Do you deserve God's love? What about God's mercy?
What about God's forgiveness?
Tough questions, to be sure. Tough questions we may
not want to think about. Because the easy answers just don't cut it, do they?
If they did, we'd have a very short sermon. Do you
deserve? Yes. Great; thanks, on to coffee hour and picnic games.
Except for the follow up: why? Why do you deserve
God's love, and mercy, and forgiveness? Hmm. That's where it gets into hard,
doesn't it?
Because we live in a society that is constantly
challenging us to justify our actions, our words, our selves. We live in a
culture where entitlement is abundant. We live in a world that pitches one
against the other, jockeying for position.
We live in a world where women like Bree Newsome, who
literally pulled down the Confederate flag from the capitol building in South
Carolina (an historical symbol of oppression and much discussed after the
murders in Charleston last week), Bree is being judged by the media as both an
activist of liberation and a rabbel-rouser criminal.
We live in a world where pastors like Charles Moore
of Texas light themselves on fire in protest of racism and denial of same-sex
rights; God rest him Charles died yesterday and is being judged both as
mentally ill and person of great faith and conviction. Ours is a world where
pastors like Rick Scarborough, also of Texas, stated he would set himself on
fire if same-sex rights were upheld by the Supreme Court - he has (since the
ruling) declared that he was exaggerating to rally the troops and will not
cause his bodily self harm - he's being judged as a hero by some, and as weak
and untrustworthy by others.
This is our world. This is our society. These are the
folks that we judge as they are in the headlines. These are the judgements that
society deems normal; that culture deems acceptable; that we all get caught up
in making.
The hard reality for us is that this critiquing and
criticising, based on headlines, without full understanding of events, is not
the Christian way. The Christian way is not one of judgement, or comparisons,
or contests. It is not a place where people are more deserving than their
neighbour; they are not more entitled than the person across the street, they
are not more important than the person in the headlines.
So do these people deserve God's love? Do they
deserve God's mercy? Do they deserve God's forgiveness?
And do we deserve to make those decisions? Hmm.
Now let's think about what God has to say about this
all, based on today's Gospel.
In fairness, our passage today is difficult to read
and hear, without even taking it any further. We have two people, very
different people with very different circumstances, coming to God and asking -
pleading - begging - for help. For love and mercy and forgiveness. For healing.
And they come in faith, prepared to receive whatever God will grant them in
this life.
These two people had faith. They had
confidence in the new life of Christ. They had the will and courage to
persevere. They never gave up hope, they never gave up their faith.
These two people likely ignored their
friends, who tried to talk logic into them. For the woman, she probably heard
over and over again: Get used to it, you'll just hemorrhage forever. For the
man, he was likely consoled: There's nothing can be done, your daughter's
illness will take her life.
Friends who meant well, who wanted to
be helpful, who were focused on very real, very earthly problems, trying to
come up with very earthly responses to the situations.
These two people likely ignored their
own better judgement. The anonymous woman may be thinking "He doesn't even
know me, why should I put myself at risk to try to get close?" For Jairus,
that moment of helpless desperation when he hears of his daughters' death, and
knows that no more (earthly) healing can happen.
Judgement that is again, logical,
earthly, and based on their experiences. How else could one realistically judge
their situations?
These two people ignored what society
thought was normal. The woman, in touching Jesus' robes, made herself (and him)
ritually unclean - unable to fully participate in the Jewish ways of life for
some time - that included common meals, worship, fellowship. Even before we
consider the reality of the power moving from Jesus into her healing, the rules
and societal norms that she was breaking were prohibitively shocking. For the
man, well here was a person of great stature and authority in the community,
seen acting in a way that was undignified, unprofessional, almost embarrassing.
To this day we can imagine the awkwardness of someone behaving like this.
Society sets the norms, and while they
can ebb and flow gradually with time and experience, we know what is socially acceptable
and what is not.
Yet. These two people came as they were.
They acted out of their faith.
Notice they did not anywhere justify
why they had come to Jesus - they just came. They didn't say "I deserve
your love" or "My works make me worthy" or "it's my RIGHT
to be healed." They just came: in need, in faith. They came to Jesus as
they were. The woman who comes asks for herself: she is poor, she is sick, she
is nameless. She has nothing left to lose: her illness has literally been
draining her life away for over a decade. But she comes.
The man comes, asking for his daughter:
the man has a name; he has a position of authority in the synagogue and in the
community; he has financial resources, a family, friends. He has everything to
lose; his stature and resources cannot help him now. But he comes.
These people just came, and they
received love, mercy, forgiveness, healing.
Physical, miracle healings? That's
powerful. And it's rare, despite the fact that we get two of them in today's
scriptures. And we shouldn't expect an instantaneous healing in our lives. To
be fair - when it happens, we should be equally amazed, awe-struck, and
abundantly gracious and thankful.
But the message of faithfulness we get
from today's story? There's the miracle. That God will be present and
responsive to us when we come. That God will hear our pleas, and listen to our
whole story. That God will promise us spiritual healing through our own faith
and commitment and praise. That God will treat us as family - sons and
daughters together. That God will know our hearts and desires, and answer our
prayers as may be best for us. That God does not base his gifts to us on
societal norms or social status or money or actions or anything else.
These are today's miracles, and we
apply them to our own lives just as the Gospel shows them applied to these
other lives.
So let's go back to the same questions
I started with. Do you deserve God's love? God's mercy? God's forgiveness?
The message from today's Gospel is
clear: YES. Yes you do: but not because of anything you have done; not because
of anything that our society may understand. You deserve this love because God
has decided that you are worthy. Because God IS love. God IS mercy. God IS
forgiveness. As my colleague Dawn said, this passage has Jesus saying to us
all: I don’t heal because I am powerful,
or you are powerful. I heal because I am love and full of compassion.
God is the great giver, ever inviting
us to deepen our faith. May we hear the words he said so many years ago come
alive in our hearts and lives this day: "Do not fear, only believe."
May we have the faith to come to Jesus, just as we are, and receive the good
news of abundant love and life that we have been promised.
