TOUCHED BY FAITH - A REFLECTION ON THE HEALING OF AN UNKNOWN WOMAN

These reflections are written as devotions for my parish church, Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton South Dakota.

Mark 5:21-34

When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him.  And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

TOUCHED BY FAITH

The story of this anonymous woman who touched Jesus’s garment and was healed is found in the gospels of both Mark and Luke. It occurs shortly after Jairus’ desperate plea for Jesus to put his healing hands on his dying daughter, as Jesus was heading to Jairus’ house to do so.  While we don’t know exactly what this anonymous woman’s bleeding condition was, her way of handling it in this situation strongly suggests it was an ongoing menstrual condition that Leviticus 15 addresses.  It would  explain why she saw a need to sneak up on Jesus to touch his cloak from behind.  

Asking Jesus in public to heal her would have risked revealing a condition that would have exposed her as being in a perpetual state of uncleanness.   It would have placed both Jesus and her in an awkward position which, in her mind, would have risked her being turned away by Jesus.  

While Jairus could ask Jesus to place his hand on his young daughter because bleeding wasn’t an issue, Jesus laying his healing hands on this woman would have made Jesus unclean until evening; basically putting Jesus out of commission for the day.  It would have also put Jairus and his daughter in a hopeless position. If Jesus would have physically touched her or she inadvertently touched his skin, he would have been considered unclean and Jairus, being the leader of the synagogue, would have felt compelled to follow the law.   Suddenly this healing story is filled with nuanced complexity.  

We know from other healing stories, Jesus was capable of simply healing someone by telling a person he or she was healed, but this suffering woman had no way of knowing that.  She was going on what she heard Jairus ask Jesus. “If you put your healing hands on my daughter, she will be healed.” Understandably, she likely thought being touched by Jesus was a necessary factor in being healed by him. 

Her approach to Jesus, however, reveals her to be an astute biblical scholar, because she saw a possible way out of her dilemma. While Jesus couldn’t touch her or her clothes or anything she sat on, the law was silent about a woman touching a man’s clothing and maybe, just maybe, touching Jesus’s cloak would be enough to be healed, such was her faith.  So in the press of the crowd surrounding Jesus she sees an opportunity to reach out and touch the back of his cloak.  In doing so, she is healed.  At the same time, Jesus feels healing go out of him; that someone had been healed and so he asks, “Who touched my clothes?”  In response, his disciples say, “Who hasn’t touched your clothes in this crowd?  We’re all being touched.”  

If the disciples were amazed by Jesus’ question, the woman felt caught, exposed, and filled with fear because of it.  She immediately confesses she touched him and tells him everything, to which Jesus says, “Daughter your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from suffering.”

This humble woman was a person of deep faith; a faith that sustained her hope, a faith that prompted her to act from love, and a faith that led her to find a way.  Faith kept hope alive in her.  Faith and hope was all she had left, after trying everything she could to find a cure.  She lost her savings and her livelihood, but she didn’t lose her faith, and she didn’t lose hope.  

When hope came to her in the person of Jesus, she didn’t think only of herself.  As desperate as the stakes were for her and seeing that particular moment as the one and perhaps only opportunity to change her life around, she wasn’t thinking only about herself.  Selfishness on her part, at that moment, risked harming not only herself, but also Jesus, Jairus, and his daughter.  She didn’t want to risk harming others.  She exhibited a love of neighbor and with the eyes of faith she found a way.

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Have you noticed, how often the people Jesus healed and who exhibited the deepest faith are never named; like the woman in today’s reading from Mark or the Roman Centurion who sought healing for his slave, the Samaritan leper, the blind man from his birth, or the paralyzed man lowered through a roof by his loving faithful relatives and friends?  We don’t know their names, but we recognize their faith. Faith is not about who we are but about how we trust and in whom we put our trust.  

Faith is always an action.  Faith in Christ always makes room for hope and love.  Faith is important to our health and well-being, not merely as Christians but as human beings.  Faith needs to be exercised, and it often is when we are faced with things beyond our control; situations that place us in a some sort of dilemma or predicament, the proverbial locale of finding oneself between a rock and hard place. 

Faith makes us alert to what is going on in our lives. Faith becomes an exercise in patience when there is no clear path ahead.  Faith never gives up; always seeking a path forward, and when one appears, faith prompts us to take it and act upon it, like this woman.  

As we were reminded several Sundays ago in an excellent homily by Liz, we are a family of faith.  We need to keep that in mind moving forward.  We need to keep putting our trust in God and in each other to continue the redemptive and healing work of Jesus in our time.  

We have spent almost four full years searching for priest and getting by with what we have.  We lived through most of 2020 and the early part of this year having no services, and yet, here we are back in our church home.  It has not been easy and when our options and a quick path forward seemed to dim early in our search process, we grew patient in faith, and faith found a way that led us seekers to find another seeker in Fr. Mike.  Faith finds a way if we keep it and are willing to be patient; if we are willing to let go and let God show us the way.

Amen  

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

A QUESTION OF FAITH - A REFLECTION ON JESUS CALMING THE STORM

 These reflections are written as devotions for my parish church, Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton South Dakota.

Mark 4:35-41

When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

A QUESTION OF FAITH

Every story in the Bible is layered with meanings.  Miracle stories are no exception and most, if not all, are there for us to explore and probe the meaningful depths they contain.  Miracle stories in the Bible are there to deepen our faith that God is involved in our day to day lives.  Paraphrasing the author of the Gospel of John at the close of chapter 20, we read, “Jesus did many other miracles and signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book  But these are written, that you might have faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that in faith you will live confidently through him.”

We don’t need stories to prove the existence of God or proof that God can perform miracles because most of us, through the eyes of faith, have witnessed the miraculous handiwork of God in our own lives.  Miracles always take us by surprise, but it takes faith to see them as such or they merely become an unexplainable phenomena that has no particular meaning in our lives.  One of my favorite biblical scholars and authors is Rabbi Jonathan Sachs who wrote in his book, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, “Faith is about seeing the miraculous in the everyday, not about waiting every day for the miraculous.”   

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The miracle of Jesus calming the sea paints a picture, an icon, or a triptych to meditate on. 

If this miracle story was to be depicted as a triptych, the first panel might portray a boat packed with Jesus’ disciples.  The boat has a mast with the sail loosed from its fittings and flapping wildly in the wind. The boat is being buffeted by the waves on all sides and filling with water.  Nobody is in control of the boat’s rudder. Jesus is asleep in the stern near the rudder and appears oblivious to the storm raging about him. The disciples, drenched with water, are depicted pleading with Jesus to wake up, with gesture suggesting they want him to take control of the rudder.  Jesus does not appear wet at all and has a serene expression on his face.

In the second panel, we see Jesus standing serenely at the stern, ignoring the rudder, with one hand raised to the wind and the other pointing to the waves. He appears to be talking while his drenched disciples are crouched down and holding on to the sides of the boat, the mast, or each other.  

In the third panel, Jesus hands are still in the position we saw them in the second panel, but now the sky is blue and cloudless, the sun is shining, and the sea is as calm as glass. The disciples are no longer wet, their faces are lit with a mix of amazement and laughter.  If this triptych was in a museum, a docent might ask, “As you are looking at this triptych, what do you think is going on? What is your take away?”

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Like most miracle stories in scripture, this story takes on a parabolic hue that allows us to see it as a metaphor for something much larger than a one-off phenomenal event some millennia ago.  As such, let’s take a deeper look at this iconic miracle story and treat it metaphorically.  Like all stories with a parabolic hue, their intent is to place ourselves in them in order to find their meaning. There are many ways to look at a story like this one. The following is just one example: 

We’re in a boat with Jesus and his other disciples riding on the Sea of Life.  The boat’s name is Faith.  Storms happen very quickly on the Sea of Life.  When they occur they can rock Faith to the point we find ourselves feeling overwhelmed by the never-ending onslaught of issues and problems driven by the winds of disappointment, discontent, division, and general dysphoria.  When these storms continue for a time, it can appear that Jesus is sleeping on the job so we pray, “Wake up Jesus!  Don’t you care about that we’re about to fall apart and sink in our despair?”  So Jesus wakes up and he says to winds of our disappointments, our discontents, our divisions, and dysphoria, “Peace! Be still” and suddenly things quickly settle down and Faith is sailing calmly on the Sea of Life. 

The story doesn’t end there.  Jesus has some questions of his own, “Why were you afraid?  You are in safe in Faith.  You were acting as if you’re paddling through the Sea of Life without a boat.”  

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It is easy to lose sight of faith during the storm squalls that quickly happen in our daily lives. There are times when it feels like we’re trying to paddle through life without a boat.  Even when we’re sitting in the boat of Faith, the nave of a church, we can be swamped and buffeted by the fierce wind and waves of life.  We feel drenched with disappointment, discontent, and dysphoria.  It can seem as though God is not present, but God never leaves us.  Within such life-storms, however, we, like Jesus’ disciples, can experience the calming presence of God in our midst.  

When Jesus asked his disciples, “Where is your faith?”  He wasn’t criticizing them for a lack of faith, but making them aware of it.  The irony in Jesus’ question is that it was their faith that led them to awaken him to take control of the boat they were in.  What they didn’t expect was Jesus ignoring the rudder to direct their lives but rather taking control the elements of their situation; the wind and the waves, the very causes of their concern.  God controls the very issues we are concerned about, and in the calm that ultimately follows such life-storms, the faithful see God’s miraculous handiwork in their lives.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

THE EXTRAVAGANT MINIMALISM OF GOD - A REFLECTION ON JESUS' SEED PARABLES

These reflections are written as devotions for my parish church, Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton South Dakota.

Mark 4:26-34

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

THE EXTRAVAGANT MINIMALISM OF GOD

God is an extravagant minimalist.  It seems evident that God likes to start small and watch God’s creation grow and flourish. This extravagance of God’s minimalism is revealed in some of Jesus’ seed parables.

Nothing illustrates God’s extravagant minimalism better than Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed, the second of the two parables in today’s lesson from Mark which is found in all three Synoptic Gospels.  As most of us know, the mustard seed Jesus is talking about is considered the smallest plant seed.  It was also a seed that produces a weed-like shrub that could grow to the size of large entangled tree-like bush which, as this parable depicts, serves as an excellent protective habitat for birds. 

Although this parable talks about the mustard seed being sown, as one would sow wheat or barely, most farmers in the time of Jesus wouldn’t dare plant it in a field because once it takes off, it is hard to control and spreads like a weed, overtaking the area where it exists.  It is not only considered an invasive but also a pervasive plant. That pervasive invasiveness is the point of Jesus using the mustard seed as a metaphor for the Kingdom of God.  Its wild, uncontrollable nature is particularly suited to describe the entangled spread of God’s Realm.  

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Found only in the Gospel of Mark, the Sowing Seed Parable is easily overlooked because it follows the well-know Parable of the Sower and uses the every day life cycle of plants to makes it point.  Within its simple agrarian reference to a farmer planting seeds, we are offered a profound insight into the nature of God's Realm.  Just as life seemingly ends with death, life comes from death.  The two are intertwined.  With the notable exception of the story of Jesus’ resurrection, this cyclical paradox is not apparent in animal and human life.  Where it is apparent is in plant life, where one can easily observe life emerging from death. 

Using the cycle of plant life of the wheat and barely grown in the area where Jesus lived, we observe, that unlike the GPS generated planting methods used today, the farmer of Jesus’ day would have simply cast these seeds on the ground and let nature takes its course. Even with the vastly improved technological planting of today, we remain amazed that “earth produces of itself;” that life from death is inherent in and emerges from the ground we walk on. 

In what may strike some as a mechanistic view of God establishing an order that lets nature takes its course, Jesus reveals that like plant life, human life has its course; that being the living souls we are follows a similar pattern.  We too are products of the earth, formed by God from its soil and breathed to life by God’s Spirit to become “living souls,” only to die so that we might live again; a cyclical process revealed in the linked together  stories of Adam's and Eve’s realization of death and Jesus’ realization of life being raised from death.

Within the parameters of human existence, is the inherent capacity for productivity in both the physical and spiritual nature of our soulfulness.  Over time, however, that which is physical will eventually die,  just like plants.  “All flesh is grass,” observes Isaiah. [See Isaiah 40:6-8].  

This parable, however, demonstrates that physical death is only part of the story.  What dies is brought to life again.  Seeds may lie dormant for millennia, only to come back to life when exposed to life-giving light and nourishment.  There is a potential energy in the seeds themselves; a soulfulness, if you will, observed in all living things, plants and animals alike.  

 

While some of our scriptures and a good deal of theology and doctrine derived from them portray death as a curse that resulted from our primeval parents’ one act of sin, the Sowing Seeds Parable suggests otherwise.  Perhaps the curse of death is not that physical life has an end but rather that we humans know it will end.  Jesus died and would have died even if he wasn’t crucified.  Death is a natural part of life and is essential for a life cycle to exist.

All physical life dies at some point. Even planets and stars die, while at the same time new planets and stars are being created. Today, we have the ability to observe such activities through astronomical technology; something the writers of our scriptures did not have available to them, and we know that stars have been dying long before life showed up on earth, which prompts one to consider whether one moment of transgression by two humans caused universal death?  It makes one wonder how our scriptures might have been written had their authors known what we know today.

Jesus’ Sowing Seed Parable suggests that death is at the service of the creator and the act of creation; that death serves as the means to bring forth abundance; that death is an intricate part of the kenotic paradox of God expending God’s self in order to expand God’s self, what Jesus referred to as the Kingdom of Heaven.  The Realm of God is all around.  We are already in it, just not aware of it.  From our perspective, life from death is a mystery and may seem implausible, until we observe plant life and see the mystery of life emerging from death.  Paul perhaps states and sums up this mystery best:

“Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

                ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

  Where, O death, is your victory?

      Where, O death, is your sting?’

The sting of death is sin (knowing - nw), and the power of sin (knowing-nw) is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”   [1 Corinthians 15:51-57 NRSV]

Amen

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

THE MADNESS OF JESUS - A REFLECTION ON MARK 3:20-35

 These reflections are written as devotions for my parish church, Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton South Dakota.

Mark 3:20-35

Then Jesus entered entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.

 THE MADNESS OF JESUS

Jesus’ family was concerned.  You can almost guess what their conversations must have been like:  

“What’s going on? What is happening with Jesus? He’s not eating right; all that preaching, all those people.  It’s not good.  People are talking.  Casting out demons!  What next?  Perhaps we should do a family intervention.”   

So they go in search of Jesus.  

They are not the only ones concerned.  

Prior to today’s selection from Mark, we read that word quickly spread about Jesus who was healing people and casting out demons.  People from all around, even beyond the borders of Galilee and Judea, were making the journey to hear Jesus and be healed by him.  

And when that happens, the leadership in Jerusalem take notice and send some scribes to hear and see what Jesus is up to.  After doing so, they arrive at the same conclusion as Jesus’ family has, “He’s out of his mind.”  Beyond that, they conclude that if Jesus is, in fact, casting out demons, it stands to reason it is because he’s possessed himself and not by some generic demon, but by the Prince of demons, Beelzebul.  

One can only imagine what Jesus must have sounded like and looked like after preaching and healing non-stop for days. Wild-eyed with the fervor of delivering a message of hope for the world, and unkempt from the press of the never-ending flow of people who had no where else to turn and no one else to give their hope for hope a chance.  It is no wonder his family and others thought he was losing his mind.  

But Jesus wasn’t losing his mind.   Jesus was healing minds and liberating souls. 

When he hears the scribes describe him as casting out demons by the prince of demons, he sees a teaching opportunity in which he offers one of his most enduring statements, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”   Jesus exposes an illogic that is present in every age, a resistance to evidential hope.  The ones who object to hope are most often the ones who see power as their sole domain; those who fear they have the most to lose when hope emerges on its own. 

 

Hope defies control. When hope takes shape and becomes realized those who fear it most cast righteousness as demonic, liberation as domination, and talk of love outside of their inner circle as subversive.  Illogical theories like Satan casting out Satan are presented as fact because, in a polarized setting, one man’s hope can become another man’s fear.  In short order, Jesus takes their illogic and exposes its fallacy.   

What comes next is one of Jesus’ most confusing statements about the eternal and unforgivable sin against the Spirit of God. 

Mark concludes that Jesus gave the scribes this warning because they said he had an unclean spirit.  It’s not exactly clear what Jesus meant by this statement, and it may strike us as a bit over the top and out of character for Jesus.  Nevertheless, it serves as a poignant warning to those who, in the name of God and religion, demonize people as a means of preventing them from healing the human condition and liberating the human soul.  In karmic terms, Jesus could be saying that those who discredit the Spirit of God in others end up severing their tie to the Spirit that made us living souls; that is, diminishing their souls to the point their isn’t much, if anything, of their souls left to forgive.

Another seemingly uncharacteristic moment for Jesus is when he is informed that his mother, brothers, and sisters had arrived and were asking for him.  Instead of going out to meet them or inviting them in, he uses their presence as another teaching moment.   In what comes across as a dismissive insult to their presence, Jesus asks the crowd surrounding him, “Who are my mother, brothers, and sisters?”  Looking at those who came to hear and be healed by him, he say, “You are. You, who are doing the will of God are my family.”  

The madness of Jesus is in appearance only and he appears as such only to those who feared losing control and felt powerless against the good they couldn’t explain and couldn’t control; a power that defied conventional wisdom as to how, when, where and by whom such good things should happen to and be enacted by.  For those whose hope was rekindled in Jesus’ preaching, who experienced his healing and  whose souls were liberated, they saw and experienced in this wild-eyed, unkempt Jesus the refining fire of God’s liberating and life-giving Spirit. 

This reading is particularly appropriate for a season devoted to the movement of God’s Spirit in our world - Yes, even the world of our making; redeeming it and restoring it one person, one moment, one event at a time to the world of God’s creating.  

To discern the movement of God’s Spirit requires one to step back, sometimes way back, to see the bigger picture.  It requires letting go of what one thinks must happen or should happen to see within the madness of our times the good that is taking place, to recognize the hope that emerges in some of the most seemingly hopeless places and situations.  

To discern the movement of God’s Spirit requires a patient and prayerful heart that feels the Spirit of God’s guiding movement that edges us ever towards the loving fulfillment of God’s will, our true hope, the healing of our world and the liberation of our souls.  

Amen.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm