June 28, 2009
The Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year B)
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Psalm 130; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15;
Mark 5:21-43
There is a variety of sermons in today’s lessons, from David’s powerful lament over the deaths of Jonathan and Saul, to the psalm that cries out to God from the depths of despair, to Paul’s strategy for getting money from the Corinthians, and in Mark’s gospel the stories of two women healed by Jesus, one a poor, insignificant, woman made unclean and outcast for twelve years by her bleeding and the other a twelve year old child of a wealthy religious leader. I could preach a sermon on David’s distress for Jonathan whose “love for me was wonderful, passing the love of women,” and how this relationship between these two men has long been thought by some biblical scholars to be a reference to their erotic love for each other.
That could be one sermon
Then, another might be from the psalm. I am constantly aware of our urgent and pleading prayers that we have been saying for so many in this parish who are sick with cancer or unknown illnesses or heart disease this month. I am aware of even more unemployment or job losses, threats to homes and mortgages that people cannot pay. Crying to the Lord in supplication from the depths of our souls has become a constant refrain, and I think worthy of a sermon and something we can all relate to.
That could be another, taken form these lessons, the timelessness of despair!
And money, Paul had money woes. I can flippantly say, “Who doesn’t?” as we think about the economy, job losses, refinancing woes that we all are facing! He uses rather strategically evoking subtle guilt tactics to pry open their purses (I am not sure they had wallets then). So to speak of the money that we need to keep the church running, even in summer when all are on vacation, would perhaps be a wise sermon to preach this day.
And then we get to the healing stories in Mark! Jesus tells the woman who bled for twelve years that her faith has healed her, and the father whose daughter was ill that all he had to do was “believe.”
There is so much to ponder, so much to learn from and about, so many more questions that are raised than are answered in these lessons! But how like Jesus that is, never to give an absolute answer but to demand that we weave ourselves into the stories and figure out our own answer based on knowing Jesus!
I found myself asking, “How much faith was enough to get healed by Jesus?” And I knew, despite all the good questions and thoughts in all of the lessons, that it was with the gospel that I needed to wrestle. Did Mark, the author of the stories about the two women, deliberately use twelve years of illness and a dead twelve year old to tell us something cryptic, or perhaps not so cryptic, in the story? One commentary suggested it is because the woman had been ill for twelve years, shunned, cast out, and unclean, and then was taken care of by Jesus before he saw the wealthy young child (also twelve and about to become a woman) showed Jesus’ preference for the poor, showed how all are equal in God’s eyes, whether a poor old woman or a rich young child
And as I thought of more and more unanswerable questions, I realized what I really wanted to know is how do I get enough faith to trust that, when I need a miracle or when one of you needs a miracle, it will happen? Why is it that God cured the bleeding woman when she merely touched his hem, that because she had enough faith, she was cured; but people I know of deep and holy faith suffer and die? What is the formula, what are the rules, the laws, for having “enough faith” to prevent such terrible things? What parent wouldn’t have faith enough if they could to cure their child and prevent them from dying?
So, how do we get more faith? And the answer, like all of the answers of Jesus, to each of these questions is full of mystery and holiness but absent are definitive rules for accomplishing the task.
And I realized something I have known for a long time (but probably forget as often as I remember). I never pray for patience because God will give me too many opportunities to practice it!
Likewise to try to pray for “more faith” or an “increase in faith,” to get what I want, might be asking to have more opportunities to have one’s faith tried! And after all we know about that mustard seed!
It is not as if faith is a quantifiable thing that one could pour into one’s self from a measuring cup! You know, open the top of your head and pour it in! Impossible!
Faith truly is a gift from God, a thing we can desire but not create for ourselves. Rather, faith is a portion of Grace bestowed on us, not by our own doing or measuring or following of some formulaic process that insures we will then be cured of all that ails us or that enables us, by our faith, to will the healing of others. It is of no matter how noble our desire or how godly our intentions. We cannot manufacture faith. So how can one have the faith to seek Jesus out and trust that we will be healed even when cancer is eating our bodies or our heart is being stilled by disease? How can faith cure such things?
That fact is we cannot rely on any answer to that question, for our manufactured faith, the faith we create, is not what redeems us, cures us, keeps us from harm. It is not following the rules, even the Ten Commandments, that buys us salvation. The only thing that redeems us, gives us faith, heal us, is Grace. Christ redeems us, Christ alone, as He did the two women in the gospel lesson this morning.
A couple of weeks ago we heard that faith the size of a mustard seed could move mountains. From that we might deduce that if we possessed faith we could order God to do what we desire, or reframe or reform the world to our specifications, literally, “I believe, so move that mountain, God!” But the truth is, it is by faith we can see the mountains move that God wants moved. It is by faith we can find courage to face the unfaceable and know that we are not facing it alone. It is by faith gifted to us that God gets a toe hold on our souls, and then we can see with eyes of mystery and holiness that it is not about us and what we want or pray for or which mountain we want moved, not about us at all! It is about God acting in the world, sometimes through us, sometimes even despite the obstacles we become – because we want something other than the mountain in the same location that God intends to move it!
We cannot manufacture faith, but we can practice it. We can practice faith even when we doubt because practicing faith means practicing the mystery of letting go. It means practicing courage and doing that which you are not comfortable doing. Practicing faith means trusting that God will indeed be with you in the darkest places when you cry out in despair or from the depths of your soul. Practicing faith means exercising compassion, forgiveness, love, passion for the outcast and poor, seeking peace over self-righteousness. It means living in hope despite all mortal odds, and most of all it means knowing that all of these actions, practices and habits are byproducts of the gift of faith given to us by God. They are the warm-up exercises for living eternally with God, beginning today in this world.
No lesson can tell us how to have more faith or how to get it if we don’t have it. But even when our faith is diminished or we are facing the most unutterable horrors life can throw at us, we can live as though Jesus is right there walking with us – even if we don’t believe it. Likely the next time we stop and look we will find that Jesus is there, allowing us to touch the hem of his garment. It is in letting go and trusting that God wants us and bestows upon us faith enough.
Whatever ails you, whatever encases you or traps you, whatever separates you one from another, these are not obstacles to faith or grace, they are the holy acts of mystery working in you that you might see through them into faith. May our faith increase, not by trial but by living as though there were no other reality possible than that mystery and holiness we know in Jesus Christ.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd