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Rev. Tom Lenhart
Sermon July 2, 2006
“Faith -- In the Center Not on the Margins!”
Mark 5: 21-43
Let us pray.
Our
scripture today as you just heard is the telling of two remarkable miracles
performed by Jesus -- the healing of the hemorrhagic woman and the bringing
back to life of the beloved daughter. Over the centuries many sermons have
been preached on this text. They often have focused on the miracles; what
did Jesus really do? Did he raise the young daughter from the dead and how
did he cure the bleeding woman? What was her illness; was it psychosomatic?
In my view the true focus of this scripture is not, however, on Jesus but on
Jairus (“Jay i rus”), the father of the little daughter, and on the unnamed,
but courageous, woman suffering from chronic bleeding. This passage is an
insightful lesson on faith. Faith in this day is a subject that is not often
discussed -- even by those of us who embrace it. It seems to make us
uncomfortable to talk about it. This scripture reveals that it has never
been all that easy to be a person of faith. Questions about and challenges
to faith and belief are not new.
The crux of these two
stories -- interwoven for dramatic effect -- is on what faith really is and
what it can accomplish if we put it at the center of our lives. Jairus is a
person of great importance. The Greek word used to describe him can be
translated “president, ruler or leader;” however, translated it is clear he
was a major figure in the Jewish community by the Sea of Galilee and in the
community’s Synagogue. Though Jesus’ relationship with the synagogue and its
leaders is less hostile in Mark than in the other gospels; Jesus’
relationship to the establishment is nonetheless ambiguous. His identity and
his teachings were problematic for some in leadership, especially the
Pharisees. As a leader in the community Jairus would normally be expected
not to spend time with someone like Jesus, an iterant anti-establishment
teacher and preacher. If it were necessary to meet with him he would
normally have sent an emissary to request if not command Jesus’ presence.
And yet Jairus ignores these strictures and traditions --these accepted
patterns of behavior -- and comes to Jesus falling before him in
supplication.
The
hemorrhagic woman equally reflects courageous action. She is from a very
different level of society than Jairus. She had suffered from chronic and
uncontrollable bleeding for 12 years. Under the prevailing Jewish
religious laws she represents the essence of religious impurity. Indeed,
to touch her was to become unclean oneself -- a profound impediment in that
culture removable only by elaborate purification rituals. The fact that she
had spent her own money on cures suggests that she was alone --either
divorced or widowed -- positions of extremely marginal status in this male
dominated culture. She was likely a shunned woman, who doubtless was never
seen in public. Yet, trusting in Jesus and what she had heard of his powers
she ventured out and defied the rules by touching the hem of his robe. Thus,
the first great lesson of this passage is that faith is about being open.
Faith requires something of us. It is not done to us. It is not passive. It
requires trusting in something beyond us and acting on that trust;
even when action is not easy and goes against the mores and grain of the
time. As Frederick Buechner has insightfully noted, faith is more a verb
than a noun.
It is a process, indeed, a journey often one that takes us away from the
ordinary and the comfortable. One that we must initiate and for which there
is no precise map.
Each of my
children went through confirmation at the end of middle school. After that
time they rarely darkened the door of the church. They were very busy. They
had extracurricular activities some even on Sunday morning, worked very hard
and diligently on school work and lobbied adroitly to sleep in on Sunday –
the one day of the week, so they said, that they could. And I capitulated. I
look back on that with regret. Faith demands that we do things -- that we
act on our beliefs. I should have insisted. Coming to church – having their
spiritual side developed and ministered to was more important than the
activity of the moment that was taking center stage in their world. Thus, it
is that I believe a successful youth program requires at least two things –
that the church provide experiences that are fun, nurturing and enriching
and that parents be more insistent on attendance. Faith sometimes dictates
that we swim against the current of the times. Certainly Jairus and the
woman did and did so courageously.
But what is
it that we should put our trust or faith in. Isn’t religious faith just
superstition and a palliative for our fear of mortality? Our passage says
emphatically no! Mark tells us, once the bleeding woman touches the hem of
Jesus’ robe, “her hemorrhage stopped: and she felt in her body that she was
healed of her disease.” Yet, the text does not end on this note. Why?
Curiously, we are told that Jesus seeks to identify her having felt her tug
at his robe. Hearing of this she comes forward to confess that she had to
touch him -- in essence defying the purity rules. And what does he say in
response – he doesn’t rebuke her, but says “your faith has made you whole.”
The robe does not contain some special power. This is not magic. This is
about faith -- that is what heals here. Jesus is not a magician, sorcerer or
conjurer of which there were many in these times; that is the point. And
this may be why Jesus says to the disciples "tell no one." It was not the
doing of miracles by Jesus that was important but faith in what he
proclaimed -- in the Good News. The transforming factor here was the
faith of this woman that propelled her to come to Jesus. She trusted in the
love we receive through the grace. A grace that releases us, reinforces us
and restores us. She had faith in the restorative power of being loved and
in the gift of the capacity to love and that made all the difference.
Indeed, in the case of Jairus’ daughter that faith manifests itself in the
victory of life over death.
While we in
this modern and sophisticated world do not reject faith because it is a
conjures’ trick as may have been the case in Jesus’ time, we do reject it or
at least at times relegated it to the margins of our world. As the frontiers
of knowledge are expanded, God and faith are pushed further in retreat. We
have split the atom; we have the capability to eliminate from the face of
the earth the scourge of horrific diseases, such as small pox and polio,
through clever vaccinations; we can genetically alter organisms to make them
bigger, tastier, more nutritious, and more disease resistant; we understand
and can treat illnesses -- physical and mental -- more successfully than
ever before. We are connected to each other and across seemingly long
distances through the genius of air travel and the creation of the Internet.
We know more about more subjects than ever in the history of humankind and
we have quicker and fuller access to such information. The list of our
achievements goes on. The catch phrase of Tom Wolfe’s novel, The Bonfire
of the Vanities, comes to mind, “we are the masters of the universe.”
Or so it seems! At times it seems that analysis and deductive reasoning --
the scientific method -- have supplanted faith as the fulcrum of life that
we depend upon for balance. Often in this day and age faith and belief are
dismissed as the product of minds that need to create something to deal with
the unthinkable or the uncontrollable in life.
There is no doubt that we
turn to faith in moments of crisis. Jairus did when he was confronted with
the near death of his beloved young daughter and the bleeding woman did
after years of awful suffering, despite having tried every cure. In
Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, the mariners cry in the face of the
storm, “All lost! To prayers, to prayers! All lost!” (The Tempest,
Act 1, scene 1) Immediately after 9/11 attendance soared at the houses of
worship in this country. The parishes, churches and synagogues were packed.
Confronted by the reality of radical evil, people sought out the faith they
had relegated to the margins. Our individual and collective sense of control
over life was challenged: the depravity of the event overwhelmed our ability
to understand it and as Dietrich Bonhoeffer had written about Germany of the
30’s, God and faith became “the stop –gap for the incompleteness of our
knowledge.” But gradually, life returned to normal and our control of life
and its many facets seemed to return. Not surprisingly, attendance returned
to pre 9/11 levels. We forgot or at least pushed into the back corners of
our minds the reality that we do not control or understand all.
There are many lessons
from that experience. I have always thought that the churches failed to
seize the moment -- to talk about the hard questions of faith and to find
worship practices that enriched the returning or new attendees. What I think
we failed to do was to make clear that faith is not the rejection of or a
substitute for our efforts to use our gifts of analysis and reasoning to
harness our world. There is much we can, should and must control – poverty,
oppression and disease are just the first items that come to mind: And there
is much that can be proven through the use of the divine gift of reason. How
electronic devices work, that the world is round, that light is both
particles and waves. Yet, much can not be controlled or fully known. The
child who contracts leukemia, a hatred that drives people to kill others by
killing themselves, such things defy our understanding and our control. But
it is not just the evils and suffering that beset our world that we do not
fully understand. It is also in my mind the things that matter must -- the
power and origins of friendship and love that animate and give meaning to
our lives, likewise faith. All logical proofs of faith and God fall short.
Faith is hardly about certainty. As Paul Tillich famously observed, doubt is
not the opposite of faith; it is an element of it.
Is it important what we
put at the center of our life? If we put at the center our faith in our
capacity to control our world and destiny then we will only turn to faith in
God for those brief periods during which our confidence in ourselves is
shaken. On the other hand we can put faith in God at the center of our
lives. That does not mean that we reject our gifts of reason and creativity
among others. Acceptance of the power of faith is not the rejection of human
freedom or creativity. For example, it is not medicine versus faith for us.
We rightly believe in both. I do not personally believe faith can cure
incurable diseases but I do believe that people with strong abiding faith
have more favorable outcomes then those that don’t and, I think, medicine is
beginning to accept this. But-- as was the case for Jairus and the woman --
putting faith at the center –acting on it – makes all the difference.
In his book, Letters
and Papers from Prison,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, focused on identifying the reasons for the failure of
the German people and its churches to oppose effectively Nazism and its
policies. He wrote, “We thought we could make our way in life with reason
and justice, and… both failed.” (Letters, p. 298). The failure was across
the board encompassing “the reasonable person”, “the moral fanatic”, “the
person of conscience”, “the follower of duty” and “the devotee of freedom.”
(Letters, p. 5). All failed because in Bonhoeffer’s view the final standard
to which each looked for ultimate guidance was insufficient for the task of
confronting the evil of Nazism. Rather for Bonhoeffer it was only those who
are “called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive
allegiance to God” who can stand fast against evil. (Letters, p. 5) Reason,
conscience, morality and responsibility are all essential – we could not
survive without them but they are insufficient without faith -- faith at the
center
But the importance of
putting faith at the center is not simply to propel us to make correct moral
judgments and to confront evil and oppression. It is also I would submit to
bring about our fulfillment. Only in being in right relationship with God
through faith do we truly begin to be as were intended to be -- created in
God’s image -- and to live life to the fullest. Several years ago a relative
of mine by marriage was diagnosed with a terminal illness. All that medical
science could provide had been tried but the ultimate outcome was clear.
This individual had come back form WWII to establish Outward Bound and to
become a beloved prep school teacher. He had lived a good indeed a wonderful
life. But he now faced a certain death. During his last nine months, this
man was visited ever other week by his life long friend, William Sloane
Coffin, who drove down from Vermont to see him. They spent those last days
together talking about life and death and praying; both men in their own
ways men of faith. When this man died his wife said the last nine months
were the most joyous and peaceful of his life. Faith in ways I can not put
into words brought fullness and meaning to his life even in the face of
death. The victory of life over death is what faith brought Jairus’ daughter
and is the promise of the Cross for all of us. Heaven knows I can’t prove
that but like Jairus and the woman I faithfully believe it. Another Wolfe,
Thomas not Tom, put faith in these words:
Something has spoken to me in the night,
Burning the tapers of the waning year:
Something has spoken in the night,
And told me I shall die, I know where.
Saying: To lose the earth you know for
greater knowing
To lose the life you have for greater life;
To leave the friends you loved for greater
loving;
To find a land more kind than home, more
large than earth –
Whereon the pillars of this earth are
founded,
Toward which the conscience of the world is
tending –
A wind is rising and the rivers flow
Amen
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC (San Francisco:
HarperCollins, 1993) pp. 29-31
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, edited by
Eberhard Bethge, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
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