FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST (Written on June 16, 2009)

For the Lectionary (what's a lectionary?) of June 28, 2009: Mark 5:21-43

 

She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak . . .

 

BEYOND OR WITHIN by Larry Patten

I cannot read the long stretch of Mark’s fifth chapter that included Jairus pleading for his daughter’s life and an unnamed woman daring to seek Jesus’ help for her illness without being transported to a pew in the balcony of the church I attended during high school. There, alone with others, I listened to a sermon.

I cannot tell you the first sermon I heard.

But I can tell you the first sermon I remembered. Treasured. Wondered about. The first sermon that spun a tale, and cast words and images that didn’t feel for others but seemed to be only for me. Maybe I leaned forward in the pew. I don’t remember. Maybe my heart raced or at times I held my breath. I don’t remember. But I can still sense the shift, the change, the amazement within me, when the preacher described an ill woman’s faith. In his description (or perhaps from his tone of voice or the way he paused, of any number of other inexplicable actions the preacher conjured) I sensed her faith. Her hand reaching. Her desire for healing. Her hopeful and appropriate selfishness mingling with selfless humbleness. Who among us doesn’t need healing?

Mark’s meandering passage is rich. Preachers can endlessly mine its treasures. Over the years I’ve given sermons emphasizing . . .

Interruptions. The woman interrupted Jesus’ goal of getting to Jairus’ home and saving that twelve-year old daughter. How much of the best and worst of our lives are interruptions rather than the plans?

Named and unnamed people. What a contrast the writer of Mark created, with the powerful—and named—Jairus making demands. And then there’s that nobody. A woman sans name. How often do strangers make a difference in how we receive or practice our faith?

Rationalization. Jesus’ dull-witted disciples can’t imagine how they can possibly know who touched Jesus. Their first reaction involved an excuse. Too many people. In other words, let’s keep moving, ask someone who cares, or I don’t have time for this.

Derision. Jesus arrived at Jairus’ house, optimistic and hopeful. And what does the crowd do? And they laughed at him. There’s a truthful sermon for a month of Sundays in those words. If you dare to preach it.

You can continue with your own list. From the first moment Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee to ordering pizza for the now healthy little girl, those verses were chock-full of inspiration for preachers, teachers, and other ne’er-do-wells.

But I simply like how this passage once and always transports me. I like how the power of the words, and the memory of a moment, remind me of who I once was and who I became. And even who I am still becoming years later.

As a high school kid, I sat riveted in a pew by the description of faith.

How much I love the power of words to move. Christians are sometimes called the people of the word because of the Bible, but it’s not only the Bible where the casting forth of words into our hearing and into our souls contains transformative power.

I sat beside an alpine lake in the Sierra Nevada when I finished John Irving’s The World According to Garp for the third or fourth time. Every time I’ve read it, I weep at the end. I can’t fully explain it. But I distinctly remember that time around the lake, as a storm settled into the lake basin where I camped, as the temperature went from balmy to brisk, as the first drops of rain moistened the pages, and I was weeping. Irving’s character had loved and lost and failed and succeeded and dreamed and deceived. He was enough like me so that I couldn’t put the words away as thunder rumbled around me.

It wasn’t until college that I met Winnie the Pooh. True! In my senior year I had a wild notion I’d missed something in my adolescence. That led me to the children’s section of the university’s library. I’d never been there before, hadn’t known a college’s library might contain more than books I desperately needed for the paper I’d put off and were currently checked out by others and wouldn’t be returned until after the semester and my futile longing for an “A” ended. But I ventured into unfamiliar territory, with kindergarten furniture, where the Velveteen Rabbit asked questions and Dr. Seuss’ weird creations spun rhymes and Mr. Toad lived with the wind in the willows. And where Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too had daily adventures.

Merely children’s stories.

And yet I became enthralled. Truth was told. Faith, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, was revealed. In the best writing, in the words that dare to dazzle, we experience ourselves. Unless you become like children, Jesus said. Winnie the Pooh beckons.

What about you? Where have you been transported beyond or within yourself by words?

I was once a young man in a pew. And someone, who really didn’t know me, began preaching. He relived a once told tale, a gospel, a good news, and almost everything he said was meant for me. I can still visualize the woman reaching out. Soon the disciples will have excuses. I imagine Jairus, with his prestigious title and fancy clothes, and yet nothing matters other than his daughter’s life. Soon people will laugh at the promise of new life Jesus brings.

All of it, I remember. All of it I still feel. I love these words. I sit by a lake and weep. Garp lives. Garp dies. I settle into a child’s chair, banging my knees on a pint-sized table, and laugh out loud over Winnie’s exploits.

The next sermon or lesson or comment you give will make all the difference in the world for someone. You have the privilege to share a story to help them move beyond or within.

in Peace,

Larry