Sermon Archive

"Only Believe", Mark 5:21-43

Date: June 28, 2009, The Fourth Sunday in Pentecost
Author: The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel

GRACE TO YOU AND PEACE FROM GOD OUR FATHER AND THE LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST. AMEN.

            I should not have read the Register-Guard review of the Oregon Shakespeare Company’s MacBeth last Friday. We went to Ashland to see the play but my enjoyment was diminished by the reviewer’s complaint that MacBeth shouted and stomped all the time. I did enjoy seeing the play again although I wish they had put the characters in kilts or something identifiably Scottish. Be that as it may, I love to hear lines I had memorized as a young person—“Out, out damn spot,” “Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble,” “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care,” and the famous soliloquy, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; and our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle. Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player on the stage. And then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
            I thought about that last speech and how for so many people life has no meaning or purpose or goal. Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, was once asked the meaning of life. He answered, “What is the meaning of life? It means hurrying to the grave.”
            Some years ago a group of Lutheran pastors invited a rabbi to speak to us on Jewish funeral customs. Many of these are the same as from the time of Jesus. There is no embalming but the body is washed, placed in a shroud and buried very quickly. In Bible times it is recorded that immediately after death took place, a loud wailing began so that everyone would know that the death had struck. The same wailing was repeated at graveside. The mourners hung over the dead body begging for a response from the silent lips. They beat their breasts, tore their hair and rent there garments. Sometimes professional mourners were employed. There is no note of victory at the funeral and little note of hopefulness. There is recognition that death is real; there is no pretending that it is a celebration of life but there is also no clear proclamation of eternal life.       
            The Bible is clear that death is an end. If Adam and Eve had not sinned they would not have died. The “wages of sin is death” and because we are all sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, we and our loved ones too will die--and not everyone lives their threescore years and ten or has the strength to live fourscore—many people die before their seventy or eighty years; for many people their lives are filled with pain and suffering and loss.
            St. Paul calls death an enemy but an enemy that has been defeated in Jesus Christ: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive…For Christ must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Christ died taking our sins to the cross. We need to die because we are sinful and unclean—we needed to pay the wages of sin which is death; Jesus did not need to die because He was the sinless Son of God. But because the One who should not have died, did die; then we who are unrighteous are made pure and holy and will live. Because of Jesus Christ, death is not our end. Life is not a walking shadow, a poor player on the stage. Life has meaning and it is found in God.
            Our text this morning is a double miracle story. There are similarities between the daughter of Jairus who is near death and the woman with a hemorrhage. The woman had been bleeding for twelve years and the girl is twelve years old. Both are female and the term used in the text for both is “daughter.” Both are saved by faith. The story of the woman is sandwiched into the story of Jairus’ daughter both to build suspense and to allow the girl to die so that the power of Christ would be evident. There are also differences between the two, very important ones, which speak clearly of God’s grace. Jairus is male, a leader, a synagogue official, has family and a large household and rich. By the time Jesus and her father came home, the family had already hired the professional mourners to wail—no wonder they laughed at Jesus’ words; they did their weeping and wailing for a living and had never seen a corpse come alive. The other miracle involved a woman, nameless, unclean and thus excluded from the religious community, isolated without family or friends, impoverished because as the text says she had spent all her money on doctors’ fees with worsening results. God’s grace and love is for all people, rich and powerful, poor and powerless, male and female, from the inner circle or the outcast, the religious and those considered common and unclean.
            As in all the biblical miracles, there is no common thread apart from God’s power that we see in Jesus. In the first story, it is not the faith of the girl that saves, but her father’s. He recognized in Jesus the power of God to heal and save. Though Jairus was a leader of the synagogue, Archisynagogos, he did not reject Jesus but fell at Jesus’ feet and begged him to come to his home. In this miracle, the girl’s faith is never mentioned and it is the father who is encouraged to have no fear but believe. In this miracle Jesus uses means to heal—he went with the child’s mother and father and Peter, James and John into the room of the girl, took her by the hand and said, “Talitha cum,” the Aramaic words came down to Mark and he put them in his Greek text. They mean, “Little girl, get up,” or the Greek could be translated, “Be resurrected.” She was dead and brought to life. In the story of the woman with the hemorrhage, it was the woman’s faith which saved her. She realized that Jesus had divine power and could do what no human doctor could do. She was willing to flaunt propriety and enter the crowd to seek Jesus out. She was unsure whether he would touch her—because that would render Jesus unclean and she did not touch him for the same reason but reached out to touch his cloak. He did not even see her but felt power go out from him. The woman was afraid. She fell down before Jesus and told him the truth. Then Jesus told her, “Daughter your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed.”
            What can we say of these miracles for us today? First, we can say that sin and sickness and death are real. The miracles are not show pieces just to demonstrate Jesus’ power, although they do that, but God’s love and compassion. The people had real needs—the woman had suffered twelve years and it cost her all her money, her social connections, her religious status. She was so desperate that she would do anything to be healed. Jairus’ daughter was near death. He would do anything to save his loved one. We do not see here the acceptance of death as the natural end to life but an audacity that would try anything for a cure. Life’s troubles are real—sickness and death are enemies to the fullness of life that is God’s good and gracious will. Second, we can still say that Jesus has the power to change lives, to make bad people good, to heal the sick and bring life and eternal life. What is radically new with Christ’s death and resurrection is that hope for life after death becomes real. Jews believed that God would put flesh and sinew on dead bones but only in Jesus do we see One who was dead, not only revived but revealing to us what the resurrected life is like. When the Bible talks about the dead being asleep that is no longer a metaphor but reality. We sleep until the trumpet sounds and we will be raised incorruptible and immortal. Death is but an interlude between life and everlasting life. What Jesus does in his miracles is show us what the future will be. Jesus reveals the kingdom of God breaking into this fallen world—the fancy theological word is prolepsis, the end times reign of God breaking into our present world. The miracles tell us that our lives have meaning; our sorrows and suffering can not be compared with the joy to come. When our earthly tent is taken down, we will have a house not made by human hands, a mansion, to come. When our brief candle goes out, there will be a blazing fire to come. Ours is not a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but God’s story of love and redemption and eternal life. Amen.

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