June 28
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
1 After the death of Saul, when David had returned from defeating the Amalekites, David remained two days in Ziklag.
17 David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan. 18 (He ordered that The Song of the Bow be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar.) He said:
19 Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places!
How the mighty have fallen!
20 Tell it not in Gath,
proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon;
or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice,
the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult.
21 You mountains of Gilboa,
let there be no dew or rain upon you,
nor bounteous fields!
For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,
the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more.
22 From the blood of the slain,
from the fat of the mighty,
the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
nor the sword of Saul return empty.
23 Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
In life and in death they were not divided;
they were swifter than eagles,
they were stronger than lions.
24 O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
who clothed you with crimson, in luxury,
who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.
25 How the mighty have fallen
in the midst of the battle!
Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.
26 I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.
27 How the mighty have fallen,
and the weapons of war perished!
Psalm 130
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.
2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!
3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.
5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
7 O Israel, hope in the LORD!
For with the LORD there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
8 It is he who will redeem Israel
from all its iniquities.
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
7 Now as you excel in everything--in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you --so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.
8 I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others. 9 For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. 10 And in this matter I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something-- 11 now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. 12 For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has--not according to what one does not have. 13 I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between 14 your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. 15 As it is written,
"The one who had much did not have too much,
and the one who had little did not have too little."
Mark 5:21-43
21 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. 22 Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23 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." 24 So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. 25 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. 26 She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." 29 Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" 31 And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, 'Who touched me?'" 32 He looked all around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."
35 While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, "Do not fear, only believe." 37 He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. 38 When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 When he had entered, he said to them, "Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping." 40 And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha cum," which means, "Little girl, get up!" 42 And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. 43 He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
A Dying Child
I’ll never forget seeing my daughter Hilary come into the world. I saw her emerge into the light and the most stunning memory I have is of seeing her blue eyes for the first time. But she was born with double pneumonia and couldn’t breathe. She was whisked immediately into the neo-natal unit. Not long after a somber doctor informed us that they didn’t expect her to live more than four hours.
I don’t know that I have ever experienced such crushing loss. All the hopes of my life seemed to dissolve into nothingness. I hadn’t been a father for more than an hour and already I was losing her.
And so I can feel a certain kinship with Jairus, and I know there are members of Philippi who feel that kinship as well. There’s a way in which even the possibility of a child dying completely unhinges a parent.
We think of God as creator, savior, sustainer. We think of God sometimes as the great and powerful Oz, the one who has the power to make things happen. Many think of him as the stern and righteous judge of humankind.
But Jesus invited us to call our God “Father.” Last week we heard some moving tributes to beloved fathers of members of our congregation. Also, Deacon Dennis Mann and Cheryl Prince Teagle both wrote lovely tributes to their fathers for our July newsletter, and interestingly, they both spoke of the Father-hood of God. They were blessed to see in their own fathers many of the qualities we associate with the Father in heaven. I encourage you to read their wonderful words.
But some of us have had the experience of less-than-perfect fathers. I never had a father growing up, and I myself was a far less-than-perfect dad. I know though that at that moment when I heard my daughter was sick and close to death, I would gladly have traded my life for hers. Of course, if you are a mother who has lost or nearly lost a child, it is really no different.
I think this is an important dimension of what Jesus meant when he invited us to call God “Father.”
When God looked down on his child, Israel, he saw a people diseased and dying, perhaps even already dead, a people who had for centuries suffered under the oppression of foreign rulers, whose faith had become twisted and corrupted as those in religious authority took advantage of those under their rule. He saw a people who were trying all kinds of things to make themselves better with no success.
The interpretive key to this story is the number twelve. Did you notice? The woman with the hemorrhage had suffered for twelve years, and Jairus’ daughter was twelve years old. Twelve is an important number in the New Testament, and it’s never used for no purpose. It’s certainly possible that the girl really was twelve and the woman really had been sick for twelve years, but even if these are facts, they are reported for a reason. Twelve is the symbolic number for the people of God, Israel.
You’ll notice also that the story of the woman with the hemorrhage is sandwiched into the story of Jairus’ daughter. Of course, that might well been how it happened, but I think Mark is also telling us to think about the woman in the context of the story of the dying child.
And so we have the story of the desperate grief of a parent for his dead child, and in the midst of that story, we have another story of an unclean woman, cut off from Jewish society because of her unstoppable bleeding. To be unclean meant not only that you couldn’t approach God in the temple, but that anyone who touched you would also be made unclean, also cut off from God. We read in the book of Leviticus 15:
When a woman has a discharge of blood that is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening.
Every Jew hearing this story would have known that in touching Jesus, the woman would, according to the law, have made Jesus unclean. This is why she was so terrified of admitting to Jesus that she had touched him.
We are to understand the story of the outcast woman desperately seeking to return to fellowship with God and her community in the light of the other story of a father’s desperate desire to save his dying daughter.
The suffering of grief is the suffering of separation. It is the pain of lost community. God looks down on his world full of divisions and anger and hatred and injustice the way I and Hilary’s mother looked down on our daughter in the neo-natal unit at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, the way every parent in this room who has ever nearly lost or actually lost a child looks down on theirs. He looks down and his heart breaks and he longs passionately to offer his life to save his child.
And because he is God, the giver of life, he alone can offer his life and yet remain alive.
But what about that child? I can hardly imagine what it must have been like for my little girl to come into the world and immediately have to fight for her life. We who live in this broken and fragmented world look up to heaven with the desperate desire to be made well and whole.
On that terrible morning back in 1988, I called my pastor and told him in tears that it looked like I would lose my daughter. Pastor Martin came to the hospital and we put on the gowns and the masks and we went into that neo-natal unit where my daughter lay struggling for her life and he took a little Styrofoam cup and he baptized her in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Most of you know she survived. I’m thankful to that hospital and to all the staff. I keep their pictures to this day. But I’m mostly grateful to my Father in heaven. It’s one of the many signs that brought me to faith. And I know not every parent is so fortunate. But I know my Father in heaven will someday restore those children too.
This healing is available to all of us who are broken. During these last six weeks as I have come back from the experience of donating my kidney, I have been reminded in various ways of how fragile and broken I still am, even after all the marvelous work God has done. Like the woman with the hemorrhage, I suffer with a spiritual illness with which I have struggled for years to recover. It’s a problem that pushes others away from me no matter how much I might long to be close to them. I have gone to doctors and hospitals and counselors for years, but nothing has healed me of my illness.
And this week, as I reflected on the ways I still push people away from me, this story came to me, and I saw a vision, a vision of a crowd. Somewhere in that crowd in Jesus, the Holy One of God, so full of God’s Spirit of grace and love that it pours through him like water to all who believe.
And I realized I believe. I believe that if I could just find him in that crowd, if I could just get close enough to him, if I could just reach out and touch the hem of his robe, I would be made whole again.
And not just for my sake, but so that I could become a part of the new and risen community. Instead of pushing people away, I could embrace them. Instead of defending myself, I could offer myself, and help the whole world to heal.
And so I am looking for that man in the crowd. And I will keep looking for him. I believe I can find him here among you. Right here in flesh and blood, alive. No one in this room can fix me, and I can’t fix anyone in this room. But when we gather together and we share ourselves with one another, when we stay with one another no matter what, he comes among us.
Do you believe this? Do you suffer with anything that cuts you off from anyone? Have you been seeking healing and have not been able to find it? Could you believe that this man Jesus might just come among this crowd of people, somewhere among them? Would you like to touch his robe?
I know I won’t stop until I do. As the psalmist sings in today’s psalm:
5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
Amen.
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