Joshua J Sander
7/1/12
Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
"Fallen"
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Mark 5:21-43
Did you feel that? Did that hit you right here, the way it does to me? Do you have a song that hits you really hard? Maybe it was one that was played at a specific funeral? Or maybe it’s a hymn that has been played at too many funerals by far. Some songs, like the one we just listened to, are directly about mourning and some come to be associated with mourning through our own experiences of loss. I have strong memories of listening to the song “Ordinary World” over and over again right after my grandmother died when I was a Freshman in high school. I know a whole group of people for whom “Freebird” does it because it was performed at the funeral of a young man associated with Silver Lake. So what songs do it to you? What songs hit you right here? Do you feel that?
Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live." I don’t have any children of my own, let alone a 12 year old daughter, so I can’t imagine, not really, how distraught and fearful and desperate Jairus must have been in that moment.
Can you? Your 12 year old daughter laying on her death bed and your only hope lies with this popular itinerant faith healer. Not just any healer, either, but one who has been drawing huge crowds and causing all kinds of political problems for you and your fellow authorities. But in that moment none of that matters—it only matters that you be able to make it through the crowd, that you get to Jesus, that he come and lay his hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.
And just as you barely dared to hope, Jesus drops everything and follows you back to your house. But the crowd… oh the crowd rises up and presses in on all sides and, well, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed but crowds go nowhere quickly. Your 12 year old daughter is laying on her death bed and your only hope lies with Jesus getting there on time. And time is short, and fleeting. Can’t you almost feel yourself trying to will the crowd along faster with your mind? Oh hurry… we must hurry… we really must go faster…
And then Jesus stops. He stops dead in the road. You probably take three steps before you can stop yourself because you’re hurrying so much. And Jesus says, “Who touched my clothes?” In the middle of that huge, jostling crowd! “Who touched my clothes?” Are you kidding me?
Then a woman comes out of the crowd, clearly terrified, and sinks to the ground in front of him, and told him that she’d been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; but it had only gotten worse. But she had heard about Jesus, an, she thought that if she could just touch his clothes, she would be made well. So she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak and immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
Then, while you stand there waiting, desperate to save your own daughter, Jesus says to this woman, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
“Daughter, your faith has made you well…” Jesus called this woman he didn’t know from Eve… Daughter. Even while you waited impatiently for him to go help your daughter. And suddenly it hits you for the first time that Jesus believes that we’re all equally important—and that he may be right.
Then the world comes crashing down. Some people from your house find you standing there, impatiently waiting for Jesus to finish talking to this woman he calls “Daughter,” and they tell you to stop bothering Jesus. Your daughter is dead.
Dead.
Did you feel that? Did that hit you right here, the way it does to me? Your daughter is dead and just as soul-crushing grief rushes in through the shock like water tearing open a damn, Jesus turns to you and says, “Do not be afraid—only believe.” Then he takes three of his disciples and goes into your house. You can hear Jesus loudly say to the mourners you hired (as was the costume then and in that place) “Why are you weeping? This child is not dead, but merely sleeping.” And then he kicks them out of the house. Only then does he take you and your partner into the house.
It is clear to you that she really is dead. There’s no question in your heart that she is dead. But Jesus says, “Talitha cum,” little girl, get up. And she does! She’s alive! Alive! The two of you are so overwhelmed by your pure joy and happiness that Jesus must remind you to feed the poor girl. And then he warns you not to tell anyone what had happened there.
“Don’t fear. Believe.” That may be the world’s shortest sermon. And I believe that those words of Jesus are actually the most important part of the story. Personally, I think that line about “she’s only sleeping,” was for the benefit of the strangers in the house, and for the crowd outside, because for whatever mysterious reason, Jesus wants to keep this miracle on the down-low. After all, once the girl in question was up and walking around again, who would question it? Sleeping… yeah, that must be it. She couldn’t have been dead.
To Jairus, though, Jesus says “Don’t fear. Believe.” The woman who touched Jesus was brave, and believed, and she was healed. Jesus said, “Don’t fear. Believe.” And then he simply raised that little girl from the dead.
I don’t know about you, but the place where I always struggle with the healing miracles—and especially with this story—is when I stop to think about all those people who don’t heal. It is hard for me to hear these words of Jesus when I’ve known faithful people who love and trust God and suffered and died anyway. For time out of mind, theologians have wrestled with this question and none of them have come up with an answer that feels anything resembling right and good.
And yet, Mark tells us the story anyway. Jesus said, “Don’t fear. Believe.” And maybe that’s what we’re supposed to do whether our loved one gets up and walks again or not. Maybe Mark is telling us here what he told us in the story about the stilling of the storm. The point is that Jesus is with us, that God is with us, that the Holy Spirit is always with us, both in the storm and in the calm, in sickness and in health, in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, and no—not even death can keep us apart.
Once again, David is a good example of what I’m talking about here. David always acted without fear and believed in the living God—so much so that it’s clear to me that the two things go hand in hand: Believe and you shall not fear. The story of how David killed Goliath, of course, is a good example of this fact, but this morning—well the lessons this morning are about grief. So let’s talk a little bit about David and Jonathan and Saul.
So, a couple weeks ago we heard about the prophet Samuel anointing David, and the last part of that lesson said that the Spirit of the Lord came strongly on David from that day forward. The very next part of the story says that the Spirit of the Lord left Saul and that God sent and evil spirit to torment Saul. I have heard it said that there is a very fine line between a prophet and a madman—I believe that Saul fell headfirst over that line. I mean to say that I believe Saul went mad.
So, basically, David got to hang around Saul’s court a lot because he was a great musician and good music seemed to calm Saul down a bit. That’s why he wasn’t out taking care of his family’s sheep when Goliath issued his challenge. Well, we all know how the whole Goliath thing turned out, but the part we don’t always get to hear is that the slaying of Goliath is how David met Jonathan.
Now, Jonathan was a true prince—a valiant and noble warrior—Saul’s eldest son. Once David had killed Goliath, Saul speaks with him, and then the scripture says, “When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father’s house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul…. David went out and was successful wherever Saul sent him…”
Now David was so successful that he became more popular with the people of Israel than Saul was. And Saul was crazy-paranoid-delusional. So most of the rest of Saul’s story is about how Saul repeatedly tries to kill David while continuing to war with every nation within sight of Israel. For David’s part, he refuses several times to kill Saul, despite how crazy-paranoid-homicidal Saul is.
But David and Jonathan continue to be very close, in fact there comes a point where it becomes clear to Jonathan that his father, Saul, really is serious about killing David. So he goes to David in secret and warns him off. It really is a very touching scene—they embrace and weep before Jonathan goes back to the palace of his father and David escapes into the night.
And now the war has taken both David’s worst enemy and a man David loved with all his heart. David is not afraid. He believes in God. And David mourns. And David, musician and poet, puts his hurt into word and song. I’m going to leave you with those words, and since I don’t have David’s music I’m going to borrow a piece that feels right to me. But before I do that, please understand, and if you only remember one thing from this sermon, let it be this: Being unafraid and faithful does not mean that you will never mourn. It simply means that you know God mourns with you.
About Me
- Rev. Josh
- I am an ordained UCC clergyperson serving in the Penn Central Conference. I am a lover of words. And I am a geek.
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