“Worth the Effort”

“Worth the Effort”

Lamentations 3:22-33   Psalm 30    Mark 5:21-43

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, June 30, 2024

First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho

Andy Kennaly, Pastor

People need solitude, but loneliness is hard to handle. We need solitude, we need to have time by ourselves, intentional retreat from social pressures, and occasional opportunities to reflect, recharge, and claim a creative edge and energy that leads us forward. Health benefits are gained in solitude, and this affects more than the individual, there’s a social sense to it. Even religious hermits are in prayer for the world, and their solo energies and focus goes beyond themselves, directly offered on behalf of others, and the world benefits in ways that are seen and unseen.

But imposed solitude adds a burden and can switch what could be a blessing into a curse, for loneliness can take hold and despair set in. Humans are social creatures, and we need to have community, society, and culture to give shape to our common life and a sense of belonging, identity, safety, and security. When we get detached from others, we lose a sense of ourselves and loneliness clouds over our hope with pain.

For example, one of the major challenges during the global pandemic for Covid 19 was isolation. In-person, social connection was inaccessible. Gatherings were canceled, events suspended, and even if people got together, they were supposed to stay six feet apart and not do any singing. For a long time, this congregation didn’t meet together in the sanctuary, but we were dispersed, only had a virtual presence online as individuals stared at a computer or the screen on their phone, tablet, or other Personal Electronic Device. Even that term betrays individualistic aspects of our culture. When we returned to the building, in worship we sat every other pew and we didn’t have fellowship time with refreshments, and singing was kept to a minimum. Months and months and months seemed to drag along ever so slowly, and many people died from Covid, even as controversy and disagreements over restrictions and public health practices increased. Leaders had to make tough decisions and were not often popular or supported by the public. All this was more than disagreement, but it reveals changes to human patterns of thinking and perceptions of reality. We are in a major shift of consciousness as we all try and make sense of the world. But we need new ways to perceive, to trust.

During a Sabbatical in 2017, my wife, Shawna, and I visited the European country of Slovenia. One of our stops in the capital city was to Castle Ljubljana, which is a medieval fortress about 900 years old. In that castle there’s a painting on display, a mural along a couple of walls and it depicts people in a line like a parade. They’re all facing the same direction, going the same way one step at a time. They’re dressed in uniforms of society: peasants, workers, clergy, and the wealthy royalty adorned in robes and crowns. But each person, regardless of their station in life, is personally escorted by a human skeleton who walks them by hand toward the far end of the mural where another skeleton sits on a chair and holds open a cellar door; a cavern marked by a cross that descends into the grave. The Dance of Death. The painting is in reference to Black Death, the Bubonic Plague that killed 30 to 50 million people in Europe, a huge portion of the population in the mid-1300’s. It killed without discrimination; it didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, male or female, royalty or peasant. The Dance of Death is for everyone because nobody gets out of here alive.

This morning’s scripture passage from Mark is a leveler. Illness strikes the rich and the poor, and death comes marching. There is equality as the leader of the synagogue, Jairus, a man with a name and position is tied in his fate with an unnamed and socially isolated woman with a terrible physical condition. Jairus has influence, but the woman is bankrupt, financially, socially, her options are few to none, and nobody cares, indeed they profit from her misfortune. They both end up in the same position: begging at the feet of Jesus, pleading their case.

There are so many layers to this passage, equality is just one of them. Perhaps it’s also about social justice, gender issues, levels of awareness as to who Jesus is, and all of these are true, and more. But the real push, the big deal Mark writes about because it affects everyone, is power. Power. Mark is about power, who has the power, and who does not. The Dance of Death shows us through art that everyone is powerless in the face of mortality. But how we live in the meantime, the way culture is shaped, the decisions we face each day make a difference and are important in larger expressions and revelations of love. Love has no mortality. Unlike power, love is beyond measure or limitations.

There are many assumptions in this passage from Mark. Jairus is named, the woman is not. This assumes he has power, and she doesn’t. This leader of the synagogue is male in a patriarchal system, he’s a religious leader with influence. Even though there’s a crowd, for example, Jairus comes to see Jesus, and he gets access, no problem. But Jairus begs on behalf of his daughter, who is dying. Here he is at the feet of the one that other leaders, his contemporaries, have condemned. This is an irony that Jairus goes against his peers and the pressures of larger systems of power. His daughter has no standing in that culture, no status, no value, except Jairus chooses to value her, to try and save her life. There must be more going on in him than social norms and conventional thought. His pleading reveals a heart connection. His trust in Jesus shows an opening, a receptivity to an energy flow grounded in love.

The details are amazing. His little daughter is age twelve. Twelve is little, a short time, she’s so young, just a child. But for the grown woman who suffers bleeding, twelve years, the very same length, is a sign of a long time. Twelve is a lot, and she’s older, she’s endured hardships. Also, the little girl is named daughter. Jesus calls the woman, daughter. These are terms that point to relationship, and when you have relationship, you have energies of connection and possibility, which involve power, and this involves the females in this story. So, are they powerless, or not?

Ironic that the one who seems to have power, Jairus, gives it up in this healing story. He pleads for his daughter at the feet of Jesus, in public, among the crowd. He is willing to trade in his social credits, his peer supports, his status and reputation, and he will live with repercussions and social ruin from this action. While on the other hand, the woman comes from the ruins as she regains social support, reestablishes relationship as the loneliness of forced isolation based on misguided purity laws is no longer required because she is healed. She no longer needs to endure public humiliation, exclusion, and the judgments of others against her. In unexpected ways, power shifts.

This does involve stress, and neither Jairus nor the woman are risk averse. There is a recognition of tension, and the courage to face it. Jesus is energetically attuned. He picks up on this courage and the actions that come from it. He does this because Christ is archetypal in embodying the energy and creative exuberance of love. Love. The flow of love. Love of father for his daughter, love of Jesus for the people.

Jesus knows when power goes out from him because like recognizes like. He not only names the woman daughter, but his power calls out her power. She thinks his reputation as a healer is her cure. She hopes she can capitalize on his magical ability to heal without getting caught and accused of stealing from him. But Jesus names the real source of healing and says, “Your faith has made you well.” She hasn’t stolen anything, only confirmed that what she seeks is already there in herself, and because of that she is able to recognize it in others.

Both, Jairus and the woman, can recognize divine Presence in Jesus, and both trust and lean into this power. But there’s another irony: as Jesus immediately feels power go out from him, he turns and asks his disciples who that person was who touched his cloak. They don’t know. His own disciples seem ignorant of Jesus’ real power, nor do they recognize what this woman does. The ones you’d think would be the closest, and they become an obstacle in this story, unable to help.

Thankfully, the woman takes courage and is not limited by the disciples’ failures. She takes a risk, as love often does, and tells Jesus everything. That’s one other aspect of both of these situations. Jesus could be made ritually unclean if he touches a woman who has bleeding, or if he touches a dead body in the case of the little girl. “She is only sleeping” may be his way of diffusing the either/or, black and white, dialectic good or bad of these situations, and why he wants it all kept quiet after the healings happen.

Do you notice where the love flows? Even in the face of potential scandal or the failures and obstacles created by centralized power, love flows toward the suffering, toward not the center but the edges, the periphery. Love gives itself away, and these scenes of tragedy are actually filled with possibilities. Ironically, a collapse becomes an opening, and the future emerges in new ways, energized by the faithful dynamic of love.

Jesus is not concerned, it seems, about social convention or deficiencies of purity laws that miss the point of God’s righteousness. Jesus is not afraid to go to the margins, to include those who are ignored, and to be touched by the untouchable. That’s another major thing in this passage. Touch.

Notice the dying daughter is someplace else, Jesus cannot see her at first. And on the way the woman touches his cloak, but Jesus doesn’t see this happen and he doesn’t know who did it. Plato the philosopher equates knowledge as a high virtue that depends on seeing, with sight. If you see something, you know something. Jesus didn’t see her, he didn’t know who it was.

But in an healthy, Archaic way, touch is much more powerful that sight. Jesus shifts the power away from the limitations of Greek thought, and shows the power of imminence, of how we’re hardwired for in-person, material touch, and the strength of trusting without seeing, of knowing intuitively that love is at work. The gospel story celebrates physicality, and declares it’s good to be human! Fully human, with masculine and feminine energies that balance and inform as Spirit and matter co-mingle and co-create, and love is what becomes manifest.

That’s what Jesus is concerned about, that is what Christ is focused on. Love expressed in this world through justice, not measured by exclusion or powers of opposition, but by that beyond measurement, without limits, that can hold and include.

Like Lamentations mentions, The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, [the LORD’s] mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. This is the source of hope, the goodness that emerges from patience and waiting even amidst the tension and struggle. This is what Jesus shows us, teaches us, and takes us by the hand and lifts us toward.

As we live in a world filled with tension and things seem like they are dying, may we open ourselves to the energetic flow of love. May we take courage to pay attention to the margins, the edges, away from where power corrupts to see and know, better yet, to trust and intuit the unfolding of justice and the realization of hope. Thanks be to God for stories that turn conventional thinking and assumptions on their head as the Spirit continues to lead us deeper into justice and healing through love that casts out fear. May we excel in living out the genuineness of love and not be silent to express our joy in the honest confidence of humility and praise. And may God be glorified, now and forever, Amen.