Desperate Faith

This is my sermon from thismorning at Faith United Church, UCC, International Falls, MN

Text: Mark 5:21-43

What do we do when we’re desperate? Some people make deals with God. Some do things they would never consider doing were they not incredibly desperate. The saying “desperate times call for desperate measures”—or it could also be drastic measures—came to mind, so I looked it up online. Here’s what I found: “…according to the Oxford dictionary in quotations, on the 6^th [of[ November 1605, Guy Fawkes is reputed to have said ‘The desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy’…But it does not credit this as the original source.”[i]

That version of the quote may be even more appropriate to today’s gospel text than the more familiar one about desperate times and measures.

This is a wonderful story about 2 unnamed women who are helped by Jesus. The stories are intertwined and contain much symbolism. In both cases there is desperation and faith—or desperate faith—on the part of someone in the story.

In the case of the 12-year-old girl who is dying, the desperation and the faith belong to her father Jairus. This man was a religious leader—head of the synagogue—with power and authority in the Jewish community. He was probably a member of the group of religious leaders who were not very happy with Jesus because of his popularity with the masses and because of the things he said and did that seemed quite contrary to Jewish Law.

We can certainly understand Jairus’ fear that his daughter is dying and his desperation to get Jesus to his house in time to save her. But the original hearers of the story would have been surprised by Jairus’ emotions and his willingness to seek out this itinerant preacher-healer who was already in trouble with the authorities who were very likely Jairus’ friends.

Prior to the scientific age people did not allow themselves to get too attached emotionally to their children because so many of the children died young in the days before vaccinations, hospitals, and prenatal care. In Jesus' time “60 percent of live births usually died by their mid-teens.”[ii] The gift of a child must have seemed too precarious to invest in wholeheartedly, yet this man couldn't bear to lose his little girl even in a time when daughters were not valued as much as sons. But he is desperate, so he risks being ridiculed, and he risks missing the last few precious moments in his daughter's life.

Jesus is with the usual crowds that follow him, but he immediately agrees to go with Jairus. The crowd goes along too. There are lots of people all wanting to get close to Jesus. I don’t know if they’re jostling or not, but Mark tells us they are pressing in close around Jesus so that I’d imagine you’d hardly know who’s who. Because of this large crowd, it’s amazing to the disciples when Jesus stops and asks, “Who touched me?”

In a crowd like that you’re likely to be bumping up against lots of people so what’s the big deal? But to Jesus it was a big deal. Someone needed his compassionate healing energy and he chose not to let it be an anonymous situation.

We, like the disciples, might wonder how he could possibly have known what happened when the woman with the hemorrhage touched the hem of his clothes. But Jesus was aware that healing power had left him. One of my Reiki instructors in Sedona told about being in line at the grocery store and feeling the Reiki energy kick in and flow out from his body. He wondered who it was nearby who was in need of that energy. I experienced it once myself when I placed by hand over the baptismal font while saying the prayer of blessing over the water and felt the Reiki energy begin to flow from my hand to the water.

The woman who had been bleeding for 12 years was desperate. She had been unclean for 12 long years, which was also the entire life of Jairus’ daughter. That means that NO one had touched her for 12 years. She was isolated. She was tired. She had no energy; no life. She had a desperate faith that touching Jesus would make a difference!

Did Jesus make the incident public so that everyone would know about the power he had? I really don’t think so. He made it public so that everyone would know that the woman was no longer unclean and so she would know that she was loved; that she was important. Now she could be welcomed back into her community. She was acceptable again under the law. What compassion! What a gift!

But as a result of Jesus’ distraction with the healing of a nameless woman in the crowd, too much time has passed. Jairus had been so anxious to get Jesus to his house as soon as possible. Instead messengers come to tell Jairus they are too late—his daughter has died. No point in bringing the Teacher home now. Don’t bother him; let him be.

But Jesus isn’t going to be thwarted by these bearers of bad news. He says to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid, just believe.” Imagine! In the face of such terrible news Jesus says “just believe.”

And so they set off again. But this time Jesus takes only Peter, James, John and Jairus with him. When they get to Jairus’ house everyone there laughs at Jesus and ridicules him for saying the little girl is only sleeping.

I have this wonderful picture in my mind of Jesus saying, “OK that’s it, everybody OUT!” Then he takes Jairus and his wife, Peter, James and John and goes to where Jairus’ daughter is. He takes her hand and calls her to get up and that’s precisely what she does!

We’re told that in the face of everyone’s amazement, Jesus tells them to feed the girl and not to let anyone know what happened. So… what? They’re going to tell everyone, “oh yeah, the Teacher was right after all—she was only sleeping!”??! Sure. Yeah. Right. Although that might be easier to swallow than to believe Jesus could raise people from the dead. Maybe they could get away with it! But like so many other times when Jesus said “don’t tell,” I’m sure the story spread like wildfire.

These beautiful stories can also be tough because children still die and not everyone who prays for healing gets it. So… what is it? Don’t they have enough faith?

Instead of analyzing whether someone has enough faith or not, maybe we should be asking why these stories are included in Mark’s gospel. Maybe these are not stories about how to get God to do what we want—in other words how to keep in control—maybe these are stories about who God is, how God acts, and what God is like! Maybe Mark’s gospel tells these stories for just ONE reason—to make it clear that this is no ordinary man. This man is the son of God. Believe it!

Miracles are not always what we imagine, and neither is healing. We need to be open to the fact that healing may be “the restoration of meaning to people’s lives no matter what their physical condition might be.”[iii]

In response to people’s desperate faith, Jesus says come and live! “You who believe, and you who sometimes believe and sometimes don't believe much of anything, and you who would give almost anything to believe if only you could…. Get up, all of you—all of you” and LIVE! Jesus gives life not only to the dead, but to those of us who are "only partly alive…who much of the time live with our lives closed to the wild beauty and the…miracle of every day we live and even of ourselves.” Jesus calls us to the power of new life, new hope, new being.[iv]

This is what God is like—filled with compassion and love for everyone, even the unclean and the unnamed. Jesus risked becoming unclean himself twice in this text—once by being touched by the bleeding woman and again by touching the dead girl. People and Love were always more important than religious law and societal taboos.

In these stories we catch a glimpse of the Reign of God, where all are heard, all are loved and community is restored. AMEN.

[i]http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_'Desperate_times_call_ for_drastic_measures'

[ii] John J. Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus Year B.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Frederick Buechner, "Jairus's Daughter" in Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons.

UCC General Synod 27

The 27th General Synod of the United Church of Christ (UCC) is currently meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan with a theme of "Immerse Yourself."

I have attended a number of Synods...

1993 in St. Louis, MO

1995 in Oakland, CA

1997 in Columbus, OH

2003 in Minneapolis, MN

2005 in Atlanta, GA

2007 in Hartford, CT - the UCC's 50th birthday bash!

This year I'm not able to attend, but through the increasing wonders of technology I've been able to watch General Synod sessions, worship services and speakers live right on my laptop! Live Coverage is almost as good as being there! But I do miss the connections and conversations with friends and colleagues as well as all the displays and booths. Hopefully I'll be there in 2011!

Thanks to everyone who's working so hard to make this General Synod another great experience AND especially to those who are bringing it live to my livingroom!!

"We Walk by Faith, Not by Sight"

Sermon preached by the Rev. Sue Judson Hamly on June 14, 2009 at Faith United Church, UCC, International Falls, MN

Texts: 2 Corinthians 5:6-17 Mark 4:26-34


At the end of today's worship service there was a special called congregational meeting to vote on whether or not we would offer the use of our building for a pilot project being developed by a community task force to provide shelter for the homeless in our community and county beginning this coming winter. This was my sermon...

Outside our kitchen window, on the west end of the house, directly under the window & growing up above the level of the windowsill, is a bush. It’s just an ordinary bush—a shrub—but a couple of years ago I noticed that one of our cats liked to sit on that particular windowsill quite a bit. Eventually I found out why.

Jesus talks about the mustard seed that is the smallest seed yet grows into the largest shrub—with branches, even—“so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”[Mark 4:32]

Someone planted those shrubs outside our kitchen window—and along the “bedroom wing” of our house as well. I don’t know if Cecil Hess planted those bushes, or Dr. Crowe, or Mark and Nancy Ness. All I know is that someone who lived in the house before us planted them. And, like the person in Jesus’ parable who scatters seed on the ground and then eats and sleeps and doesn’t worry about those seeds, they went about their business of living. And the shrubs grew. We know not how, but it’s one of God’s miracles of life.

God sends the rain, the sun, the snow, the hail, the cold, the heat and the humidity. And the shrubs and bushes grow. Homeowners eventually have to cut them back so they don’t completely cover the windows of the house. And still, they continue to grow.

And my cat sat on the windowsill and watched because the birds didn’t make nests in the shade under the shrub; those cute little birds lived IN the shrubbery. And when someone walked by, or there was a loud noise in the cul-de-sac, or someone drove in the driveway… the birds would frantically rise—as one—out of the bush up into the safety of a taller, nearby tree. And the cat thought that was a wonderful sight to behold—definitely worth sitting on the windowsill and waiting to see!

That bush—and the others around our house—doesn’t produce pretty flowers or edible berries or anything. It’s very plain. It’s just there. In the winter it’s a mass of bare twigs until it becomes a huge white snowball. But in the summer—ooooh! In the summer (I don’t know how, just as the seed-scatterer in Jesus’ parable doesn’t know how) it miraculously sprouts green leaves so it’s no longer bare and barren-looking. And it becomes a temporary home, a haven, a safe refuge, a shelter for some of the birds who spend their summers here in the north.

We could be like that shrub or bush! We could be a temporary home, a haven, a safe refuge, a shelter! It’s not as frightening or difficult as some people might think. We have been presented with a wonderful opportunity for mission in our community—a terrific opportunity to immerse ourselves and Share the Love!

Not long after I became pastor at the Congregational UCC in Decorah, Iowa, I was visited by a member of a community committee that was working to find sponsors for Vietnamese refugee families who wanted to come to the U.S. Other churches in town were sponsoring families, which entailed getting them set up with furniture, winter clothing and food and helping them out until they were able to get work and become self-supporting. I told the committee representative that our congregation was mostly older and not large enough to support a family.

A year or so later we were contacted again. This time, they said, there was a father and his young son who needed sponsors. With only two people to provide for, was that something our church might be able to do?

Spear-headed by 2 members of the congregation who were deeply committed to this project, we agreed that we would try sponsoring a father and son. We had no idea how it would turn out or exactly what it would entail, but we chose to “walk by faith, not by sight.”

And what a wonderful experience it was! Nghiep and Thuc (otherwise lovingly referred to as “Nip & Tuck”) taught us about love, honor, appreciation, and their culture. Nghiep went to work at the turkey plant in Postville, eventually being able to send money to the rest of the family back in Viet Nam. We all enjoyed watching Thuc blossom and become fluent in English, excel in school and enjoy being a kid growing up in the Midwest as if he’d been born here.

Eventually they brought the rest of their family over, and on the Saturday before my last Sunday there, we had a wedding! I was privileged to officiate at the marriage of Nghiep’s oldest daughter to the son of the first family that had been sponsored by Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. Our two passionate members thought it was the perfect opportunity for a traditional Vietnamese wedding, but the families thought otherwise—they wanted a very traditional American wedding! It was great fun watching my Lutheran colleague teach the guys how to usher people in and out of pews and how to hold their arms just SO to escort the women down the aisle!

Because most people would rather walk by sight than by faith, making changes, doing new things and taking risks can be quite frightening. But Paul says, “…if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” [2 Cor. 5:17]

God calls us to do new things and Jesus says, “…Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”[1] The “least of these,” no matter who they are, or how we might feel prejudiced against them, ARE members of God’s family, every bit as much as we are.

We live in uncertainty, between the planting and the harvest. We don’t know what may grow from the seeds we sow. Symptoms of our anxiety include perfectionism, drivenness, moral outrage, restlessness, dread of being alone, and estrangement from God. This kind of anxiety is "an occupational hazard of being a finite creature in a universe of infinite possibilities.” Barbara Brown Taylor tells us that “What is absent when anxiety is present is faith…[faith] that God will be God, that the automatic earth will yield its fruit, that life can be trusted.” The antidote to anxiety is courage, which is chosen “over and over again, every day that [we] live, if real living is what [we] are after….” And if real living is what we’re after, then we should “scatter [our] seeds,”[2] open up our hearts and our doors and be willing to be amazed at what God will do through us! Wouldn’t it be great to see what God can do through us if we give God room, if we give God a chance?

Taking the first step—opening our doors and our hearts—may feel like the old cartoons where the character walks off the edge of a cliff into nothingness and fear and scrambles frantically to get back up to solid ground. But as God’s people we DO walk by faith, not by sight. We don’t walk alone because God is always with us. And as we gather at Christ’s table we are reminded that we are all one in the Body of Christ.

I may not see what lies ahead, but still I walk—in faith. AMEN.

Endnotes:
[1] Matthew 25:40, NRSV.
[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Automatic Earth,” from Mixed Blessings, quoted at http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/june-14-2009-eleventh-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html
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The Congregation voted to be part of the pilot project by offering our building as one of three sites for the start of the pilot homeless shelter project.