Touching
Mark 5:21-43

      On this weekend of national holidays and fireworks, celebrating the seventh year running of Canada being rated the most livable country in the world by the United Nations, it is always important to examine just how and why we are in this glorious state. Freedom is consistently the by-word and in Canada, we are accustomed to thinking that freedom means accepting and taking on responsibility for the freedom of others, no matter who they might be.
      The Common Lectionary used by so many churches is always a little stumped when it comes to Scriptures for this Sunday. National holidays don't fit very well into the Biblical calendar. Indeed, for the New Testament witness, there was no nation. Palestine was an occupied territory of the Roman Empire. There were no Palestinian rulers or government. If you claim to be Christian first, even before being Canadian, realize that the political context of being a Christian was from the beginning that of a people who had not been free and would not be for a long time.
      Yet this complex, interwoven story in the Gospel of Mark fits quite well, insisting that the healing and new life, life brought back from the dead, is intended for all of God's children. If there is no freedom for people on the margins of society, there is no real freedom for the powerful and privileged.
      It begins with a familiar scene of chaos, the dominant mode for Mark's Gospel. Jesus is teaching and the crowds are in danger of overwhelming him. Just like last week's Gospel when he attempted to escape in a boat and cross to the other side of the Lake of Galilee, Jesus lands not to solitude, but is met by a great crowd pressing hard about him.
      Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, rushes to Jesus and implores him to come lay his hands upon his deathly ill daughter, and Jesus goes with him.
      All of this is what one would expect: here is an important dignitary, a religious leader, who is asking for Jesus' help. Obviously, he has understood something about Jesus which most of the other Jewish leaders of Palestine were unable or unwilling to admit. Nevertheless, this is the important kind of person to whom one expects a minister to respond quickly. An elected official, a judge, a lawyer, a doctor: an important and powerful person such as Jesus deals with important and powerful people of that society. And Jesus is on his way.
      A funny thing happens on the way to Jairus' house: someone touches him in the midst of a huge amoeba of a crowd moving along with Jesus. Nobody is trying to stay far away from Jesus, yet he knows that someone has touched him and meant it. The disciples think Jesus is "touched" alright and they dismiss the idea.
      A woman - who had been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years and had wasted her resources and dignity on many doctors - wanted to touch him. It wasn't that Jesus was her last resort -- she knew that he was her reality of becoming healthy.
      We never do hear her name and that may have been for a reason . We know Jairus' name because he was important as a religious leader. We don't know her name because she was exactly the kind of person condemned by Jairus when he was working. According to the religious laws, any woman who was in the midst of her menstrual period was considered unclean and could not come into contact with a man, particularly a rabbi. For 12 years she had been unclean, so that her audacity in the midst of that crowd was unthinkable.
      She was beyond caring about popular conventions and mores. When you've been humiliated so much by doctors and reverends, you know there is nothing more that can be done to you. So she touched him, because she knew his power would cure her and immediately she was well. She was not afraid either to come forward and claim her actions. Jesus may have felt the particularity of her touch in the pressing crowd, but he gave her all the credit, "Your faith has made you well; go in peace." She may have earned her health through her faith, but Jesus restored her d ignity as a human being to this nobody. Back to real business, Jesus gets word that Jairus' daughter had died, yet he has a word for the leader of the synagogue, "only believe." Have faith, just like this unclean woman who is now whole.
      The mourners at the house are wailing away, hysteria amok. Jesus tells them she is only sleeping and they laugh at him. In the crowd Jesus was touched by someone barely alive for 12 years; in the bedroom with only a select few, Jesus touches a 12 year old girl barely dead. The doctors and the mourners were of no help and even harmful, the 12 disciples couldn't figure it out, but no one there ever forgotten Jesus' words, "talitha qum" - Aramaic for "little girl, get up!" They gave her something to eat - a foretaste of the Eucharist, Communion, the Lord's Supper.
      Which person healed was more important in Jesus' scheme of things? Most of humanity would reply Jairus' daughter since her father played a more significant role in the functioning of that society. Who knows the number of people she went on to influence as a result of her privileged position? The fact that we do not know her name either is reflective of the patriarchal chauvinism of that society. What we do know is her power.
      All we know about the hemorrhaging woman in the crowd is her disease. No guarantee that her being healed had any residual effect. Who would listen to an unclean, impoverished woman long ago written off as an untouchable?
      The question about which healing was more important shows our faithlessness. Both cures arose not out of technique or magic on the part of Jesus, but out of a faith which knew God. Resurrection happens in subtle and spectacular ways, but the result is a new life filled with unquenchable drive to live. Faith is not rubbing the magic talisman with all of your heart, but a relationship with the God who calls us into being which cannot be shaken by results.
      During these few days in which we celebrate freedom, we should know that nowhere does the Christian faith exalt the powerful and mighty. We don't need to do so, for the rest of the world does it very well. We are defined as Christians by our lifting up the poor and marginalized among us, and making their suffering ours as well. The woman in the crowd and Jairus' daughter are sisters at least in spirit, and neither one is to be ignored or rejected as unclean.
      An old Chinese tale tells of a woman whose only son died. She went to a holy man and asked, "What prayers, what magical incantations, do you have to bring back my son to life?" The holy man could have sent her away or have tried to reason with her, but he said, "Fetch me a mustard seed from a home which has never known sorrow. With that seed we will drive the sorrow out of your life." She set off in search of the magical mustard seed and first went logically to a splendid mansion. Knocking on the door, she asked, "I am looking for a home which has never known sorrow. Is this such a place? It is very important to me." They told her, "You've certainly come to the wrong place" and began to describe all the tragedies that had recently befallen them.
      She said to herself, "Who is better able to help these poor unfortunate people than I, who have had misfortune of my own?" She stayed to comfort them, and then went on in her search for a home which had never known sorrow. But wherever she went, in the slums and the palaces, she always found one story of sadness and misfortune after another. Ultimately, she became so involved in helping with their troubles and grief that she forgot about her quest for the magical mustard seed, never realizing that it had in fact driven the sorrow out of her life.
      It's probably not proper to mix cultures in this way, but we know that she had faith the size of a mustard seed, a relationship which powered her whole life. Her faith not only healed others, but by her faith she had healed herself.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan
July 2, 2000