Sermon June 28, 2009
“In Whom Do You Trust”
Mark 5:21-43

Let us pray.

    Who here has ever watched late night television or one of the non-premium cable channels?  One of the things I find most entertaining about them is the advertisements they run for off-beat items. You know the ones I mean –for the Ginzu knives that will cut every vegetable, fruit as well as every other material known to human beings, including steel, or those ads for Brite Magic and the like -- products that will in minutes restore the finish on your 23-year-old car to showroom brightness. And, of course, just before they are finished it happens – the announcer says, “wait, wait for a limited time only we will throw in two, yes two!, containers of Brite Magic for the price of one. So call the number on your screen now.”  Well today that’s what we get in our scripture -- two for the price of one. Mark has intertwined two parables – one, about Jairus and his very sick daughter and the other, about a woman hemorrhaging for twelve years despite medical help.

          All kidding aside each time I hear this passage I experience a sense of awe. Think about what is happening in each of these stories. Though very different each reflects a profound belief – indeed, a trust in Jesus that overcomes the most significant of barriers. First, there is Jairus. He is a leader of the Synagogue. It is hard to equate the importance of such a figure to our modern experience. It is so much more than being President of the synagogue or Moderator or Elder of a church. It is akin to being simultaneously leader of both the secular and the sacred communities in which one lives.  Jairus commanded people to come to him. That is why it is so extraordinary that he would go to this prophet rather than command that Jesus be brought to him. Imagine this high ranking official begging for help -- Jairus falls to his knees before this very prophet, scorned by the religious establishment that Jairus leads. Amazing!

          And what of this woman whose name we never know.  Plagued by non stop bleeding, she is as ritually unclean as one can be under Jewish law. She has either been formally divorced or simply abandoned by her husband. That was the lot of women who could not have children, as would have been the case here. And she was destitute too, having spent – we are told -- all of her money on unsuccessful medical treatments. For a Jew to have contact with her was to become unclean themselves. She was an outcast by every social and religious measure. Every custom and rule counseled her to stay apart and isolated from her community. The most sensible conduct for her was to suffer in silence rather than face the scorn, rejection or worse of her neighbors. But something caused her, as it did Jairus, to cross all barriers of custom, convention and religious rule and to place her trust and faith in Jesus and to seek him out.

          You’ve heard about the most common lies. One is “the check is in the mail” and another is “I am from the government and I’m here to help you,” We can’t trust people to pay us back or our government to help us.   But certainly we do rely on our government for many things. Just ask our elected officials here in Chappaqua about the calls they get when the trash isn’t collected, a road is littered with unrepaired potholes, or a bridge needs replacing. Don’t we place great trust in our professionals too? Much as we like to disparage the legal and medical communities, we do put our trust in them in profound ways – relying on them to insure that our hard earned assets go to our loved ones or entrusting our very lives to their care and skill.

As the cover of our bulletin also implies we place great trust in power. It isn’t always used properly but for the most part we believe that without it we are at risk. So also do we put our trust in the rule of law, believing that without it we would wallow in a state of nature that is dangerous, unhealthy and unsafe:  But with the security of law and order we can grow and thrive. And perhaps most importantly we place great trust in ourselves. Ours is an age of self-reliance and individualism. How often have you thought or said aloud, “If I do it myself, I know it will be done right.”

 For the most part these are appropriate things in which to put our trust.  Such trust you see is a matter of the head. We trust in things based on experience and analysis. If the sun has come up every day for the first 35 years of our life than we can trust that it will again tomorrow.  “I have always been able to pull the chestnuts out of the fire; I’ll solve this crisis too. My doctor figured out what was wrong the last time, she will do it again.” And so to paraphrase the famous passage from Hebrews – trust is the conviction of things not seen based on our actual past experience and the probability that things will be the same in the future.

But I think there is another even more profound form of trust. Jairus had no direct experience with Jesus. Indeed, all of the objective information that he would likely have accepted as a member of the religious establishment would have dismissed or discounted Jesus and his powers as a dangerous fraud. Likewise, the text gives no suggestion that woman has any direct knowledge of Jesus. At best “she had heard about him.” We don’t even know what she heard. “Miracle worker? Healer? Prophet? Or Son of God?” Who knows?

How many of us would seek out a doctor we heard about at the grocery store or heard about on the internet? What would it take for us to put our trust in some stranger, especially to entrust the life of a very sick son or daughter?  What possessed the woman or Jairus to go so far outside the boundaries of convention? I think it would be too easy to say desperation -- though desperation does send some to far off places in pursuit of rumored cures.

Besides yourself who do you trust with your life? Health care proxies – those documents that identify who makes life and death decisions about us when we can’t – usually identify one’s spouse or children. Why? Certainly, we have experience with them and have seen their decision making in the past. But deep down we don’t put them on that proxy or power of attorney because of a confidence built on past decisions – we do it because we believe that they love us, want the very best for us and will honor our wishes.  The most profound trust we display is one that comes not simply from the head but from the heart. It is based not solely on past practice but on a deeply held belief that another loves us. It is the assurance of things hoped for based upon a belief as certain to us as our own existence. Isn’t that what is really behind the remarkable actions of the woman and of Jairus. They believed that Jesus loved them and wanted the best possible for them. Not that he was a special healer or a magician.

And in our parables their trust is rewarded. The hemorrhagic is cured. Listen to how Mark describes Jesus’ words to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” It is no accident that she is called daughter, it is a further sign of the loving relationship in which she has rightly put her trust. And the other daughter – Jairus’ – she too is cured –“and immediately the girl got up and began to walk about…” What actually happened here to these two daughters – no one knows. But I suggest we not get hung up in an effort to hypothesize a scientific explanation nor should we dismiss these cures out of hand as implausible. The important point is that trust in God – in God’s love was and is transforming and healing.

I know a very successful professional whose world came crashing down under the weight of over work, accusations of unethical behavior (totally unfounded) and the development of a serious medical condition.  He went into a deep clinical depression. He became virtually incapacitated and even had suicidal thoughts. He told me later that he kept saying, “Pull yourself together” but despite the fact he always had been able to in the past, his trust in himself was unavailing. The well-meaning comments of friends that “he had so many talents and so much to live for” simply did not help at all. In their own way they too implied that all he needed to do was “pull himself together”. He said it was like being in the darkest, deepest well where he could not see or find any grips on the walls to grasp and to use to climb out.  Indeed, the small sliver of blue sky at the top kept getting dimmer. It was a terrible merry go round of self doubt and despair that he could not get off. 

But he did recover – wiser, more sensitive and resilient for the experience. Medication was prescribed, and a caring therapist engaged. Each of which contributed to his recovery. But he also said that critical to his recovery was when there was nothing else left he finally placed his trust in God’s love of him. That what started him on the way to recovery was the sense that he was not totally unworthy, if God loved him despite his so evident flaws and short comings. 

I don’t know what happened to the bleeding woman or Jairus and his daughter but I believe that their trust in Jesus which defied convention and logic was transforming and healing. The trust they displayed is very hard for us. It asks us to move beyond the head -- beyond logic and experience -- and include the heart. But the reward is beyond measure – just ask the woman or Jairus. Amen