June 30, 2024 | Rev. Loren McGrail
Dear Ones, I love this story. It is my Call Story. Did you know that every minister gets asked which story in the Bible best describes their call to ministry? This is mine because when I was overcome with pain in the late 1990s, I identified with her desperate reaching out. My reaching out led me to become a Reiki Master and then in seminary to focus on the healing ministry of Jesus and to become the director of the Reiki clinic. Yes, Andover Newton had a Reiki clinic which was directed by my former Jewish Mediator who was now a Unitarian. As part of the training for Levels I, we used this story to reflect on the courage it takes for people to come to us for healing. And yes, many of us identified with the feeling of being called to touch like Jesus but I also felt it was equally important to identify with that part of ourselves which wanted to be healed or restored. We are all wounded healers as Nouwen says.
For years I used this gospel story to talk about my call but this morning I want to talk about both stories and the importance of Jairus. The story of the hemorrhaging woman is coupled with the raising up of Jairus’ daughter. He was the synagogue leader. In essence this Gospel story, which is also found in Luke and Matthew, is really a tale of two daughters ---a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years and a 12 year old girl who falls ill. 12 years before and after bleeding. 12 tribes of Israel.
The nameless woman’s condition rendered her ritually unclean which meant she could not go out in public including entering a synagogue, the heart of her own religious community. She couldn’t touch or be touched by anyone without making them also unclean. By the time she reached Jesus she had spent every last coin she owned on doctors. She was an outcast who also had been abused by the medical system of the day. I identified with this part of the story as I got tossed around from doctor to doctor until I found my own healing path.
In desperate hope, she committed an act of civil disobedience by entering the crowd and reaching out touch even if it was only the hem of his garment. Jesus immediately felt her touch but even more her gutsy faith which led him to tell her it was enough to heal her. Not his touch h but hers was the catalyst. There is another detail often overlooked in the story that I wish to emphasize. He not only felt her touch but insisted on the woman coming forward to tell her story. He wanted to hear her “whole truth.” Her telling of her story also led to her healing. How many doctors do you know ask to hear our stories when we go to them?
Back to the story. So, Jesus, even though he was on the way to another healing crisis with the synagogue leader’s daughter, paused to restore this bleeding woman to fellowship with others so she could regain her dignity and humanity. Jesus insisted that her embodied experience was as important as the synagogue leader’s. Jesus invited her to find her voice and speak her truth. When she finished, he said. “Daughter, go in peace.”
Dear Ones, I invite you to imagine or see how we are or have been this bleeding woman. I invite you to reflect on the following questions as we reflect on our own healing journeys:
- What do you have to do or to push through in order to grab hold of God’s boundless compassion? What hierarchies, taboos, or skepticisms stand in your way?
- What is your whole truth? Do you have the courage to tell it?
- How does your faith heal you? What is your proof?
- Do you believe or accept you are one of God’s beloved daughters or sons?
On a societal level, how are people with chronic illnesses---physical and mental illnesses—treated as unclean in our society? Are we listening to their stories? Are we respecting them?
Now let’s turn to the second half of the story which involves the desperate faith of a father whose daughter appears to be paralyzed, in a deep sleep or dead. I wonder what Jairus experienced as he watched Jesus embrace and empower this bleeding woman as a religious outsider. Does he flinch when he sees him touching the unclean woman? Dear Ones, imagine yourself as Jairus for a moment. Where do we hear this perspective today in our own country? Who are the untouchables? Those with disabilities? Trans youth? The migrants at our borders?
When Jesus arrives at the home of Jairus, he takes only a few of the disciples into the room with him to be witnesses to the rising of the girl. For the listeners of Mark’s Gospel, they would be remembering Prophet Elisha who raised the dead son of a woman who gave him something to eat with the little she had. Perhaps this is why the story ends with Jesus telling them to feed her.
In the story of the rising of Jairus’ daughter, we are being challenged not to see death when there still is life. How many of us find ourselves paralyzed by life’s tragedies?
How many of us feel unable to move under the weight of the world’s grief? Difficult to rise to another blistering day that reminds us that heat waves are now our new normal?
Dear Ones, it is only when the outcast woman is restored to “daughterhood” can the daughter of the synagogue leader be restored. The faith of the privileged must learn from the poor. The last shall be first and the least the greatest. If we only focus on one of the stories we miss this important message. Healing and restoration are contingent on the last shall be first. Finally, let us also remember we are not only the one reaching out but the one commissioned to be a healing presence to others.