Grasping Life

 Mark 5:21-43, Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

This passage from Mark is one I personally find very moving and very inspiring.   The passage is really two stories put together.  In the first story, a man of some stature approaches Jesus about his little girl.  She is terribly ill, “to the point of death” we are told, and later in the story the man is told that she is dead.  We understand this father.  He is desperate, truly desperate for healing for his daughter.  He is desperate to the point that he doesn’t care that many of the other synagogue leaders and people in power are suspicious of Jesus and even want to have him killed.  He doesn’t care if he makes a fool out of himself in front of people who may be in his temple and may lose some respect for him, possibly making his position as leader in the synagogue difficult.  He doesn’t care because this is his little girl he is concerned about, and she is dying.  So he comes and falls at Jesus’ feet and he begs Jesus.  We are told that he begs Jesus repeatedly.  “Please, I beg you, come and heal my daughter.  Just put your hands on her, please, so that she may live!”

His desperation pushes him beyond caring about anything else except getting healing for his daughter.  His despair pushes him to an act that would otherwise be seen as very courageous, as very bold, maybe even as outrageous.  His love for his daughter caused him to concretely grasp hold of whatever he could to claim LIFE for his daughter.

Jesus is moved by the man’s desperation.  He is moved by the man’s pleas.  And he is moved by the man’s act of faith in approaching Jesus in this way.  We are told that he goes with the man to see his daughter.

At this point the story is interrupted by a second story.  In this second story a woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years approaches Jesus.   In those days to be bleeding meant that you were unclean.  She would have been a complete outcast, totally isolated from her community because of her status as diseased and therefore untouchable.  She has done everything that could be done in those days to help herself.  We are told she has spent all she had, every penny, going to doctor after doctor for help.  And all of it has only made her worse.  She too, then, is desperate.  This time not for someone else but for herself.  And she too is motivated by that desperation to be courageous.  She pushes her way through the crowd, “infecting” all those people, since (remember) she was unclean because of her hemorrhage, and she reaches out to touch this holy man, knowing that her touch basically makes him unclean as well, a great affront to a religious person.  “If I can only just touch him, I know I will be well.”   Unlike the father in the first story, she does not ask, she instead “takes” it - reaching out and touching him without speaking to him or asking for healing.

But she gets caught. Jesus feels the touch and asks the crowd about it despite everyone’s confusion since, as his disciples said, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘who touched me?’” And then the women performs another act of great courage: she comes before him trembling, falling down before him in shame and fear: and then she tells him everything, she admits to touching him, she tells the truth.

Jesus is again touched and moved by this woman’s courage and faith.  He is moved by her honesty and by her desperation.  He tells her to go in peace, he tells her that her very trust that he could hear her has made her well.  She was healed because she reached out to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

While Jesus is talking to the woman we are suddenly thrown back to the first story. Some people approach the synagogue leader “even as Jesus is speaking” to tell the father that his daughter has died and that there is no more to be done.  But Jesus calls them to even deeper faith.  He still goes, and he raises her from the dead.  This story is told in Matthew, Mark and Luke and is the first resurrection story in each of those gospels.  The first to be resurrected in the New Testament was this little daughter, this girl child, not someone normally considered important in that time or place.  Yet important enough to God to be the first to be raised from death. 

In each of the three Synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, the two stories of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage are told together.  These stories are told together because they are both part of the same commandment.  Jesus’ second commandment to all of us is to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Mostly in church we focus on how much we need to love our neighbors and care for them as much as we care for ourselves.  But this story invites the reverse as well.  We are also called to love ourselves and take care of ourselves as much as to love our neighbors.  We are called by these stories to reach out for healing, for our loved ones, yes, for our

neighbors that we don’t even know - yes, AND for ourselves: to be courageous, to be bold, to even be outrageous and reach for the things we need to LIVE.  We are called to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT. 

            I want to point out that Jesus asks everyone to be quiet about what he has done.  He declares that the girl was not dead but asleep.  Why?  Well, in part, no doubt because the sooner he drew attention to himself, the less time he would have on earth to heal and proclaim his message.  But I believe there is another reason that is equally important here.  Jesus was restoring this little girl to her community.  Restoring her.  But if she became known as “the girl that was raised from the dead” she would not have been fully restored to the community.  She would have taken on solely that identity.  She might have been used as a political pawn: someone to be scorned by those who did not agree with Jesus: a lesson to be raised up by those who would have made her life difficult.  And an idol for those who followed Jesus.  No, his request to be quiet was for her sake as well.  We are called to live fully, to grasp life fully: and the courage that it takes to do that with integrity and with fullness should not be underestimated. 

I know this can be hard.  It is easier to ask for healing for our children, for example, than for ourselves.  While it might be hard to see how this is true in our own lives, we all know people who complain endlessly about ailments but never take the steps to heal them. At one point in time this stand of enduring problems without fixing them might have been considered self-less.  When my close friends’ aunt died, everyone said at her memorial service how giving and self-less she was.  But what that really meant was that she refused to seek help when she needed it, she refused to take care of herself at all, when things went wrong, she still declined seeking help.  And in the end that wasn’t really self-less at all.  She loved the attention she received because of all her pains and problems.  And she died early, leaving grieving and suffering children behind who would not have been motherless had she attended to her medical problems.  We are called not to live marginally through attention for our problems.  We are called to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Many of you know the stories of Lance Armstrong, and of people like him, who have

become heroes for facing terrible illness and for fighting back against amazing odds.  In Lance’s case, he was faced with, some estimate, a 3 % chance of surviving his testicular cancer that had spread to brain and lungs and had metastasized.  But he decided to try an aggressive chemotherapy that ended the cancer.  He then took the next step of deciding to enter the cyclist racing world again, a challenge he describes as even greater than the fight back from cancer.  He had lost all his strength in his battle with cancer.  Yet he decided to be cancer free was not enough.  He felt the pull, the call, even, to become strong again, to learn to ride again.  After his battle with cancer he won seven Tour de Frances, the most won by any individual in the history of the race.  Lance chose not only to survive, but truly to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Not all of us are Lance Armstrong.  Not all of us can find that kind of healing or at least, find the support and the doctors such as were available to Lance.  Sometimes, like the woman with the hemorrhage, we feel we’ve done all we can to heal ourselves.  We’ve spent all the money, we’ve gone to all the doctors.  And still we are no better.  But Jesus calls us even then to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.  That can mean so many different things: it can mean selling what we have and in one final effort joining the peace corps or a mission group and serving with

the little time we have left.  It can mean simply reaching out to help someone who needs it.  It can mean taking the chance to heal a relationship that seems beyond repair: making the hard phone calls, writing the difficult letter.  It can mean leaving a relationship that is not life giving, even though it may involve giving up security, to try to find a life that has safety and meaning and godliness.  It can mean starting a new career, one that is truly following an inner calling.  For someone else, it might mean planting a garden full of beautiful flowers or vegetables and fruits: helping bring forth new life and beauty.  For another it might involve joining or starting a campaign for something that is really meaningful to you, getting more involved in the community.  It can mean trying alternative medicine and healing practices.  It can mean praying in a different way or with more attention and devotion.

The second scripture passage we read today came from the book of Jeremiah.  And in it, despite all signs that Israel and Judah were about to be completely destroyed, Jeremiah is choosing something incredibly hopeful.  He goes and buys a field.  In the midst of the destruction of his country, his community, his faith body, he goes and buys a field in an extraordinary vision of hope.  There are witnesses to this and the deed is put in a clay pot and preserved so that when they are in exile, they know that that field is waiting for their return.  He puts a concrete action into the future: and by doing so makes the statement that the Israelites will be restored to their own land and that it will bear fruit.  By the way, the place where he buys the land, Anathoth – that word means “answer to prayer”. 

Richard Rohr says that the only thing that changes people completely are a combination of great love and great suffering.  We have the great love: God offers that every single day.  But suffering also comes and we have a choice about what we do with what we experience.  How do we walk into the future when the world seems despairing, when our lives feel despairing?  We choose: do we become bitter or do we get better.  John Dewey said, “We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.” And that is a choice that we make.

While Jesus is not here today, I believe that offer to grasp life applies to us still.  We cannot touch Jesus, but we can touch the hem of his robe.  Our faith tells us that Jesus is with

us, in this very room.  And so, we too are invited to reach out and touch.  We touch the hem of his robe by asking for the support of one another.  We touch the fringe of his cloak by praying together in community.  We see Jesus in one another, we see Jesus in fellowship, in prayer, in worship.  We touch the hem of his robe by believing he is here among and within us and by having the courage to ask for help.  We touch the fringe of his cloak by reaching out to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Again, I’m not saying that means everyone will be healed from every illness.  What I am saying is that all of us have been offered life, new life, whole life, through our faith.  Whatever that looks like for you, Jesus invites us to reach out, to touch the very hem of his robe, for our loved ones, for our neighbors, for enemies, and even for ourselves: to grasp life, to claim it, to LIVE IT.

Good Samaritan

 

Luke 10: 25-42

Psalm 15

 

            Today’s passage from Luke is longer than we normally hear together.  Usually, we either hear what we call “the story of the good Samaritan” or we hear “the story of Mary and Martha”.  We don’t often hear these together.  But I think there is real value in hearing them together that all connects to that first question asked by the legal expert.  To re-read you just that part:

“A legal expert stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to gain eternal life?”  Jesus replied, “What is written in the Law? How do you interpret it?” He responded, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.”

            What I want to suggest is that the two stories that follow, then: the Story of the Good Samaritan and the story of Martha and Mary: that these two stories go together as illustrations of that law, of that interpretation of the law.  That these two stories show us what it is to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength and with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. 

            So, with that as the “topic sentence” of my sermon, let’s spend some time looking at these two stories.

            We are so familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan.  It is probably the most well-known story that Jesus tells.  A man is traveling down what is often considered a dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho.  He is set upon by thieves who left him near death.  A priest sees him and passes on the other side.  A Levite sees him and passes by the other side.  Then the person that the legal expert would normally dismiss shows up.  And he, in contrast to those who should have helped, stops, takes care of him, takes him to an inn, pays for him to stay there and be taken care of.  At the end Jesus asks the legal expert who acted as a neighbor and then he tells the man to go and do the same.  

            When we hear this story what do we think?  How do we feel? 

            I know you’ve all heard about the study that was done with seminary students in the 70s.  Some seminary students who were in a class were told they had to go to another building.  On the way they encountered a moaning man slumped in an alleyway.  They varied the amount of urgency they gave to the students as well as the task they would have when they arrived.  Some were told they would talk about seminary jobs, others were told they would have to tell the story of the Good Samaritan.  Some were told they were already late, others that they were early but should head over anyway.  The results were that about 40% offered some kind of help and the only thing that seemed to impact their actions one way or another was how big a hurry they were in, or their anxiety level about what they were already supposed to be doing.  40% offered some kind of help, meaning that 60% offered no help at all.  Again, these were seminary students and many of them had just been told to focus on the Good Samaritan story.

            To me these are convicting numbers.  Convicting information.

            But when we stop and think about this, we know this to be true.  When we pass homeless people on the street, how often do we stop and at least acknowledge them?  Ask them if they are okay or if they need anything?  If they are sleeping or slumped over, do we stop and offer care?

            I’ve shared with you before my own experience at my first congregation where a young girl was in need of help to get home and an entire session of people refused to help her in any way.  They didn’t give her a ride, didn’t pay for a cab, didn’t offer to let her use the phone… all out of fear.  They, too, had just heard the Good Samaritan story that Sunday.  But putting it into realistic actions was another thing altogether for them. 

            I invite you to think about it in your own lives.  Imagine a friend fell off a ladder while you were there.  You wouldn’t hesitate to call for help, to get help, to offer help.  But imagine you are walking, by yourself, without your cell phone, and you see a stranger who looks beaten up and is lying injured.  What would you do then?  Let’s say the person is of a different race?  Would you be more and less likely to help?  Let’s say they are wearing obvious gang clothes and there aren’t a lot of other people around.  What would you do?  Now let’s throw in that maybe you are in a hurry to get home because you are needing to take your sick child, grandchild or spouse to the doctor?  Now what would you do? 

            I think for most of us, this story is a story of conviction.  It calls us to think about how seriously we take the call to actually love our neighbors, those strangers, those people we don’t know, those we fear, even as we love ourselves. 

            But one of the things that I would like to point out to you is that Jesus is not condemning of those who didn’t help.  I think he understands that we are all on this journey, all struggling to be better, to be more the neighbor that we are called to be.  All of us.  Instead, the emphasis for this story seems to me to be more on the unlikelihood of the Samaritan.  He was not someone who people expected to do good, to do anything to help.  He was the unexpected helper, the “angel” if you will because he was a messenger of love from God. 

            Who are the Good Samaritans of today?

            There is a wonderful group of folk called BACA – Bikers against Child Abuse.  This is a group of self-identified “scary”, rough bikers whose goal is to protect, support and care for children who have suffered abuse.  A story on Yahoo told about one specific girl who was sexually abused by her step-father.  She was so terrified by this man and by her experiences that she could not sleep at night, was scared all the time and was falling apart.  BACA began to escort her to school, they went to court with her and stood by her as she testified against her step-dad, and they stayed outside her house all night in a circle, on their bikes, so she could sleep at night.  These are the Good Samaritans of today.

            We generally think that poor people, especially those who ask for help on the street or other places, are not generous.  But this in fact is far from the truth.  When we look at pure percentages, the poor give so much more generously from their poverty than any of us who are comfortable ever consider giving.   Recently there have been a number of social experiments that have shown exactly how true this is.  In one study, the experimenter had left a $100 bill where either a “comfortable” person or a homeless person would find it.  Later they set up a situation where they are in need.  In one video I saw that documented this, the experimenter found, at different times, the comfortable person and the homeless person sitting in a park a short time after having “found” the $100 bill.  The experimenter pretended he was on the phone talking in desperation and in tears to a “pharmacist” who was telling him something very upsetting.  He got off the phone and was crying on the bench near them about how he didn’t have the money he needed to get his sick daughter some medicine.  The rich person simply got up and walked away, uneasy with the man’s distress.  The homeless man, in contrast, who had just taken the $100 bill he had founded gone to target where he bought himself some food and a new blanket, expressed concern and asked the crying experimenter if he was okay.  The man explained again that he needed money because his daughter was in need of medicine that he couldn’t afford.  The homeless man told the experimenter to wait.  He ran back into the target with the things he had just bought, asked for a refund for everything he had just bought for himself, came back and gave the $100 to the experimenter.   

            In another experiment, a person approached several people who were eating outside and asked if they would give him a slice of their pizza, or a piece of their chicken basket.  All of those who were comfortable said no.  All of them.  In contrast, then, that same person approached a homeless person who had been given a couple left over pieces of pizza.  Similarly, he said he was very hungry and would the homeless man be willing to share.  Even though he only had a couple pieces, he did not hesitate to share it with this stranger.  In the end, the experimenter who had asked for the food gave the homeless man $70 and you could see the homeless man break down in wracking sobs.  $70 is not that much for most of us.  But it was a world of money for this man who had nothing.  

            One of my lectionary group shared with me this week about a group called Food not Bombs who apparently can be a little scary at times in the strength of their convictions.  But this same group, all dressed in black with tattoos, all smoking – can be found every Saturday in the park handing out food to any and all who need it.

            This story of the Good Samaritan is radical.  It is a radical story that calls us not only to risk treating everyone as we would treat ourselves, to risk loving even our neighbors whom we don’t like as ourselves.  It was also a story that invited the legal expert to consider the possibility that a person whom he did not value, could not value, would not see as an equal human being, this Samaritan, might in fact be the very one who was doing the will of God.  That this reject might be the one who had something to teach the legal expert.  That this anathema might be the face of God, reflecting love, acting with care and kindness.

            And then we come to the Mary and Martha story.  In Jesus’ time women had their very clear place.  It was a place of serving the men, doing the work of the household.  It was not, ever, to be out with the men, learning, listening, partaking in the worship and conversations and community of the men.  But Mary crossed that line.  She wasn’t helping Martha.  She was sitting at Jesus’ feet.  She was honoring the Lord she loved and the God she loved by letting go of all her ideas of what it was to be a female at that time, what it was to be “proper” and “right”.  Instead she did what her heart told her to do: to be with Jesus, to be learning and listening and loving.  Those around her did not like it.  Martha, in particular, who was working hard to do what she had always been told she was supposed to do, to be what she was always told she was supposed to be, did not like that Mary was stepping out of her place to be something else.  But Jesus told her that Mary had chosen better.  She had chosen LOVE of God over social acceptability.

            Lent is a time when we are invited into self-reflection.  We are invited to look at the areas in which we are called to grow, to risk, to try anew.  On this the first Sunday in lent we are invited to look at our own actions and see where we are challenged to love God and neighbor with much more fullness.  We aren’t always going to get these things right.  And I want to point out that in neither of these stories is Jesus condemning the ones who didn’t get it right.  He doesn’t yell at Martha.  He doesn’t spend time expounding on the sins of the priest and the Levite.  He doesn’t even scold or correct.  What he does instead is to celebrate the wins, celebrate the times when loving God and loving neighbor over everything else is chosen.  He celebrates the wins, the times when that call was answered.  And then he invites.  Mary, you’ve chosen the better part and it will not be taken from you.  Legal Expert, see the astonishing, surprising man acting in the way God calls us to act and go and do likewise. 

            To return to where we started then Jesus tells the legal expert that all the commandments and laws can be summed up into two: to love the Lord your God with everything you are, AND to love your neighbor as yourself.  In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus shows us what it is to love your neighbor as yourself.  In the story of Mary and Martha we see what it is to love God with all you are: putting aside the business and expectations of one’s life to sit, learn, worship.  And then we have Jesus’ final words for today’s reading, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. One thing is necessary.”  First, he took all the commandments and summed them up into two things.  And now he has taken the two things and summed them up into one.  One thing is necessary.  One thing.  And that is love.  When we love fully, when we are fully present in love with the God who IS love, then all the rest will follow.  The Samaritan chose to love his neighbor as himself.  And Mary chose love of Jesus and through that, love of God.  We end then with Jesus words to Mary.  “Mary has chosen the better part.  It will not be taken from her.”