Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 13(B) – Mark 5:21-43
We are not going to talk about racism today.
Early in this week, I received, along with all the other clergy members of the ELCA, a request from our Presiding Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, to make this Sunday a day of repentance and mourning after the tragic shooting of nine men and women at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston some ten days ago. You heard Dan read her statement on the events already. And though we appreciated the message and worship resources she sent, Dan and I decided together NOT to follow her request, mostly because it seemed like too little, too late. We talked and prayed about it last week, and the resources would have been welcome then. A friend of mine pointed out that it wouldn’t hurt us to talk about race two weeks in a row, and I tend to agree with him. But we don’t need repentance and mourning anymore. No amount of mourning will bring these nine people back. What we need now is action. We, a mostly white community of faith, have the obligation now of doing something to change the racism rampant in our world, so that the senseless death of God’s children due to hate can stop. Unfortunately, Dan and I haven’t figured out what kind of action we should take. And so, trusting in the Holy Spirit dwelling in all of us, I invite you to come to one of us and share your ideas, so we can hear what God is calling us to do together.
So, as I say, we’ve decided NOT to talk about racism this week. We’re not going to do it. We’re not focusing at all on the shooting and its effects. We’re not going to talk about the fact that we all, in one way or another, judge and value people based on the color of their skin, even if we hold deep within us anti-racist sentiments and were taught from childhood that people of color are beautiful and worthwhile, and beloved by God. We’re not going to talk about how that judgment is a sin, a terrible one, and it would be good for us to beg God for forgiveness and ask him to change our hearts. We’re not. Not going to talk about it. Not.
Except, see, I have to talk about it. I can’t help it. It’s gotten under my skin this week. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s all-consuming. I don’t know why it is. Thirty people are shot dead in our country every single day. Why is it that this nine has made me sit up and pay attention? Is it because it took place in a church? At a Bible study? Every Friday morning I gather with about five other people at Vivian’s Café in West Boylston for Bible Study, and we have never, never been afraid for our lives while doing so. Nor will we begin. What a privilege we have to not have to worry about that! Is that why I’m so bothered by this? Because I recognize my privilege as a white person, and that makes me uncomfortable? Or maybe it’s because—did you know this? The shooter was a member of an ELCA church. A member of our church did the killing! I wonder what that pastor is preaching this morning. Anyway, I don’t know what it is, but something about this event has interrupted my life. It’s sent me on a detour, and I can’t ignore it, I can’t.
I need to get off of this topic. Maybe if I talk about the Bible story? Jesus sails back across the sea from the land of the Gerasenes, where he comes upon—surprise, surprise—a big crowd. Crowds seem to follow him everywhere. But out of this crowd comes one man, named Jairus. Jairus is a Pharisee, a leader of the synagogue, and we know what people like him think of Jesus. All of his religious convictions tell him that Jesus is not to be trusted, that the movement growing around him is dangerous, that he should stay away, if not for himself then at least for his congregation’s sake. He should lead by example, showing his congregation that Jesus is not a real rabbi, not to be followed, not to be listened to.
Except that he’s heard something else about Jesus, too. About his healing. And Jairus’ daughter is sick, so sick that she’s courting death’s door. And so, in desperation, Jairus overcomes all of his convictions against this Jesus guy, and goes to him for help. It’s an incredibly courageous thing Jairus does, and he’s rewarded for his courage because Jesus agrees to go with him.
At the same time, in this crowd, is another courageous person. A woman who is desperate for healing of her own. She’s been bleeding for twelve years, probably a menstrual hemorrhage that won’t ever stop, and she’s run out of options for help. She’s been to every doctor she can find, allowed herself to be put through countless medical procedures, and nothing has worked. And since they didn’t have universal healthcare in ancient Palestine either, she’s spent all the money she had, she’s become poor, impoverished, because of her bleeding. She can’t afford to provide for herself. Her family—if she ever had any—has abandoned her because she’s ritually unclean. She is utterly alone, and has nowhere to turn.
And so, she resolves to go see Jesus. But unlike Jairus, she’s not a leader of the synagogue. She’s not a person of importance. She is poor, and unclean, and a woman, and utterly powerless. She can’t make her way through the crowd to ask him to help her. Why would he listen? So she reaches out in the crowd, and thinks, maybe if I just touch the hem of his garment, maybe he has that much power, maybe that would heal me. And she does. And she is healed.
And Jesus knows. And this is where the miracle happens in this story. We think the miracle is in the healing of the woman’s hemorrhage, or in the raising of the little girl, and while these things are miracles, they’re also par for the course in Jesus’ vocation as a miraculous healer. What makes this story special is what happens now. Jesus turns, and asks who touched him.
A stupid question, the disciples think. You’re in a crowd. Everyone touched you. But Jesus knows that power has gone out of him. Jesus knows something important has happened. And while he could ignore it and go on—he is in an awful hurry to save a dying girl, after all—he doesn’t. He stops. He cares. He wants to know what’s going on. He allows this interruption into his life.
It’s remarkable. This woman is poor, sick, unclean, unimportant, completely valueless to everyone around her, but to Jesus, she matters. To Jesus, she’s important enough to stop what he’s doing, to seek her out, to speak to her. You can hear the miracle in the words that he says to her. “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” Daughter. He doesn’t call her “woman,” or ignore her identity. He calls her daughter. He names her and claims her as a child of God.
And it’s important for him to do that. Important enough to delay so long that the girl he’s headed toward dies, after all. And that gives him the chance to do his greatest healing yet, bringing someone back from the dead. Someone who, let’s face it, is just a twelve-year old girl, another person who, in that society, has no value, no importance, for anyone save her father. Jesus goes out of his way to heal her, to bring her back, he lets himself be interrupted again for the sake of someone everyone else would call utterly unimportant.
But Jesus knows that the interruptions in our lives are opportunities for God’s grace.
On Monday, I got an email from one of the other pastors in Holden announcing a prayer vigil to take place that evening at Belmont African Methodist Episcopal Zion church in Worcester. Primarily it was a gathering of all the AME Zion pastors in New England, brought together by their bishop, but anyone else who wanted to go was welcome. This was an interruption in my schedule, and for something that undoubtedly would make me rather uncomfortable. I don’t know anything about the AME Zion church, and I didn’t know what I was walking into. I didn’t even know if I was really welcome. But something made me decide to go, anyway. Someone had to represent the Lutherans.
What I found there was one of the most unique and powerful worship experiences I’ve ever had. To be honest, it wasn’t my cup of tea. It was a little disorganized and spur-of-the-moment, and I like my worship to be well-planned and ritualistic. The AME Zion church is also a Pentecostal tradition, in some ways, and that tradition is utterly foreign to me. But we prayed, and prayed really from the heart, prayed for pastors as they teach and laypeople as they grieve, for first responders in their work and for the unchurched as they seek to make meaning in all this. And we sang. Oh, we sang. We think Lutherans know how to sing, but we can’t hold a candle to the Black church. They sang grace deep into my body and soul. And then, at the end of the service, the bishop invited all the clergy to come forward and hold hands—and gasped, as he saw how many non-black faces gathered at the front of the sanctuary. Our presence there, together, was a powerful sign of God’s grace, of God’s refusal to show partiality in his love toward all creation.
Sisters and brothers, the interruptions in our lives are opportunities for God to show grace to us. The massive interruptions that shake our whole nation, and the big interruptions that shake our individual lives, and the small interruptions that shake up our day. God uses every opportunity he can to reach out to us and call us “daughter,” call us “son,” call us his beloved children. God even uses our most violent interruptions, like when we struck out to kill a man and hang him on a cross, to bring the most powerful, overwhelming, world-changing grace to us. God turns our wailing into dancing, and he does it again, and again, and again.
May you have the courage of the hemorrhaging woman, and the courage of Jairus, to discover God’s grace in each of those interruptions. And may you carry that grace to others as we seek, together, to heal our world. Amen.