Community Church Sermons
Year B
June 28, 2009
The
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Sunday
Mark 5:25-34
Rev. Martin C. Singley, III, Senior Pastor
“You and I must make a pact,
We must bring salvation back,
Where there is love, I’ll be there.
I’ll reach out my hand to you,
I’ll have faith in all you do;
Just call my name, and I’ll be there.”
I have to admit that I don’t share with what seems like the rest of the world a real strong connection with Michael Jackson. I’m more a fan of the King of Rock n’ Roll from Memphis, Tennessee than the King of Pop from Gary, Indiana. Even apart from lifestyle issues, I don’t really resonate with the later music of Michael Jackson although I did like his work as a young boy with the Jackson Five.
“You and I must make a pact,
We must bring salvation back,
Where there is love, I’ll be there.
I’ll reach out my hand to you,
I’ll have faith in all you do;
Just call my name, and I’ll be there.”
I’ve been trying to remind myself these past few days that the 50-year old Michael Jackson who died on Thursday was once a mother’s little baby. It would be easy to simply look at the garish costumes, the strange physical appearance, and the sometimes bizarre behavior of the pop star and dismiss him out of hand. And lots of older folks do. And yet the truth is that my kids and tens of millions of others found meaning and enjoyment in Michael’s artistry and music. Despite my feelings on the subject, his “Thriller” album nonetheless stands as the best-selling music album of all time. So I find myself wondering, “What am I missing here that younger people get?”
I think it’s more than mere musical taste. Perhaps it is an understanding that there’s more to people than what meets the eye – that underneath our outward appearance, and hidden below our visible life circumstances, there lies a human being who is worth loving. And even though much of the world would label such a person “unclean”, God has a different view of it.
SHE was unclean – this freakish woman in the dark robes who, the Gospel of Mark tells us, had suffered much under many physicians. If Michael Jackson spent a lot of money on doctors and medical procedures, so did she. In fact, we are told this woman spent every penny she had trying to get well. But she did not get well. She got worse. And twelve years after the hemorrhaging began, she was bleeding still.
And that made her “unclean” in the eyes of her religion. She was not allowed into the Temple for fear that she would make others unclean. Temples and churches and religious people then and now conjure up all kinds of ways to label others as “unclean” and not worthy of acceptance and love.
SHE was unclean.
And she was desperate! She wanted to be well! She wanted to be regarded as a human being! She wanted to LIVE!
So imagine her there, in the crowd that day. Jesus was coming to town! She’d heard about him - that he sometimes healed people. Maybe he could do what the doctors couldn’t do! And so she hid there in the crowd, plotting her next move, waiting for just the right moment…
…and then, as Jesus passed by, she pushed through the lines of people, and broke free of the crowd, and ran up behind Jesus, and…did the unthinkable.
She touched the hem of his cloak. In doing so, you realize, she made Jesus unclean.
And then he was gone, and the crowds swallowed her up once again, and …
…wait a minute!
The whole procession stopped.
“Who touched me?” the voice of Jesus asked. When no one responded,
he asked again. “Who TOUCHED me?”
Fearfully, the woman made her way through the crowd to Jesus. Trembling before him, she spoke. “I’m the one,” she confessed. And then she waited.
What would Jesus do? She had broken the rules. She had committed a grave sin. She had rendered Jesus unclean by touching him.
You and I are faced with situations like this quite frequently. Someone in our family, or some neighbor, or someone on the national scene fails to live up to our moral standards, or is afflicted with a contagious illness, or just plain bugs us because they are not what we want them to be, or what we think God wants them to be. What will we do with them? And its not just with others because we ourselves have our own inventory of failure and sin and sometimes we wonder how God can possibly love us anymore because of what we thought, or said, or did. What will God do with us when our sinfulness is great?
So what will Jesus do in the case of the dark-robed woman?
You might be tempted to say that Jesus will scold her, maybe even condemn her for breaking the laws of the Bible. Perhaps Jesus will strike her down dead!
But that is not what Jesus does.
No, Jesus does something truly surprising. He does NOTHING.
But what he SAYS is amazing!
“Daughter,” Jesus speaks, “your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
Your FAITH…
Jesus had a unique ability to see into the hearts of people. While others obsessed about the externals – how religious they were, how bad they were, how sinful they were – Jesus saw something in people that was worth embracing, and affirming, and loving.
In this case of the dark-robed woman, it was her faith. And that faith she expressed had nothing to do with religion. It was not any belief in doctrines or theological principles like people today think faith is. Her faith was simple: she saw a goodness in the Lord that could make her well, and she was determined to grab hold of it.
I think the sin of our generation is that we have lost hold of the goodness of God. So many religious people look at others and treat them as people God despises rather than as people God loves. We can easily point out the faults of others – whether it’s Michael Jackson, or Mark Sanford, or my next door neighbor, or someone in my family, or this hemorrhaging woman. But it’s much more difficult to see what God sees - the kernel of faith - the little seed of goodness – the inner gift that God can use to begin the work of healing and making what is broken whole.
“Your faith has made you well…” Jesus says.
As we go into this new week, I challenge you to look at the world through God’s eyes. Pray and ask the Lord to help you with that, to give you a new vision for seeing others. And as far as people like Michael Jackson are concerned, try to look through the garish costumes, the strange physical appearance, and the sometimes bizarre behavior to the inner gift that our kids see.
And although I personally can’t quite get to all the music, and have no chance at all of ever doing a “moon walk”, I do value this song:
“You and I must make a pact,
We must bring salvation back,
Where there is love, I’ll be there.
I’ll reach out my hand to you,
I’ll have faith in all you do;
Just call my name, and I’ll be there.”
There is something of God in that song. Can you hear it?