This morning we welcomed and thank The Rev. Scott Harris to our pulpit. Scott is a retired Lutheran pastor and last served as Senior Pastor at St. John’s Lutheran, Stamford. Besides serving in parishes in Wisconsin and Long Island, Scott and his wife, Karen, lived in India for five years, where Pastor Harris was an instructor in Hebrew and Old Testament at an interdenominational seminary in Hyderabad, India. He is a graduate of Yale Divinity School and has a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Old Testament from Union Theological Seminary, NYC. Scott is Co-Chair of the Refugee Resettlement Committee and
Karen is a member of the Board of Deacons.
2 CORINTHIANS 8:7-15
MARK 5:21-43
HEALING AND HEALTH, IN CHRIST
If “Laughter is the best medicine,” it is also the cheapest. Having a routine medical check-up is almost as expensive as buying a couple tickets to attend a Red Sox/Yankee’s game. Almost. One would hope that if laughter were the cure-all for our ills then we would not be facing the political fracas over health care. But who’s laughing?
To state the obvious, America is a divided nation. The divide between the rich and the poor is widening into a kind of chasm last seen in the Gilded Age of Robber Barons stealing from the middle class and poor only to add to the wealth of the already rich. Just as Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
But our nation is also divided in terms of health care between the haves and the have-nots. While the Affordable Care Act for now provides welcome health care for millions, behind the scene political efforts still chip away to dismantle it. Just like a recent editorial that had this headline characterizing the cruel attempts to roll back health care coverage: “[Politicians] to Americans with Health Problems: Drop Dead.” As one pundit observed, health-care-for-all is a political football that has been kicked around since the days of Harry Truman. Not so. It has been kicked around since the time of Christ as well.
Like today’s Gospel about poverty and privilege, sickness and health: “When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side,” today’s lesson begins, “a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and when he saw [Jesus], fell at his feet, and begged him repeatedly, ‘My daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ So [Jesus] went with him.”
This is a heart-wrenching story. Any loving parent knows the emotional turmoil that churns within when one’s own child is seriously ill. In desperation Jairus’ pleads: “My daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” But Jairus’ desperation leads him to beg Jesus to do the unthinkable.
In Jesus’ time Jewish law prohibits an observant Jew from touching a sick person. To touch a sick person, or be touched by one, makes one ritually impure. But Jairus asks Jesus, a fellow Jew, to do just that: “My daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” He is desperate as we are when it comes to our health or the health of a loved one.
Said writer Susan Sontag: “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick.” It is clear what kingdom Jairus’ daughter is in. He is desperate. He repeatedly begs Jesus to touch her and heal her.
But Jairus is not the only one in desperate straits. On the way to heal the young girl both Jesus and Jairus are unexpectedly interrupted: “And a large crowd followed [Jesus] and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in a crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’” A desperate act in itself, not unlike what Jairus does. For if she touches Jesus she will pollute him and she will be routinely condemned.
This story is one of stark contrasts. Ostensibly a story of two ill females: one a child, the other an adult. Neither female is ever named, trait of a male dominated society, then and now, where women are second class citizens. In contrast, we know Jairus by name. What’s more, Jairus is a man of high standing in the community. To drive that point home three times we are told that he is one of the leaders of the synagogue, making him an entitled man in the community and the gatekeeper as to who could attend worship. While Jairus’ daughter has an advocate in her father, the unnamed woman is a virtual nobody.
While Jairus begs for the health of his ill daughter, the woman in the crowd has no male to plead her case. If married her husband probably left her in the lurch. What good is an ill wife whom the community has already rejected on religious grounds? No wonder she is alone. The contrast deepens.
If a Jew, the woman with the hemorrhages of blood would be denied access to the synagogue for religious reasons. If she were a Gentile, meaning foreigner, forget it. This too: unscrupulous physicians have milked her dry and she is now dirt poor. In terms of health care, how contemporary is this story? Her dilemma also explains her body language.
In contrast to Jairus who comes to Jesus and face-to-face begs for help, the woman sneaks up behind Jesus and says to herself, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Her body language sends the bitter message that she knows rejection by her own community. In terms of health care and community support she might as well drop dead.
Knowing just this much it is patently clear that it’s not just Jairus’ daughter and the ill woman who are in desperate need of healing, but the whole society—the community—is morally unhealthy and in need of healing.
At times, laughter IS the best medicine. But this account given us today is no laughing matter. And speaking of an unhealthy society that is not a laughing matter does the following quote sound familiar?
“Brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives, are torn asunder and permitted to see each other no more. These acts are daily occurring is the midst of us. The shrieks and agony often witnessed on such occasions proclaim…the [injustice] of our system. There is not a neighborhood where these heartrending scenes are not displayed. There is not a (town) or [city] that does not behold the sad procession of manacled outcasts whose mournful countenances tell that they are exiled by force from all that their hearts hold dear.” Sound at all familiar?
No, it’s not from the recent editorial titled, “Children and Parents, Torn Asunder,” about the children of undocumented immigrants being taken from parents, put in cages and treated like criminals. And, no, it’s not from comedian Steve Colbert who recently stepped out of character and “(Made a) Plea On Behalf Of Migrant Families Being Split up,” and then labeled such behavior as “recreational racism.”
The words come from the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky to its churches in 1835. 1835. It’s a plea to the nation through the voice of its churches in 1835 to come to its senses about the inhumanity of slavery and the cruelty of dividing families. Then African slaves—husbands and wives, parents and children—were torn apart and treated like animals. What was that but an earlier version of cruel racism, a form of moral illness? Have we reverted back to one of the darkest periods of our history? 1835. 2018. Yogi got it right; it’s déjà vu all over again.
The current immigration policy is called “Zero Tolerance.” It might as well be called Zero Compassion—a form of behavior read about today in today’s gospel and that Christ fervently rejects.
What’s missing in our nation is not political policy but moral purpose—the kind of moral purpose that recognizes the God-given sacredness of all humanity—women, children, men. For without moral purpose then mercy, compassion and justice are replaced with fear, cruelty, and hate. If you don’t believe that just watch the daily news. Then remember the ill woman in today’s lesson.
The woman in the gospel may be nameless but she is no stranger to us. She represents any and all who are demonized, rejected, vilified, ostracized or simply disregarded in the name of misguided religion and politics. No one would dare touch her.
As Fr. Daniel Berrigan years ago said: “It all comes down to this: whose flesh are you touching and why? Whose flesh are you recoiling from and why?”
The people around the ill woman recoiled from her, recoiled from touching her–all in name of religion. But touched by the woman, Jesus does not recoil from her in disgust but he deepens her healing by saying, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Jairus comes to Jesus begging for the healing of his “daughter.” The first word out of Christ’s mouth to the ill woman is “daughter.” By calling her “daughter” Jesus gives her more than a name—Christ gives her a cherished identity of “daughter” that affirms her God-given humanity, her dignity, and her full and equal membership in the community—the same community that rejected her. Jesus shows us what leads to healing and health: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
At times “laughter is the best medicine.” Do think the ill woman, called “daughter” by Christ and healed, walked away with at least a smile of joy on her face?
Besides the healing of the woman and Jairus’ daughter, there is another potential healing that we may overlook—that of Jairus. As a leader of the synagogue he oversaw who could attend worship and who could not. It was his job to exclude a woman like the ill woman whom Jesus heals and calls “daughter.”
But when Jesus—a male, a fellow Jew—publicly shows no discrimination between women and men, between the rich and the poor, between the sick and the healthy, when Christ speaks to her, calls her “daughter”,” then heals her, Jairus is at Christ’s side witnessing the power of Christ’s mercy and welcoming love—mercy and love that is nothing less than infectious. Do we see what Christ is doing? Does Jairus?
Maybe we are told Jairus’ name for a reason. His name in Hebrew means, “He awakes.” Maybe that’s what happens to him—he awakes from his errors and becomes the same welcoming, loving, merciful human being whom he sees in Jesus Christ—a sure sign that he is healed and healthy. And then what of us?
In the name of the resurrected Christ, being healed of the finality of death and the grave, what more can WE then become when WE enter this place of worship—this synagogue, this church, this Meeting House—but to be the same welcoming, loving and merciful follower of Jesus Christ? After all, Christ does not reject US whatever our gender, age, sexual orientation, skin color, our health, nationality, citizenship or lack of it—but says to each of US: “Daughter, son, sister, brother, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” Being touched by Jesus Christ there is healing. Being in Christ there is joy. In the resurrected Christ, there is even laughter.
The Rev. Scott Harris
