Sermon by Reverend Dr. John W. Mann | June 30, 2024

Mark 5:21-43

In 2003 I was a commissioner to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). One day during lunch I sat down at a table with some other folks and introduced myself to the people around me. In the polite lunchtime conversation that covers the ground of “where are you from” and “what do you” I learned that the fellow sitting next to me was a retired New York City police detective.

The topic of conversation turned to, “Where were you on 9/11?”

He said he arrived at work early that morning. He was arranging a retirement party for one of his colleagues, his best friend in fact whose last day at work was September 11, 2001. When word came in about what was happening at the World Trade Center, the retirement party was quickly set aside. His friend had been on his way to work and went directly to the scene instead. He was one of those who were killed that day.

There’s a certain irony about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bad luck, we call it. Likewise, there are times when we happen to be in the right place at the right time. Good luck, we call it.

There are also times when we make our own luck. Times when the bad things or the good things that happen, things which to the casual observer might seem pure chance, happen because of our own choices; choices both active and passive.

One day I was at work. In those days there was a church secretary, Kristy who answered the phone. I would talk to anyone accept someone trying to sell me something. I realize people must make a living, but I don’t enjoy talking to people when I know that the result is me telling them for the dozenth time, “Listen, I’m just really not interested – seriously, no.”

One day Kristy spoke through the intercom, “It’s a Rev. Lindsay Biddle on the line.” “Yeah, I’ll talk to her,” I said. Lindsay was a colleague in the presbytery of the Twin Cities. We had gone to lunch a few months before, as colleagues and I had attended a dinner party at her house along with a group of other people.

This Rev. Biddle wanted to know if I was free for lunch that day. She had been planning to meet the secretary from the church where she was interim pastor, but that person had to cancel. On the spur of the moment, she called to see if I was available. Yeah sure, lunch – why not?

During lunch the conversation ranged over several topics. One of those topics was our mutual social lives. Or in my case, the lack thereof.  I decided to take a chance and queried, “Why don’t you and I go on a date?” Take a chance; what harm could there be in asking? That chance made all the difference.

We look at our lives and where we are now at any given point is due to choices we have made. Some choices are carefully considered, and some are more by gut instinct. Even the choices that turn out to be wrong ones, can seem right at the time.

The story that follows on in our study of Mark’s portrait of Jesus reveals a picture of people making choices and taking chances. The story tells us that what might seem like the lucky break, or the chance encounter could very well be the divine intervention.

Jesus was not having an easy time of it. He was teaching in the villages around the lake called the Sea of Galilee and had attracted large crowds. People were demanding much of his time and energy. He went to the other side of the lake where mostly Gentile people lived.

Over there he managed to create a stir. There was a notorious character that lived in the graveyard, who people said was demon possessed. Jesus freed him from his demons, but in the ensuing chaos, a herd of pigs ran off a cliff and drowned in the lake. This was not a good way for Jesus to make friends and influence people. The people in those parts told him that they would all be better off if he just packed up and left.

He went back again across the lake and once again the big crowds came around. Crowds are interesting. There is such a thing as a “mob mentality.” Individuals seem to get lost in a crowd and it seems as if many people are acting of one mind. But it only seems that way. In any crowd there are leaders and followers. There are people who can incite a crowd or agitate a crowd. The police always film crowds because they know if the crowd turns into a mob, they can go back and study the footage to determine individual actions.

One man stepped out the crowd. His name was Jairus. He was a community leader. He was a man who would normally conduct himself with a certain decorum and dignity. But this was not a time for dignity. He was desperate. His daughter was ill and he wanted Jesus to help her.

Maybe he thought at first – “I’ll just explain who I am and he’ll be honored to do me a favor.” But crowds have a way of removing decorum. Get in line, wait your turn, hold on, that woman cut in line, wait a minute I’m next, hey I’m getting pushed back here, oh no wait, he’s moving on. My daughter might die!”

“Stop! Wait, please, I beg you…” And off they went. The crowd followed. It was pressing in. Hardly any room to breathe. Then there was a woman. She had suffered. She had endured. She had spent everything she had. She just grew worse. Twelve years; what a life. Unclean, constantly, chronically unclean.

Maybe she thought at first – “No one else has been able to help me all these years; I don’t know why this guy should be any different. But who am I to say. I’m nobody- I’m less than nothing. Thanks God for nothing.”

And then she saw him at the lakeshore. There was something about him, some sense of him that if there was healing to be had, he was the guy to give it. But all those people, she couldn’t get close. No matter, he was off with someone important. So much for that chance. But wait, if she just pushed through a wee bit, there she could just get a lucky touch on the back of his robe there.

And Whoa! What just happened there? That was a jolt. And then she felt, she knew she had just been suddenly and miraculously healed. Jesus felt it too. He stopped. He looked around and said to the crowd, “Who just touched me?”

His disciples were a bit confused. “Who just touched you? Were in the middle of a crowd and you’re asking, ‘who just touched you?’”

“I just felt somebody getting healed,” said Jesus. As he looked around at people they were looking around too. Not accusingly, but curiously. No, no, it wasn’t me. But the woman who had touched him thought maybe she had done something wrong. Naturally she would, being unclean for as long as she had been. Any sense that she had any right to even a shred of dignity had been removed from her a long time ago by a society that constantly reminded her she was no good.

She too fell at the feet of Jesus. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean anything by it. I just thought, no wait, I wasn’t thinking. What was I thinking that I could just touch you?”

But Jesus called her “daughter.” It was a term of endearment, unlike any she had heard for a long, long time. He did not condemn her, he commended her. Daughter of Abraham, child of God, member of the community, just like that he announced her restoration. And he said, “Your faith has done this.”

And then some people came to tell of the other daughter, of Jairus’ daughter. “She’s dead,” they said. “Don’t bother the teacher anymore.” Even if they had hurried it would have been too late. But still there is that sense of, “If that guy hadn’t been up there buying his lottery tickets I would not have missed my bus!” Too late.

But Jesus said otherwise. “Don’t be afraid, only believe.” Easily said, but when it’s your loved one at death’s door, words can sound cheap. Along they went. It wasn’t far and when they arrived people were already engaged in mourning. The house was packed and people were “making a commotion.”

That’s a good word for this story, commotion. It means when people are engaged in civil unrest or insurrection. It’s as if to say people were rising up against God’s possibilities. They were giving into fear and calling for the overthrow of hope. Jesus didn’t stand around and empathize; he told them they were misguided if not misinformed. The girl was not dead, she was just “sleeping.”

He took the girl by the hand and told her to arise, and she did. He told people in no uncertain terms to not tell people what had happened. This was not something that should lend itself to the spirit of commotion by which they had been engaged. But of course, they told anyway. It was too big to keep quiet.

If there is meaning in the story it is found in where we find ourselves in it. In the crowd, moving along with the ebb and flow of the common culture in which we live; in Jairus, coming to Jesus in spite of ourselves; in the woman, feeling like the outcast and believing we’re hardly worthy; in the mourners, so caught up in the facts of the situation that we deny God’s power to intervene; or in the wee girl, the one who simply needs to be taken by the hand and given permission to rise again. Each in their own way, like us, on the road to discovering our identity as children of God.

The story reveals that our random moments are in the reality of God’s realm, divine appointments. For all of us, the words of Jesus ring true, “Do not be afraid; only believe.” Amen.