PROPER 8, YEAR B

Sunday 30 June 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24

Psalm 30

II Corinthians 8:7-15

Mark 5:21-43

 

Last Sunday’s Gospel of the stilling of the storm on the Sea of Galilee presented Jesus in his divine power as the Lord of nature’s elemental forces. Picking up where last week’s left off, today’s Gospel goes a step further, revealing Jesus as the Lord of sickness and health, even of life and death.

 

As Jesus and his disciples return from their boat trip across the Sea of Galilee and disembark in Capernaum, an elder of the local synagogue, named Jairus, begs him to come and lay hands on his twelve-year-old daughter, who’s gravely ill to the point of death.

 

As they’re making their way to Jairus’s house, however, a woman who’s suffered for twelve years from hemorrhages takes hold of the Lord’s cloak, saying to herself, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Such is the divine power that inheres in his person, extending even to his garments, that she’s healed on the spot, without his even knowing who’s done this. He simply perceives that power has gone forth from him.

 

Following this interlude, messengers arrive and inform Jairus that his daughter has died, and they attempt to dissuade him from troubling Jesus any further. Undeterred, Jesus continues toward the house, taking only his innermost circle of disciples: Peter, James, and John. There, amazingly, he raises the girl from death. She gets up, walks about, and, at the Lord’s instruction, is given something to eat.

 

A point to note is that both miracles involve touch: the woman touches the Lord’s cloak; Jesus takes the dead girl’s hand. And in both cases Jesus speaks. His word to the woman confirms and ratifies her healing: “Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” To Jairus’s daughter, likewise, he issues a command: “Little girl, get up.”

 

Both miracles reveal Jesus as the divine giver of life and health: or, as the Christian tradition calls him, the Great Physician. In this respect, he reflects and expresses the character of God his Father. Today’s reading from the Book of Wisdom declares: “God did not make death and he does not delight in the death of the living …” The Lord’s healings in today’s Gospel fulfill the joyful words of Psalm 30: “O Lord my God, I cried out to you; and you restored me to health; You brought me up from the dead; you restored my life as I was going down to the grave.”

Today’s Gospel invites us to place our faith in the Lord’s healing power. In both miracles, the recipient’s faith plays an indispensable role. Jesus commends the woman healed from her issue of blood: “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” In the case of the twelve-year-old girl, the operative faith is not her own but that of her father, who clearly believes from the beginning in Jesus’ power to save her, and whom Jesus reassures: “Do not fear, only believe.”  So, today’s Gospel holds up both Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, and the unnamed woman with the hemorrhage, as models of faith. Both stories display a synergy between human faith and the Lord’s healing power, which work together to make the miracles happen.

 

A difficulty arises, however, in the question: What about all those cases where such faith seemingly goes unrewarded, and such prayers for healing seemingly go unanswered? In addressing this question, I think we need to dispose of two errors.

 

First is the mistaken belief that the age of miracles ended with the death of the last apostle. Authentic Church teaching is clear that miracles do still happen in our own time, and that God still intervenes in our world of time and space to bring about healings and other miracles for which there’s no scientific or medical explanation. The Church thus supports and encourages prayer for the sick and dying.

The opposite error is the much more insidious temptation to conclude that when people being prayed for don’t recover, then either they themselves or those praying for them were somehow lacking in faith or not praying hard enough. And that, frankly, is a horrible and uncharitable thought, which understandably brings the healing ministry itself into disrepute.

 

The solution to this conundrum lies in the recognition God grants healing on his terms and not ours. When Jesus performs the sort of miracle recorded in today’s Gospel, the cure is never an end-in-itself but always a means to some larger end fitting into God’s wider purposes for the salvation of the world.

 

Both the woman with the hemorrhage and Jairus’s daughter eventually grew old and died of other ailments. So why did Jesus heal them at the time and place he did? We can only guess. But it seems reasonable to suppose that the woman’s healing served not only to confirm her faith, but also to build up the faith of the crowd that was present. Similarly, for the chosen few permitted to witness it, the raising of Jairus’s daughter served to reveal Jesus’ identity as the one bearing God’s own authority over life and death.

 

So, we always do well to pray for the sick and the dying. But we need to realize that while such prayers never go unanswered, in many cases the answers are such that we won’t ever see or understand in this life. When miracles do happen, we rejoice and give thanks. When they don’t, we give thanks also, trusting that God is unfailingly working to bring about the ultimate good, indeed the eternal salvation, of those being prayed for and those doing the praying.

 

A legend grew up in the early Church that the woman with the hemorrhage was none other than Veronica, who according to tradition wiped Our Lord’s face with her veil as he was carrying his cross to Calvary, so that the image of his bloodstained face was imprinted on it. We have no way of knowing whether that’s true, but it’s beautifully fitting. He dried up her flow of blood ultimately by letting his own blood flow freely to heal us all.

 

The ultimate healing offered each of us without exception that which takes place after death. The words Jesus speaks to Jairus’s daughter, “Little girl, I say to you arise,” echoes his saying in John’s Gospel: “Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” Then, his command to give her something to eat points to the endless feast of the Kingdom of God—of which this Eucharist is a foretaste. So, we look forward to the day when he takes each of us by the hand and bids us rise from the sleep of death into that new world where pain, sickness, death, and sorrow are no more, for the former things have passed away.

PROPER 7, YEAR B

June 23, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Job 38:1-11

Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32

II Corinthians 6:1-13

Mark 4:35-41

 

During my time away, I spent some time at two beaches, and I took one small sea voyage on the ferry from Lewes, Delaware to Cape May, New Jersey. On all three occasions, the ocean was a pleasant, calm, and relaxing place to be.

 

But as any sailor can tell you, the ocean or sea can also be a dangerous and terrifying place. In ancient Hebrew cosmology, the ocean was a remnant of the primordial chaos that existed in the beginning, before God began his work of creation, making the sky and the dry land appear.

 

Some of God’s most spectacular exploits in the Old Testament take the form of dramatic victories over the primordial waters. In the story of Noah and the Ark, God sends the great flood but then makes the waters recede, so that the earth once again becomes habitable. During the Exodus from Egypt, God makes a way for the children of Israel through the Red Sea, with walls of water to their right and their left.

Psalm 107, which we just recited, describes the terror experienced by sailors during a storm, and their rejoicing and praise of the Lord who calms the waves and brings them safely to harbor.

 

In all these biblical passages, God stands forth as the Creator of life demonstrating his superiority to the waters of death. In today’s Old Testament reading, God firmly reminds Job of how he brought order out of chaos in the beginning, setting bounds for the sea and saying: “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped.”

 

The Sea of Galilee is actually a medium-sized lake, thirteen miles long by five miles wide at its widest point. The one occasion I was on a boat on the Sea of Galilee, the air was completely still and the water’s surface was like glass. I remember thinking that it must have been like this after Jesus stilled the waves. But the Sea of Galilee is also prone to sudden violent squalls whipped up by winds funneled in through the surrounding high hills.

 

When Jesus rebukes the wind and commands the sea to be still, he’s exercising a power that properly belongs to God alone. The disciples are filled with awe—the Greek text says literally that “they feared a great fear”—and they say to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

If they were afraid before, they’re even more afraid now. But whereas their previous fear was a bad fear, arising from lack of faith, their new fear is a good fear, the fear of the Lord, because the only possible answer to their question is that the one standing in their midst is God incarnate.

 

The detail of his sleeping on the cushion in the stern reminds us of his two natures as true God and true man. Jesus Christ is one Person, fully human and fully divine. In his humanity, he shares with us the same physical needs we all have, to eat, drink, and rest. So, according to the dictates of his human nature he falls asleep after a long, hard day of preaching to the multitudes. But after the disciples awaken him, it’s by the power and authority of his divine nature that he commands the wind and the waves to be still, and they obey him.

 

Now, at this point, the standard homiletical move would be for the preacher to draw an allegory, likening the boat to the Church or the individual Christian making a way over the storm-tossed sea of life, so that just when we feel overwhelmed by our troubles and about to go under, Jesus steps up and commands, “Peace, be still!” Then, even if our problems don’t go away, they’ll at least become navigable.

 

I suspect that we’ve all heard that sermon on multiple occasions; I’ve preached it a few times myself. And it’s a perfectly legitimate application of today’s Gospel. But instead I’d like to quote from a sermon of Saint Augustine of Hippo, who lived in North Africa in the late fourth and early fifth century. Augustine likens the wind and waves to our temptations and sins. He says this:

 

When you have to listen to abuse, that means that you are being buffeted by the wind. When your anger is roused, you are being tossed by the waves. So when the winds blow and the waves mount high, the boat is in danger, your heart is imperiled, your heart is taking a battering. On hearing yourself insulted, you long to retaliate; but the joy of revenge brings with it another kind of misfortune—shipwreck. Why is this? Because Christ is asleep in you. What do I mean? I mean that you have forgotten his presence. Rouse him, then; remember him, let him keep watch within you, pay heed to him … A temptation arises: it is the wind. It disturbs you: it is the surging of the sea. This is the moment to awaken Christ and let him remind you of those words: “Who can this be? Even the winds and the sea obey him.”

 

Isn’t that wonderful? If Christ is asleep in us, this is the moment to awaken him! As Saint Paul puts it in our reading from Second Corinthians: “Now is the acceptable time; Now is the day of salvation.”

 

As the disciples awaken Jesus, they cry out, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” I could be wrong, but my guess is that all they expect from him in that moment is to help them strike the sail and bail the water so that the boat won’t go under. Hence their amazement and awe when instead he stills the storm simply by his word of command. They’d merely wanted him to join all hands on deck, but he does almost infinitely more than they’ve asked of him.

 

Therein lies a message of hope and encouragement for us all. Perhaps, as Augustine suggests, we’ve let Christ fall asleep within us. Then, if we call on him in moments of crisis, he’ll indeed awaken and come to our aid. But he will do so on his terms rather than ours. He’ll insist on doing more for us than it ever occurred to us to ask, and he’ll expect far more from us in return.

 

This episode of the stilling of the storm takes place early in Mark’s Gospel, not long after the initial calling of the Twelve. For the disciples, the adventure is just beginning, and it will take them places they’ve never imagined they’ll go: not just across the Sea of Galilee but ultimately across real seas, and real oceans, to begin the Church’s mission of preaching the Gospel to all nations. Similarly, when we awaken Jesus within us, the adventure of the Christian life begins: an adventure that I wouldn’t exchange for anything else in the world. So, happy sailing!

 

PROPER 4, YEAR B

June 2, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Deuteronomy 5:12-15

Psalm 81:1-10

2 Corinthians 4:5-12

Mark 2:23-3:6

 

A good key to interpreting today’s lectionary readings is found, I think, in the Collect of the Day. This collect tells us, first, that God’s never-failing providence orders all things both in heaven and earth.

 

Let’s pause to consider that affirmation for a moment. The largest city in this state is named after this doctrine of divine providence. Obviously, then, it was an important conviction for Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. A simple definition of providence is the belief that God, in his infinite wisdom and love, is in ultimate control of everything that ever happens, in accordance with his purposes, which are always good and never evil.

 

This doesn’t mean for one moment that God actively wills the bad things that happen to us in this life: sickness, injury, bereavement, financial misfortunes, bad breakups. None of these things are God’s doing. But God is working in and through them all to turn them to our good, bringing good out of evil.

 

And so today’s Collect asks God to do what God does: namely, to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things that are profitable for us. Here the words “hurtful” and “profitable” need to be understood from the perspective of eternity. In other words, we may rely on God, if we ask him, to put away from us those things that are hurtful in that they deflect us from our heavenly goal, and to give us those things that are profitable for our eternal salvation.

 

These reflections establish a context for understanding today’s Old Testament and Gospel readings about the Sabbath. Here Jesus affirms: “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

 

In the language of the Collect, God gave his people the Sabbath as something profitable for them, both physically and spiritually. The Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy is very clear: when the people were slaves in Egypt, they were subject seven days a week to hard, back-breaking labor. So, after freeing them from bondage, God gave them the Sabbath and commanded them to observe it, as a reminder of their liberation: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”

 

Psalm 81 rejoices in this gift: “Sing with joy to God our strength; and raise a loud shout to the God of Jacob. Raise a song and sound the timbrel, the merry harp and the lyre …For this is a statute for Israel, a law of the God of Jacob. He laid it as a solemn charge upon Joseph, when he came out of the land of Egypt.”

 

The deeper point here, I think, is that whatever God commands us, he commands for our good, indeed for our ultimate happiness. H. L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Well, if that be the case, then thank God that we’ re not Puritans!

 

But even good gifts can be turned to bad uses. And so, in the Gospel, the Pharisees challenge Jesus when his disciples pluck heads of grain while walking through the grainfields: “Why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

 

The irony is that where God gave the Sabbath as a celebration of liberation and freedom, they’re turning the Sabbath into constraint and oppression. That’s what happens when we focus on the letter and not the spirit of the Law.

 

And a key theme in our Lord’s teaching and ministry is that he’s come not to abolish but to fulfill the law by recovering its inner meaning. Some of those in the synagogue are watching to see whether he’ll cure the man with the withered hand and so violate the Sabbath. So, he asks them: “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”

 

His clear implication is that in their narrow focus on the letter, they’re killing the spirit of the Law. Whereas, by healing and giving life on the Sabbath, he’s fulfilling the Sabbath’s deepest meaning—because God’s commandments are always given for our health, salvation, well-being, and happiness.

 

But notice that his good deed has a cost. “The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians to destroy him.” In other words, the healing of the man with a withered hand that Sabbath day in the synagogue marks a first step on our Lord’s long road to Calvary and the Cross.

 

As Christians, we’re apt to find that doing the right thing can and often does have a cost. In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul describes the costs that he and his companions bear in consequence of their apostolic ministry.

 

On one hand, Paul affirms joyfully that the God who said, “let light shine out of darkness” has “shone in our hearts to give the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” But, on the other hand, it’s a costly ministry full of afflictions, perplexities, persecutions, and blows. So Paul reflects: “while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh.”

 

In other words, the hardships and sufferings that Paul and his companions undergo for the sake of the Gospel are bringing Christ’s life and light to the world. “So,” Paul concludes, “death is at work in us, but life in you.” And that makes the sufferings totally worthwhile. For as Christ himself teaches us, by both word and example, self-sacrifice in the service of others is the pattern of the Christian life.

 

And so we come full circle to the doctrine of divine providence. In his infinite wisdom and love, God is working in and through all things—even our sufferings in this life—to bring us to eternal light and glory. In that assurance, we can abandon ourselves to God’s service, trusting him to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things that are profitable for us—for his never-failing providence orders all things both in heaven and earth.