As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout that district.
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
There actually are benefits of a long commute to work. While I’m driving I catch up with friends, often clergy friends. We sometimes talk about, even commiserate with each other, about lectionary readings coming up what we’re thinking about them. And talking about Matthew’s gospel with a friend this week, we started to remember our time as chaplains at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. We shared stories – sort of pinging off each other back and forth of patients we’d met and still wonder about, about families and staff members, about difficult conversations, tearful prayers, compassionate hugs. The scent of Holy Oil, the beep of the monitors. Some hospital stays ended well. Many did not. But in these encounters, the common thread was hope. God was always present so there was always hope.
Illness, we discovered as hospital chaplains, is a leveler. It makes no difference whether we are rich or poor, whether we are at the center of power or at the margins. Illness causes great disruption in our lives and with some long-term illnesses we lose hope that we will ever be healthy again.
Sometimes we look around and see models of faith among us, people battling serious diseases who seem to have this inner peace. I know I’ve included in other sermons my time with a lady named Charlotte who had fought hard against various forms of cancer. She’d celebrate a good medical report one month only to find a recurrence of cancer a few months later. She told me with deep conviction that she had no regrets about her life, only a sky full of stars. She named people and experiences she’d had among her stars. Cancer, she said, was just one of the stars in her sky – but not the biggest and not the brightest.
We see people who pray over those in pain and seem to ease their suffering, people who read passages of Holy Scripture that give them strength in touch times, people who are simply present with the ill to give comfort or a cup of water when needed. What do we learn in this passage about the nature of illness and the place of faith and hope in healing?
We are told about two people battling illness: a leader of the synagogue who seeks out Jesus for his daughter and also a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years. These are two people who would not have associated with each other, if they were healthy. The male leader would be unlikely to associate with a female, let alone one made unclean by bloody hemorrhage. Nevertheless, here their distress place them in the same story, even in the same crowd, seeking a healing miracle from Jesus. They seek a healer to do what they have no power to do for themselves.
How often have we sought help from a physician when we are ill? We may at first rely on our bodies to heal themselves – give it a little time and rest and some of those aches and pains, coughs and colds will resolve on their own. It’s part of the gift of God that we have bodies that in some cases can heal on their own. Or we may try our own home remedies. But at some times we realize that our own knowledge and expertise is not enough, that we need someone with knowledge of the body and medical arts who can guide our treatment. We look for, we pray for, a healer who will listen to our distress and confidently outline a successful plan of treatment.
When the leader of the synagogue approaches Jesus, all hope for a successful outcome seems lost. In other Gospels his name is Jairus. Jairus’ daughter is already dead and yet this man is not hopeless. He asks Jesus to lay hands on her with the expectation that she will live again. The interruption of the woman does not seem to concern him. We don’t hear about Jairus objecting to the conversation between the bleeding woman and Jesus in order for Jairus to get his own miracle back on track, even though a man of power might expect Jesus to pay more attention his need than to a woman.
Perhaps at that moment he sees in her some one who suffers just as his daughter has suffered. After 12 years she has probably sought her share of assistance from others, spent whatever fortune she had on treatment and been abandoned by her family and friends. But she, too, has not lost hope, saying “if only I touch his cloak, I will be made well.”
Such great faith from these two witnesses in Matthew! It almost feels too easy. “Suddenly” it says in verses 18 and 20 they are there before Jesus. And just as suddenly he has responded to them, to their needs. For the woman be confirms that her faith has made her well; with Jairus’ daughter, he simply takes her by the hand and she gets up.
When we read these accounts, we might feel that our own faith is weak and insignificant by comparison. When faced with even more significant and perhaps life-threatening illness, where do we find the strength to carry on?
There is a great mystery here provoked by these healing stories. Why does Jesus respond to these people, among all those who are seeking his help? Do that have the greatest faith or the greatest need? Or both? Why, when we pray for healing for ourselves and others, do some prayers seem to go unanswered? Is it because our faith is not strong enough? Tragically, some would tell you that. I can’t tell you why some prayers are answered in the way would like and some are not. But I can assure that there is no “cause and effect” process here, that illness
We may not get very far into this passage before we wonder if anyone other than Jesus is really up for this task of healing. Curing the sick? Cleansing lepers? Raising the dead? Few will feel confident going into those assignments.
When we look at what we’ve heard Jesus do and what the disciples are later sent to do, we anticipate that they will fall short. Remember who Jesus was talking to – a tax collector, a rabble-rouser, some fishermen, an accountant, men who were tradesmen or like Jesus were trained to work with their hands. Average people. No practitioners of the curing arts among them. And yet they were all called to be healers. If we place ourselves among the disciples, we might feel that we would fall short. Perhaps we’d be more comfortable among those who Jesus encountered and described as being like sheep without a shepherd.
But I think that Jesus helps us out with this task. We have a formula to follow: Compassion with Faith and Action lead to Healing.
To be equipped for healing doesn’t mean that you need to go out and get a medical degree or enroll in nursing school. If you feel called to heal in that way, God bless you and love you through that process.
But just as the disciples were sent out to towns in ancient Israel, we who follow Jesus today continue to be challenged to do this work with little more than the strength of our faith and the deep well of compassion within us. Fortunately, that’s enough. Compassion with Faith and Action lead to Healing.
Jesus does not just talk about these two daughters. He touches them. Both would potentially make him ritually unclean, one by the blood in her illness and the other by her death. Still Jesus allow himself to be touched and takes the young girl on her deathbed by the hand. He shows her and the crowd who waited, the people who laughed, that he is about breaking down the barriers that separate us. Illness and death are something we share. It is precisely at the these times that we most long to be touched, even if our bodies are ugly and in pain.
As we think about the illnesses of others, we know that we too can be the hands of Jeus. We may not have the trained hands of a surgeon or a nurse, but the touch we bring comes with hope. This hope contains our faith that Jesus Christ is moving among us, suddenly making us well and saving the weak and weary in unexpected ways.
So today let us be bold in proclaiming the good news that Jesus Christ recognizes our suffering and our faith. He who died on a cross knows what it is to be in pain. He who is risen has the power to make us whole. Amen.