Sermon on Mark 5.21-43

(With inspiration from many sources, including "The Community" blog by Rev. Naomi Miller)

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.