On Charleston and the Gaping Wound of Racism and the Cloak of Jesus

Mark 5:21-43

Along with many of you, I have found myself devastated in these last days at the news of the murders of the nine who had gathered for prayer and study last Wednesday night at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. As Presiding Bishop Eaton of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America so eloquently wrote in her statement of June 18:

It has been a long season of disquiet in our country. From Ferguson to Baltimore, simmering racial tensions have boiled over into violence. But this... the fatal shooting of nine African Americans in a church is a stark, raw manifestation of the sin that is racism.

The church was desecrated.

The people of that congregation were desecrated.

The aspiration voiced in the Pledge of Allegiance that we are "one nation under God" was desecrated.

"Why does this seem worse?" asked a member of my congregation at our coffee hour this morning. We pondered it for a moment and only came to this. It was in a church. A sanctuary. A place where one and all should always be safe.

And so yes, not unlike the two described in the stories before us now, it seems as though this gaping wound will never heal. Indeed, these two or those closest to them at some point must have despaired --- not believing that life in all its fullness would ever be theirs again. How this must have been especially true for Jairus once he received news that his daughter had died. Oh, how we are like them --- for we --- all of us in small towns and cities, in our communities where we all look alike and most certainly in those places where the colors of our skin are more diverse. How we are like them. And yes, it seems to me, we have been hemorrhaging for a whole lot longer than twelve years. And I myself wondered for at least a moment this week if all hope of anything different had finally died.

I find myself to be so very blessed to serve in a community where we don't all look alike. Oh, like most every place I know, we have not yet found a way to welcome greater diversity into our pews on Sunday mornings. However, if you are living in this community, it is simply not possible to be so isolated that we are not deeply aware of the differences between us. Differences which begin with the pigment of our skin which all too often painfully end in markedly different experiences of this world. At least our common experience of living with such differences makes it easier and more immediately important to talk about it. I know this is not necessarily the case for all of you.

So it is that last fall I sat at a volunteer hospital chaplain's lunch with a colleague who is African American. We were trying so hard to talk about what had happened in Ferguson in my congregation and we found ourselves stumbling in our attempts --- feeling as though we were just talking to each other. And we were. I leaned over to Pastor Joe Mitchell and told him what we were trying to do. I pleaded with him, truly, asking what we could do. And the next day I got a call asking if we would host the next Beloved Community Dinner.

These monthly gatherings have been a start at least. We gather in one church fellowship hall or another. We bring food to share. We do our best to 'mix it up' --- sitting with people we don't know who don't look just like us. We have listened to one another's stories. We are starting to know one another's names. And histories. And hopes.

Last Thursday afternoon I called up Pastor Joe. The news of this horrific event in Charleston was the only thing on my mind, and yet I found I did not know what I would say to him. When we did connect on Friday morning, I was stumbling all over myself trying to find words. I knew, I know of course, this is not about me or us and I did not want to sound as though I thought it was. And yet, I knew we needed to talk about it. Or at least I knew that I did. I hoped he would think so, too.

Mercifully, he stopped me. And he suggested that we worship together.

And so on Tuesday night at 6 p.m. we will gather at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church here in DeKalb for worship.

But here is what Pastor Joe was really suggesting. He was saying that together, like the woman in our story now --- together we touch the cloak of Jesus.

Will the devastation that racism causes be immediately healed as this woman experienced so long ago? Oh, I expect not. But it must be so that the simple act of turning to Jesus together will go a long ways. And perhaps, as with her, doing this together will at least stop the hemorrhage and then maybe we can get on to the work of restoring life between us and among us.

For beyond the miraculous physical healing this woman experienced in the presence of Jesus, this was perhaps her true healing: this being able to again be fully a part of life in her community. And as long as we are separated along racial lines? We are all as cut off from the life God intends for us as she was before she made her way through the crowd and touched the cloak of Jesus.

And this we can be sure of. There were, no doubt, a whole lot of things to be figured out for her as she found her way back into life in her community. It probably was not all easy. But once the bleeding stopped? Once she experienced that first healing? All the rest was possible as well.

• In your setting, in your worshiping community, how have you responded to the horrific event at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. church in  Charleston? Has this prodded you to further action? Why or why not?
• Very often illness isolates. This can be especially so when it is suffered over a long period of time as it was by the woman in our story now. Is it fair to compare our experience of and with racism to the illness which isolated her? Why or why not?
• What does it mean to you to touch the cloak of Jesus? What is it that you will be able to do once the bleeding stops?

On Healing and Wholeness

Mark 5:21-43


It was the Thursday before Father’s day when I stood in a hospital waiting room with a family.

We were waiting to hear from their daughter’s surgeon.  The child is 13 years old. 

The surgeon arrived and delivered the much welcome news that he believed the cancer was contained.  There appeared to be no other involvement.

After he left the import of this good news began to sink in. With a sigh, the child’s dad said aloud, “Now, that’s the best Father’s Day present I could get.”

I told that story in worship the following Sunday.  I spoke of how just as this earthly dad demonstrated the best of what it is to be a dad in how he loved his daughter, he was also, in that moment, pointing to who God is for all the children God so loves.  For even as our Gospel lesson today demonstrates in not only one story, but two, God not only yearns for us to be whole.  In Christ Jesus God makes it so.

Only as I told that story to the beaming faces of a people grateful for such good news, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of one among us struggling to keep her composure, but weeping all the same.  Even before I was done speaking, I remembered that her daughter --- a grown woman to be sure, but by all measures still young ---  had died of cancer the September before.  Tears simply streamed down this grieving mother's face as she received this story.  I know she was wanting to rejoice with those who found themselves so blessed, but her own still raw struggle and pain overwhelmed her anyway. 

To be sure, in any given congregation on any given Sunday morning we are likely to encounter such a mix of experiences.  And it is into precisely that varied mix that these stories in Mark’s Gospel are spoken.  They fall on the ears of those who like Jairus have been able to celebrate life even after it appeared all was lost.  They fall on the ears of those who like the hemorrhaging woman have cause to rejoice long after every conceivable medical option has been tried.  And to be sure, these stories also fall on the ears of those who have prayed desperately, who have thrown themselves into the presence of Jesus reaching out, even, to 'touch the hem of his robe,"  but for whom the much yearned for healing they hoped for does not come.  Who are tempted to say in the wake of such stories, "Why not me?"

I wonder how it is that we engage these stories among people who come to them with such varied hopes and hurts and struggles and joys.

And so I find myself recalling today a seminary professor who told us to remember that everyone whom Jesus healed did also one day finally die.  Jairus' daughter, if she was so blessed, outlived her father and grew to be a mother and grandmother herself.  The hemorrhaging woman, finally declared 'clean,' was able to return to a full life which had been denied her for twelve years.  No doubt both of them felt a deeper gratitude for God's gifts because of all they had experienced.  But in the end, like all of us, they one day died as well.  

So, to be sure, it cannot be enough to read these stories as simple miracle stories granting cures to earthly diseases. It seems we must dig deeper order to more fully understand their gifts for God's people now.

For instance, we hear in Jairus the story of a man who would go to any length to get help for his daughter.  His love compels him even to beg --- a posture no man in his time and place would consider if he felt he had any other choice.  More than that, we hear that Jairus was a leader of the synagogue.  What must it have taken for him to approach Jesus?  What other avenues must he have attempted first before he turned to Jesus.  Indeed, perhaps this story is told to remind us that Jesus receives our deepest hurts and fears and even if he is our 'last resort' still he simply 'goes with us' as he did with Jairus.  Or perhaps, as the story concludes, it is a reminder that God's power is greater than what you and I can imagine.  That in the face of the seemingly impossible, even in the face of our disbelieving laughter, God still works. Sometimes with results we can't even allow ourselves to hope for. 

In the story of the unnamed hemorrhaging woman we also hear of one so desperate she will go to any length to find wholeness.  I intentionally use the word 'wholeness' here because like any physical disease hers was one that isolated in ways you and I can hardly imagine today. And while, to be sure any one of us who has ever struggled with illness or what the world perceives as disability has some idea of what her life must have been, what would be different is in Jesus' day she would have been considered 'unclean' and therefore prohibited from entering the synagogue, the temple. She would not have been allowed to enter the 'holy places' of her time.  We can only begin to imagine how she was treated by her family, her community.  Indeed, we can be certain that her illness had broken more than her body.   And yet we hear that even in her desperation, she does not have the courage to go to Jesus to ask for what she needs.  Rather, she believes if she can just get close enough perhaps some of the goodness Jesus offers will also be hers.  It turned out that this was so.

Only the story doesn't end there.  Rather, it ends with Jesus turning to her and acknowledging the connection they now share.  It ends with Jesus' promise that her healing was not only physical --- but would now extend to all of her life.  And somehow that larger promise is only spoken and received in the relationship formed between them.  When they speak face to face. 

And so perhaps a deeper healing or sense of wholeness is the point of these stories in the end.

For Jairus maybe part of his healing or wholeness was discovered in his loving his daughter so much he would do anything to secure her life.  His wholeness was realized in his willingness to abandon much of what had defined him: his position and his sense of pride, to name a few --- and to turn without shame to Jesus who alone could answer his deepest need.  Perhaps Jairus was on his way to healing already even as he acknowledged and acted on his deep love for his child... Indeed, I wonder if this story is actually more about Jairus than it is about his child.

The no longer hemorrhaging woman realized healing or wholeness not only when the bleeding stopped, but when she finally looked into the face of Jesus.   In that moment she was lifted up from being one who felt she had to sneak up behind Jesus and anonymously receive the gifts of God to one who was recognized by and acknowledged by Jesus himself.  Who was not yet 'named,' but who was called 'Daughter:' one in relationship with Jesus.  To be sure, it seems her healing was not complete until then.  So perhaps this is the gift of this story.  That the healing we are blessed to receive in our physical beings can be, to be sure, the very gift of God --- but still that healing is only temporary.  On the other hand, the healing that comes to us as our relationships with Jesus deepen and grow leads to the sort of wholeness which somehow permeates our entire beings and all of our relationships and lasts far beyond the single earthly lives we have been given.


And so next Sunday, along with many of you, I will step into a whole mix of God's people for whom these stories will speak in varied ways.  I will do this, as I do most every week with equal measures of both trepidation and hopefulness.  My prayer will be that the Holy Spirit would work in and through all who speak and all who listen that we might more deeply experience God's healing, God's wholeness, whatever that may mean...  In the hearing of these stories once more and in our lives even more than that...

1. Does one of these two stories hold more meaning for you than the other?  Why is that?
2. What particular mix of experiences will these stories fall on in your congregation this Sunday? How will that shape your proclamation?
3. What do you think of my seminary professor's assertion that all who Jesus healed would one day also die?  Does that cause you think about these stories differently?  Why or why not?
4. Have you ever known yourself to be not necessarily 'cured' but still healed?  Consider how these stories might speak to that sort of experience.