Monday Meditation

This is the last sermon I offered at the Community Church of San Miguel Allende Mexico. It’s been a remarkable two months for Claudia and me. We have much to be grateful for, especially the hospitality of the community. 

Mark 5:21-41 
Reach out and Touch

When does healing begin and when does it end? One can hardly tell. It may begin with a parent’s cry for a suffering child, or it may begin with an afflicted woman’s daring faith to touch Jesus’ garment. But once the healing begins when does it end? It may go on and on, from touch to touch. In the gospel, Jesus is the healer; we are the healed. Yet, once healed our human vocation is to be healers, too. Wounded healers, perhaps, but healers, nevertheless. Healers of human hurt who point not to ourselves but in our willingness to embrace others in pain, and be embraced by them, become instruments of the living Christ who heals all touch Him.

I experienced a healing one Sunday in worship. Some missed it because there were no crutches piled up at the site; no hearing aids; no little white sticks with red painted on the end piled up to mark the spot where the healing occurred. None of that was here. No leg braces. Nothing at all marked the spot and anyone could have missed it. And the healing is not exactly over either. The deepest healing lasts longer than we can contain.

It happened when I invited the congregation to offer their prayers of concern and intercession. On this particular occasion, one fellow, who has a developmental disability, had a concern that he wanted me to hear but I couldn’t understand him. So, he pushed his way out of the pew and walked straight down the aisle to stand only three inches from my face. He was hoping maybe now I would understand the prayer of his heart that he wanted the rest of us to pray. Still, I couldn’t understand him. 

So, in order to make me understand he fell into me with his entire body and rested his chin against my shoulder, embracing me as if he was embracing … well, his mother? his father? his God? Who? I don’t know. But I know that we were one for that long moment both embracing the Holy One. Whatever tears were crying, coming out of him on my shoulder were coming forth on us all at the same time. Then it was over, just like that. He went back to the pew, and the worship went back to the way it was supposed to be: decent and orderly. Or did it? 

A little like the woman grabbing onto the hem of a garment in a crowd, pushing through, holding onto that garment for just a second, it had to be a second! And something happened, didn’t it? Something very powerful came forth from the living God embodied in Jesus into that woman in such a way that she knew her life had been changed forever. And then it was all over. All over. Or was it? When this special friend fell into my arms and I fell into his arms. I don’t know if that was really the healing. I think it might have been when the older person spoke to me afterward worship. She gave me permission to share what she said.

“You know what happened right then taught me something. Because what he did is what I have wanted to do but have not had the courage to do it. It’s been a year since the one I loved most in this world - my mother - left this world. And for that year I have wanted to fall into somebody’s arms and be held and let myself go – all of myself go! But I couldn’t. So, I sat on the pew, wishing and hoping, and then our special friend showed me. He showed me the way to Christ. And he showed me that I needed to be hugged. Not once, not twice, but as often as possible, so that I too would be embraced by the body of Christ.” 

Was that the healing? Has it ended? I don’t think so. 

Did it end when the woman who had the hemorrhage for twelve years touched his garment and then walked away. Was that the end of it? How about the man, the man that Mark kind of deftly inserts into this amazing story? Where’s the healing here? Is it the woman who for twelve years sat on the pew unwilling, unable, who knows why? But something happened, something happened at that moment that forced her to press through the crowd and break all the rules. She broke all the rules. You know that don’t you? It’s not permissible for a woman to touch a man, and even doubly so for a woman who has been hemorrhaging blood for twelve years, to touch a man who’s a holy man, on top of all the other things. Can you imagine what got into her? Twelve years! And finally, something rose up inside of her that says “This is the moment; this is it. If it’s not now, when will it ever be?” So, she did it. 

But was that the healing Mark wants us to hear? “What about the father, Jarius, who loved his daughter so much that he would call out to Jesus who was not even in his village, “Please come over here because my daughter, who is about to die, needs you.” What about all those around him who said “Ah, it’s over, she’s dead.” So go back to your homes, go back to life just the way it is. Don’t think that anything new is ever going to happen. She’s dead. Is this the healing that is about ready to happen? 

Yet, our human vocation is to be healers, too. Wounded healers, perhaps, but healers, nevertheless. Healers of human hurt who point not to ourselves but in our willingness to embrace others in pain, and be embraced by them, become instruments of the living Christ who heals all touch him. But who are the arms and legs of Jesus now if not you and me? We are the body of Christ.

Jesus is the healer, but there are others of us, in fact all of us, who have an opportunity now to be both the one who falls into someone else’s arms and the one who embraces another. What holds you back? There is somebody crying out in your life to be touched. 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

The Woman with an Issue of Blood by James Tissot