The Reverend Barbara K. Briggs
June 28, 2009
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 8, Year B

This morning’s gospel tells the story of two people who were sick:  A woman who had suffered from a hemorrhage for twelve years and a twelve year old girl on the point of death.  Getting really sick is scary, disorienting and even alienating, especially if it is a chronic illness or one for which finding a cure is doubtful.  It is even worse when loved ones and family members fall ill than when we are sick ourselves, because we can feel so helpless and vulnerable, especially if it concerns a child.

When I was fourteen, two children close to me died in the same week.  One was a friend from school who had had leukemia for two years, and the other was my best friend’s sister, who was misdiagnosed with the flu and died of appendicitis.  I vividly remember lying on my bed in my parents’ home trying come to terms with the indisputable finality of it all.  I could not cry.  I didn’t feel sad, just shocked, detached, lost.  For years afterward I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing and incomplete because of their absence and the toll it took on their families.

Where was God in all this?  I saw God as being largely absent.  It wasn’t that he had abandoned my friends or withheld his care or even that he had caused their illness and death.  God was out of the picture, as far as I was concerned.  I classed these deaths as totally unfathomable and gave up trying to find a reason or a cause.

When Jairus, a leader in the synagogue, comes to Jesus, he comes in utter desperation.  His own twelve year-old daughter is on the verge of dying and he simply can’t accept that.  So, he turns to his only remaining source of hope:  Jesus.  But just when it looks as if Jesus will actually come to the house and get there in time, an unknown woman interrupts them and touches Jesus’ clothes and is healed.  This delays their progress, since Jesus stops and asks who touched him.  He and the disciples wait there until the woman comes forward and tells her story.  This takes some time, and it happens that while Jesus is still talking to the woman, some people from Jairus’ house come with the news that his daughter has died, and tell him not to bother the master any further.  What must Jairus have felt in that instant?  Was it numbness?  Utter disbelief?  Overwhelming sadness?  Crushing disappointment?

But Jesus overhears and says to Jairus:  “Do not fear, only believe.”  In other words, Jairus is supposed to put his whole trust in Jesus and not in whatever he is thinking or feeling.  He is being asked to let Jesus take care of the situation, whatever the outcome will be.  Jairus does not know what Jesus will do.  He had come to ask for healing, but now that his daughter has died, it seems too late for that.  The worst has happened.  What could anyone do now but grieve?

When they get to Jairus’ house, that is exactly what they find everyone doing:  grieving.  People were weeping and wailing loudly and there was a general commotion.  But Jesus makes them all go outside except the parents and Peter, James and John.  They go in to where the child is.  Jesus goes directly to the child and takes her by the hand and tells her to get up.  And she does.

This is an amazing story.  Jesus heals the woman with a hemorrhage and raises a girl from the dead.

At the very least, the story points out a truth:  when we or our loved ones get sick, God cares.  But sometimes, despite our fervent prayer, people do not get well and sometimes die.  Where is God in that?  Why do the people in the Gospel stories get well when sometimes our friends and family members do not?  Does this mean that Jesus can no longer heal?  Does it mean that Jesus answers some prayers and not others?

These fundamental and sometimes agonizing questions call for a response.  As Christians, we need to know where to put our ultimate hope and trust.  It would be too painful to put all our trust in God if we would only be cruelly disappointed in the end.  Jesus says to Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.”  He is not asking Jairus to believe in any specific outcome.  He makes no overt promise.  He simply takes Jairus with him back home, and Jairus goes.  Jesus takes Jairus back to the place of his daughter’s death:  to the place of his greatest loss and deepest need, and Jairus allows Jesus to go there with him.

Christian healing is not magic.  Jesus himself suffered and died.  Yet, when we ask for healing, God always answers.  When we pray for healing, spiritual healing always occurs, even if no physical cure takes place.  To be spiritually healed is to enter a process by which we come to trust God ever more deeply for our ultimate well-being and wholeness.  It is an attitude of openness whereby we give Jesus permission to come into the places of our lives where we have suffered the greatest loss or the deepest grief and to let him transform us.  It is always miraculous, for it is only through the work of the Spirit that we can at last understand that our greatest good and source of joy is not that things come out the way we want them to, but that we experience what it is like to loved by God and know deep down in our core that we have a future with God forever.  Physical healing sometimes also occurs.  Spiritual healing always does.  With Jairus’ daughter we hear Jesus tell us, “Get up.  Get up from your despair and live.  Get up in your grief and know how much I love you.  Get up.  Get up out of your discouragement.  I am taking you by the hand.  Hold on.  And get up.”

This morning we are all invited to let Jesus come into the places of our deepest need for healing.  We can do this by sitting silently in our seats and praying.  We can do this by coming to ask for our specific needs with members of the prayer team and receive the laying on of hands, and we can do this by coming for anointing.  If you have a specific request for healing, members of the prayer team will pray with you at either end of the aisle or by the lectern.  If you wish to receive anointing, Fr. Don will be at the altar rail.  Wherever you find yourself this morning, Jesus is here and he cares.  He is taking you by the hand.  All of you.

Copyright © 2009 by The Reverend Barbara K. Briggs