Pentecost IV, Proper 8, Year B
Deuteronomy, 15:7-11
2 Corinthians, 8:1-9,13-15
Mark, 5:22-24,35b-43
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Anew academic study about the social patterns of Americans has some good news. Published in the American Sociological Review, the report concludes that more people have social ties to people of different races than in 1985.1 Unfortunately, that seems to be the one bright spot.
Now here’s the work for the Church – for our parish. We’re doing a good job, but there’s much to be done – a real need to be addressed. The researchers were shocked to find that over the last twenty years there has been a “steep decline in close social ties.” In 1985, Americans reported an average of about three close friends. Now it’s just about two. In 1985, 80 percent had a confidant outside of their family. Now it’s 57 percent. In 1985, about ten percent had no confidant whatsoever. Now it’s twenty-five percent. One person in four has no one with whom to have an important conversation!
The report also concluded that our confidants have become increasingly similar to us. Social ties with people of different educational and economic backgrounds have diminished. One of the researchers said, “That image of people on roofs after Katrina resonates with me, because those people did not know someone with a car. . . . There really is less of a safety net of close friends and confidants.”2
Chronic loneliness, despair, unhappiness come from social isolation, from not tending to relationships, from not reaching out to people different than ourselves. We work too hard; we retreat to our homes; we spend too much leisure time surfing the web, playing computer games, watching television. Healing comes through community, fellowship with people. Everyone needs other people who care for them, who will talk to them. Otherwise, life is dark and empty, a nothingness.
Today’s good news is that a relationship with Jesus connects us deeply to other people. Christianity should not be used to disparage people or to divide people. Christianity is about healing our relationships and making new ones; it is about building healthy, inclusive communities. This is central to the story of Jesus raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead.
Today’s gospel reading has a hole, a missing a section. It omits a number of verses, skipping over a connected story. As Jesus was following Jairus to see his daughter, a woman with a chronic, and presumably terminal, hemorrhage touched his garment, and immediately Jesus feels power go out him to heal her. Then Jesus turns to her, and she falls down in fear and trembling. She tells him her life story. Jesus responds by calling her ‘daughter’ and bidding her peace. This incident interrupts the story of Jairus’ daughter. The interruption is significant.
Jairus is an important man, the ruler of the synagogue. He’s extremely anxious to get help to his daughter before she dies. Jesus, however, allows a woman made ritually unclean by her bleeding, her illness, a marginalized, overlooked, socially insignificant woman, to interrupt him and to take precedence. Jesus stops to recognize her, to speak to her, to personalize their relationship.
Decades ago, Lewis Mumford wrote, “Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.”3 While he’s got a point, he’s also wrong. We need to recognize interruptions as opportunity for growth, as moments to build up our inner life. We definitely need time to be alone – for silence, for prayer, for concentrated reflection, but the way Jesus handled interruptions should inspire us. “A teacher once remarked, ‘You know . . . my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.’”4
I’ve not attained the clarity of that teacher. I often resent interruptions. But increasingly I do recognize that interruptions are often an opportunity to make room for other people, to make time to connect with others. We get so anxious and uptight about accomplishing tasks, many of which are of questionable importance. It’s a big, big challenge to be open to other people, especially people much different than we are. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “If you love only the lovable, big deal. Anybody can do that. If you greet only those who greet you, what more are you doing than others?” (Mt 5:46-47, loosely translated)
Jesus’ ministry is about breaking down barriers between people and creating unity. This morning the gospel shows him giving equal regard to the mighty and the lowly, the ritually clean and the ritually unclean, the accepted and the rejected, the celebrated and the ignored. He’s creating a new community where the standard is inclusion and love and mercy.5
We also see the objects of God’s mercy being open and receptive to grace. Jairus risks rejection and humiliation for his daughter by begging for help from Jesus – a man, in the eyes of the world, clearly beneath him, an inferior, a poor, unfashionable itinerant teacher who associates with the most offensive people. “[Jairus] places his reputation and status on the line for the sake of his daughter . . . (at a time when daughters were not valued as much as sons).”6 His humility made grace possible. His openness made a renewed life possible.
Similarly, the woman with a hemorrhage literally risks her life in seeking Jesus’ help. She is ritually unclean. She’s not supposed to be in a crowd of people where she can ritually defile them.7 Jesus, however, reaches out to her and calls her ‘daughter.’ He includes her. “He restores her to the family of Israel, makes her once again part of the community in which she had been an outcast.”8 Jesus transforms her from lonely and cut off to a member of the family, from misery to love and fellowship. That’s what we’re to do.
Again and again, Jesus challenged the social and religious conventions of his age. He up ended the Jewish traditions of piety, its clear lines of who’s in and who’s out. We have to ask ourselves, “Does our practice of Christianity have integrity with the teaching of Jesus? Do we exclude and ignore? Do we forget that Jesus was friends with sinners, even unrepentant sinners? Do we use Christianity to look down on others?” The Church is not an exclusive clique of respectable, like-minded folks. Rather, we’re a diverse, open family, engaged in a common enterprise. Bishop Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, one of the great theologians in the Anglican Communion, calls it “a family business, in which everyone has a proper share and a proper place.”9
In the middle of third century, the Roman civil authorities persecuted Christians in northern African cities. Thousands of Christians were martyred, and many Christians did not hold firm. They lapsed from the faith. When the persecutions ended, many of the lapsed sought to come back to the Church. Novatian, a doctrinally orthodox and highly regarded church leader, argued that the lapsed had fled from the faith and failed to maintain the truth, that they had succumbed to the world. He wanted them excluded from the Church.
However, Cyprian – Saint Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, forgave the lapsed and welcome them back to his churches. He recalled that the Apostles had abandoned Jesus at the cross, that S. Peter had denied Jesus. Cyprian understood that forgiveness and reconciliation are essential in any healthy relationship, that Christianity is primarily about building loving, trusting relationships. Praise God that ultimately Cyprian won the argument. Within a couple of centuries, the churches that followed Novatian died out.
The way we come to know Jesus is through loving relationships. That’s what’s really important. We Christian often lose focus on the big picture. This story may be sentimental, a bit cornball, but it’s right on.
A teacher stood before his class with several items on a table. He picked up a large, but empty glass jar and filled it with golf balls. He asked the students if the jar was full, and they agreed it was.
The teacher then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly so that the pebbles would roll into all of the areas between the golf balls. He again asked the students if the jar was full, and they agreed it was.
The teacher next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. The sand filled up the rest of the space between the golf balls and pebbles. He again asked the students if the jar was full, and they agreed it was.
The teacher then got two cups of coffee and poured the contents into the jar. Now even the space between the sand was filled.
The teacher declared, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things – God, Church, family, friends, health, your calling in life, other people. If everything else in the jar was lost, your life would still be full. The pebbles are other things – your job, your hobbies, your home. The sand is everything else – the very small stuff.
“If you put sand into the jar first, there’s no room for golf balls or, even, pebbles. The same is true for life. If you spend all of your time and energy on small stuff, you will never have room for the important things. We need to pay attention to the things that give us purpose and meaning, that build our character, that elevate us.”
The teacher continued, “Go to mass and pray. Play with your children. Have dinner with your spouse or a friend. Take time for medical checkups. Give to those in need. Make new friends. Take care of the golf balls first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”
A student then asked, ‘What about the coffee?” The teacher replied, “It’s there to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple cups of coffee with a friend.”
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1 Sebastian Mallaby, ‘Why So Lonesome?,’ The Washington Post, 26 June 2006, p. A21, brought to my attention Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, Matthew E. Brashears, ‘Social Isolation in America: Change in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades,’ American Sociological Review, 2006, Vol 71, p. 353. http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/June06ASRFeature.pdf
2 Lynn Smith-Lovin quoted by Chuck Pearson, blog.chuck-pearson.org, 24 June 2006.
3 Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities, ch. 1, sct. 5 (1938).
4 These comments on interruption derived from Lamar Williamson, Jr., Mark, John Knox Press (1983), p. 112. He quotes Henri J. M. Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 36.
5 Charles L. Campbell, The Lectionary Commentary: The Third Readings, the Gospels, Roger E. Van Harn, ed., Eerdmans (2001), p. 210.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid, p. 211.
9 N. T. Wright, Simply Christian, Harper Collins (2006), p. 211.
© 2006 Lane John Davenport
