God Heals: A Sermon on Mark 5:21-43

This is the third sermon I wrote for this morning. I spent Thursday through Saturday at a conference in Holland. So in preparation for that conference, I wrote my sermon for today on Wednesday afternoon. And then on Wednesday evening, as I was packing up my things and getting ready to leave, I received an email from the presiding bishop, asking that we make today a day of prayer and mourning for those killed in Charleston. And I didn’t want to, for the very shallow reasons that I already had a sermon written and we already had bulletins printed and for the very serious reasons that preaching on racism is scary and dangerous. But the Holy Spirit doesn’t have much truck with excuses, shallow or serious. And it wasn’t long before my prepared sermon fell apart before me, and I knew those would not be the words the Holy Spirit had for us this morning.

I am distraught over Charleston. I am distraught that more and more the pages of the newspaper read like pages from the history books I grew up with. I read about it, many of you lived through it, and yet, here we are again, here we are still. I am distraught that racism is still real and alive in our nation. And most of all, I am distraught that I was able to ignore it and treat it like history, because it is not history. And people have died for my ignorance.

And yet, in the stories coming out of Charleston I am also hopeful. I find hope in renewed conversations around race and privilege. I find hope in the powerful words of forgiveness the families of the victims of those killed gave to the man who killed them. I am hopeful that maybe this brutal act will finally bring us to the day when, like the apostle Paul wrote, there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, for all are one in Jesus Christ.

So I got home Saturday night and I began to write sermon number two for this morning. And I was getting along pretty well, but I still felt strange. I still felt this tension that I couldn’t quite name. This tension drove me to distraction, which led me to Facebook where, surprisingly, I finally was able to put a finger to what felt off. Because my Facebook feed is filled with rainbows and wedding pictures as my friends rejoiced in the Supreme Court’s decision that marriage between two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together is legal in all fifty states.

But my joy was tempered by the reality that we still have a long way to go. That while so many of the people I love can now marry the people they love, they can still be fired from their jobs, be blocked from adopting children, face housing discrimination. And all at once I was overwhelmed by an enormous complexity of emotions, joy and grief, love and pain, pride and shame. How does one make sense of a week like this one?

So I went to our Gospel reading for this morning, and I thought about Jairus. Jairus was a leader in the synagogue. He was wealthy, powerful, well-respected, and honored in his community. But none of that mattered on the day his daughter took sick. On the day his daughter took sick, his wealth, his power, his honor were meaningless as he threw himself at the feet of Jesus and begged for healing for his little girl. And Jesus healed his daughter. But that healing had a cost. See, before his daughter took sick, Jairus hadn’t needed anyone, or hadn’t thought he’d needed anyone. He was a leader in the synagogue, he was wealthy, powerful, put together. His daughter’s illness and Jesus’ healing forced Jairus to come to grips with the fact that all of those things that had defined him had never had any value at all, that when the thing that mattered the most, his daughter’s life, was on the line, he was powerless. What a complexity of emotions Jairus must have felt on that day. Joy at his daughter’s healing, shame that he could not keep her safe in the first place, relief that she was ok, grief at the loss of the identity he’d built for himself. And over that complexity of emotions was Jesus, drawing Jairus and his daughter into new life, into a world more full, more whole, than the one they had known before. Through all that complexity, Jesus healed them.

And I thought about the hemorrhaging woman. So different from Jairus. So low as to not even be named. Suffering for twelve years from an illness that left her an outcast in society, penniless and unclean and alone. Until in an instant, she reached out her hand to touch Jesus’ cloak and she was healed. What a complexity of emotions. Relief, that her long years of suffering were finally over. Fear, of discovery, of what might come next, of what it might mean to have to reenter the very community that had made her an outcast. Hope, that she could finally live again. Grief over all the time she’d lost. And over that complexity of emotions, Jesus healed her. Jesus brought her from isolation back into community, and she found life, new life in his healing. Through all that complexity, Jesus healed her.

What this Gospel story reminded me was that my emotional turmoil this week was not an anomaly, it is our reality. We live in a complex world. So often we try to make sense of this complexity by framing each experience as one thing or another. Something is good or bad, hard or easy, sinner or saint. But so often we find that things cannot be broken down so simply. It is not an either or world we live in, but a both/and world. Joy in an exciting life change like a marriage or a retirement can also be tinged with sadness over losses of relationship or familiarity. Grief over the death of a beloved loved one may also have edges of relief that our loved one is no longer suffering. Life is gritty and complicated and that is OK. That is what makes it real. We find this tension even in ourselves. Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber said it very succinctly when she wrote, “I have an incredible capacity for inflicting pain on myself and on others, but I also have an incredible capacity for kindness.” And so to do us all. We laugh, we cry, we hurt each other and heal each other. We keep promises and break them. We are both / and people.

Because we are both / and people, God has given us a both / and church. We confess and receive forgiveness. We encounter Christ through Word and Sacrament. Baptism is water and word, the Eucharist is bread and wine. Out of love for us, to help us practice this tension so that we are better prepared to experience it, God has built this into the very fiber of our worship life.

And over all that wonderful and painful and beautiful complexity is Jesus. Jesus who’s love for us was so great that he took on flesh, the most powerful embodiment of both / and, a God who became human, divinity that was at the same time mortality. A king born to a peasant. A Jew who was also a Nazarean. Sisters and brothers, God gets complexity. And through all our complexity, God brings life. Because the greatest both / and of all creation is this one. That the one who died on the cross rose again. That the tomb that held the body of Jesus became the place where resurrection reigned. We don’t have to make sense of this life, we just have to live it. And we live it in the promise that no matter the complexities we face, God walks with us. Leading us on to a place of healing and grace, resurrection and new life. Because Jesus Christ has triumphed over the complexities of death, these complexities have no power over us. They may complicate our emotions but they do not control our souls. Through it all is Jesus, drawing us deeper into the promise of new life in God.

And so, in weeks like this one. Weeks where I am so taken aback by the wonder and pain and beauty of being alive. When my heart feels both broken and elated, I find assurance in this knowledge beyond belief, that at creation God brought order out of chaos, that in Jesus God raised life out of death, and that through this complex world blows the breath of the Holy Spirit. And so I go on, laughing and crying, mourning and hoping, fighting and forgiving, confident that over all this complexity is this one simple truth. God heals. Thanks be to God. Amen.