beautifully illustrates what is illustrated and illuminated this Gospel text for me today,

Archbishop Tutu opposed apartheid with confidence. He demonstrated this once when he was conducting a service and soldiers surrounded the church. The terrified congregation looked to him as their leader. He looked at the soldiers and the situation they all were in and he laughed.

He laughed because of his faith. "In the end good and laughter and justice will prevail." said Tutu, "the perpetrators of injustice or oppression, the ones who strut the stage of the world often seemingly unbeatable — there is no doubt at all that they will bite the dust." The thought delighted him and, he addressed the soldiers and invited them to "Come and join us!"  Everyone should share in celebrating how good, laughter and justice will ultimately prevail.

This is the faith Jesus helps us glimpse. Not conditional on what someone does in their life. Not conditional in a belief in Jesus, God, Allah, Buddha or the thousand other names of God but, rather, in the inevitability that good eventually prevails.