Sermons from Park Hill Congregational UCC Denver, Colorado Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] June 27, 2021 “Can Grace Really Be Amazing” Mark 5: 21-43 – New Revised Standard Version “21When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. 22Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” 24So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. 25Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. 26She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” 29Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.30Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” 31And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” 32He looked all around to see who had done it. 33But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.34He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” 35While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” 36But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” 37He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. 38When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” 40And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” 42And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. 43He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. I want to start today by reminding us of our Park Hill UCC core values.
Today’s gospel text incorporates all of these core values, but there is one in particular I want to focus on: spiritual depth and intellectual integrity. When we were articulating our core values as part of our strategic planning process in 2009, I remember discussing this with one of our beloved saints of the church, Amelia Lawrence. She said, “I want a church where I don’t want to have to check my brains at the door.” Me too! Amen? That’s when we proposed the words intellectual integrity. Although, now that I think about it, “A church where I don’t want to have to check my brains at the door” sounds more compelling. But that’s not enough, she said. Neither do I want a brain that must be constrained to only those things that “make sense.” We talked about the importance of connecting our heads and hearts. So that’s when we added the words spiritual depth, but maybe we should have simply said, “And neither do I want a brain that must be constrained to what can be explained.” New marketing plan, anyone? There’s a lot in the Bible I find hard to believe – especially when it comes to the stories of healing and miracles, including our stories today. To that, the controversial Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong said, “I must reject Jesus’ miracles as not possible and therefore not true in any literal sense.”[1] That may help us avoid brain strain. He added that such rejection doesn’t prevent him from still believing that “Jesus offers me a doorway into the realm of transcendent otherness.” But, still, he said, miracles can’t be considered true in any “literal” sense. One of our Lunch and Lectionary participants on Thursday said we should just sit for a moment and appreciate what the woman might have felt. To be curious about her life. To wonder what a life with a constant flow of blood for 12 long years would have been like. At one time she had enough money to spend on one physician after another, but nothing got better. In fact, it only got worse. And now, she had no more money left. But she heard about Jesus and thought, “if I just touch his clothes I will be made well.” Sit with that for a moment. Not I might be, but I will be made well. Was that hope and faith or delusion and desperation? And would it matter? Does it matter if the only time we pray is when nothing else has worked? When the only option left is to pray for a miracle? It didn’t matter to Jesus. He praised her faith, and very clearly noted, it was her faith that healed her. He hadn’t done anything. Think about the strength of her faith, such that in a crowd of people pressing up on him, he felt her power when she simply touched his clothes. Isn’t that amazing? I mean, think about it: he felt the power of her faith touching him. Who was this amazing woman? After asking us to sit in wonder about the woman, our friend said, “I’ve had experiences like this. Not a miraculous healing in the same way, but experiences where I don’t know what happened, but it was healing. It was wonderful. And I won’t rationalize it and I won’t dismiss it. I put it in the miracle box.” What if she said, “I can’t believe it? It’s not logical and therefore it’s not true.” Because, with all due respect to Bishop Spong, that’s not the only answer for progressive Christians. Bruce Epperly is a progressive Christian theologian. He laments that we have been so scandalized by the antics and bombastic theatrics of TV evangelists that we may feel we have no other option but to reject healing by faith. But he believes that post-modern, progressive Christians need to become more holistic.[2] We need to be more relational, to really listen to one another’s stories – like our friend at Lunch and Lectionary. And if we listened with open hearts and minds, we would hear more of the same from many others who won’t share their experiences for fear of being seen as irrational. We need to be less dismissive and more constructive, more open minded, in our approach to healing and wholeness. Think about how the modern world separates sacred and secular. Do we want that? Think about how we compartmentalize spirituality and social justice. Is that how we want it? A truly holistic progressive theology affirms the relationship of mind, body, and spirit as part of one whole, interdependent reality. Progressive Christians need not reject healing or miracles for the sake of intellectual integrity. Spiritual depth asks, how do we bring it all together? That’s one option for looking at today’s text. Other progressive theologians offer a different perspective on the stories of healing in the Bible. John Dominic Crossan says that these stories were really about transforming society, about Jesus overturning social stigmas.[3] The point wasn’t that Jesus was intervening in the physical world. The point of such stories was his criticism of hard hearted, stiff-necked, purists in the social and religious world. Jesus really meant to cure society’s heart disease: its lack of compassion. Thus, true restoration was the outcast and ritually unclean reunited with society – their families, their religious life. For example, Jesus touched a man with leprosy because if he was healed, then he could go home, go the Temple, go the market. As we sit and wonder about the life of the woman, why was she alone? Was she abandoned? Was she considered dangerous because she was unclean? Crossan would claim that Jesus cured her social location when Jesus called her “daughter.” That means she could be reintegrated and no longer kept from her community of faith. In addition, notice the nod to social justice in the way Jesus stopped for this unknown woman while on his way to the home of a prominent religious leader. He gave equal attention when he resurrected the girl’s unbearably short 12 years of life after he healed a woman with 12 agonizingly long years of misery. Although, again, Jesus didn’t heal the woman. Her faith made her well. Some might say that’s just the placebo effect. If you place your trust in a pill or prayer, you can psychologically heal yourself. But I want to stop for just one minute on the whole “you can heal yourself if you have enough faith.” Be careful of anyone who forces that expectation upon you. It comes with the option to blame you for not having enough faith. Healing and cures are not the same thing. Healing is complex and might mean coming to terms with your disease. It might include learning not to fear death. It doesn’t necessarily mean getting better, whatever that means, because sometimes even death itself is a form of healing. As a progressive Christian, I like the implications of Crossan’s interpretations. For example:
Intellectually, in Jesus I find the ultimate fighter for social justice. Our advocate and activist role model. Does that mean he can’t also be a healer and miracle worker? Because a more holistic approach to theology means not minimizing things like the efficacy of prayer, the power of healing touch, and healing ministry done in the name of Jesus. Every time we share our prayer requests, we are praying for a miracle. We pray for God to comfort the dying and strengthen the weak. We pray for rain to end the drought and wildfires, to spare more misery for those whose homes are threatened. For the remission of cancer. We even pray for civility among politicians – because hey, miracles can happen! We pray to God for a safe journey, but of course, we also know that the biggest factor to bring us home safely is to drive carefully. And unlike believers in a pre-scientific world, we know that germs and viruses cause illness, not sin. But there isn’t just something called intellectual integrity. There is also spiritual integrity, which means, don’t explain away things that can’t be explained. It’s OK. We can let grace really be amazing. And we must have more than spiritual depth, we must explore intellectual depth. To move beyond the modern world’s limiting enlightenment view of an ordered universe to a post-modern understanding of chaos. There is more to this world than the physical plane. We should not play into any false dualism that separates body and spirit, body and mind, belief and unbelief. So, back to the stories today, it’s OK to remain skeptical, to not check our brains at the door. And yet I pray that we do not constrain our brain. That we can embrace the capacity to sit in astonishment. To wonder, have I missed something to put in my miracle box? Without explaining why, can we let grace simply be amazing? [1] John Shelby Spong, Jesus for the Non-Religious, Harper San Francisco, 2007 [2] Bruce Epperly, “Progressive Christianity, Mysticism, and Healing,” at www.progressivechristianity.org [3] John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI love being a Archives
March 2024
|