The Rev. Carol Wedell
July 12, 2009

As we prepared for our South Dakota trip, Cathy Jo and I frequently laughed at the seemingly desperate need many of our youth had to know how every last minute would be spent.  They wanted to know precisely what we would be doing and when. Clearly, our youth are typical of this time and place:  every day has at least one thing scheduled, and if you add school into the mix you can understand why they are almost always sleep-deprived!

Now in fairness to our youth, I'm not so different.  I live by my watch, and if my phone calendar died and I didn't have computer back-up, I would be a wreck.  I'm the one who keeps track of appointments for all family members, including the dog!  Just watch my face if I can see that worship is going to be longer than the appointed hour!

Yet trying to get all of the loose ends of the trip figured out ahead of time simply wasn't going to happen.  We were working with my roommate of five years, who though Caucasian, has lived on a Native American reservation nearly all of her life. She may have blond hair (with help these days) and blue eyes, but to a significant degree Mary Beth thinks and acts like a Native.  She operates on "Indian" time.  That means things begin when everyone gets there and end when things are over.  The same thing was true for the work we were to do.  We knew we would be cleaning and perhaps painting their fellowship hall, but nothing else.  And the question of showers was still up for grabs before we left! (Talk about raising anxiety....)

Save for making sure we didn't miss the train, I was basically able to let go of my need to control every minute of every day.  Friends, those of you who know me well know how big a statement that is! But you see, I trust Mary Beth.  And I trust that God works through her.  So I was comfortable going with the flow, far more than I usually can.  And sure enough, we ate three meals each day AND got a shower, got an amazing amount of work done and found time to learn and play and even get a fair amount of sleep (except for on the train).  While it absolutely was not a "relaxing" week, it was a week with considerable freedom from the clock and the "to do" list.

Even better, I saw many of our youth beginning to experience that same freedom on the train.  Except for asking me every ten minutes when we were going to get there, many of them sat back and simply took in the beautiful scenery in Wisconsin and Minnesota.  The sunset held us spellbound and we were even graced with a complete rainbow.  We weren't so busy "getting there" that we missed the gifts of the journey. 

One dynamic of "Indian time" is that the present moment is always the most important thing.  So if you are getting ready to leave the house and I stop by, you welcome me in, offer me something to eat, etc...  You don't say, "Oh excuse me, I'm expected at wherever in 10 minutes..."  You are present with the person who is right in front of you.  You give your full attention when you are with someone, so that they understand that you are important to them.  In a sense, there is no such thing as an interruption.

And that is precisely what was going on with Jesus in this familiar story.  He and his disciples have just crossed back over from the Gentile side of the sea to the Jewish side.  Within seconds the crowds have surrounded him, so that he is barely able to move.  A very important man, a leader in the synagogue named Jairus fell at Jesus' feet.  Already Jesus' trip is interrupted - or is it? 

The picture of Jairus begging at Jesus' feet would have been alarming - shocking to the faithful Jews who had gathered around.  After all, Jesus' actions had been questionable.  The Temple leaders had been the ones most upset!  Yet here is one of them, Jairus, kneeling before Jesus, pleading for Jesus to come and heal his 12 year old daughter, who was near death.  Whether or not children - particularly girls were valued in that culture, it is clear that Jairus was genuinely in pain - the kind of agony any parent knows when their daughter or son is suffering.  As a friend recently said, "you're only as happy as your least happy child." So Jairus not only asks, he begs Jesus to come, before it is too late.

Jairus is right in front of Jesus, presenting a heartbreaking need.  And Jesus begins to follow him toward his house. They have only moved a short distance when a woman, clearly not important enough to be called by name, approaches Jesus from behind. 

You can almost see the crowd move away when they see who it is.  It's that woman.  The smelly, disgusting, pitiful excuse for a human being, who has been bleeding for 12 years.  12 years!!!  That's as long as Jairus' daughter has been alive.  Because she was continually bleeding no one could get near her. And who would want to anyway? God must really be upset with her. She couldn't even begin to imagine a future of anything but suffering.  She had already spent whatever money she had on a variety of remedies.  The doctors were happy to take her money, but offered her no relief.  No one would hire her.  No one was supposed to touch her, so even basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter would have been difficult to come by. Can you imagine the loneliness, the exclusion?  To a lesser degree haven't we all known some of that in our lives? Feeling left out, with backs turned toward us, or conversations that clearly are meant to either hurt or make clear who isn't included. At school, in social circles - sometimes even at church? Not just her body was in need of healing, to be sure.  For more than anyone else, it was the religious folks who wanted nothing to do with her. So her faith community was absent for her as well - in fact, they held her in contempt.

But the crowd that day was so dense that this outcast woman couldn't move very far-just far enough so that she could squeeze her way through and tentatively touch the hem of Jesus' cloak.  She believed that one touch would be enough to heal all of her pain. And sure enough, her bleeding stopped. Immediately, Jesus sensed that power had left him. Jesus began looking around in the crowd, "Who touched my clothes?"  His disciples find this a bit amusing.  After all he's surrounded by easily a hundred people.  He probably had bumped up against at least 10 or 20 of them.  Clearly if she had wanted to, the woman could have slinked back from where she had come.

But that's not what she did. Mark tells us that this shunned, discarded, unnamed and courageous woman came forward in fear and trembling.  Would Jesus be angry?  Would he chastise her?  As one of my online colleagues has said, she did the best thing to do when you find yourselves in a jam:  she told the truth.  "It was me.  I touched your clothes."  Then she too fell on the ground at Jesus' feet and told him everything.  All of the pain of rejection.  All the sadness of being unable to marry or have children or be a part of any family.  All the physical exhaustion of losing so much blood.   She holds back nothing. Nothing at all. When you let someone else know you in such a vulnerable manner there is a different kind of healing, as well.

But remember that Jesus was on his way to see Jairus' young daughter.  This interruption for a total nobody would only delay him.  He wouldn't get to the really important things.  I mean think about it - Temple "big wig" or smelly, outcast woman? Seems like it should have been an obvious choice, right?   Don't we apply that principle in lots of places - subtly or not?

But Jesus understood something that our native friends in South Dakota lived out for us every day. Sometimes the interruption itself held a special chance from God. Jesus knew that these so-called "interruptions" were actually opportunities - opportunities to make visible God's desire for all people.  Jesus always took time for the people right in front of him, whether it was infants, or God-forbid, a noisy toddler in church, or a woman for whom society had no room.   

The woman could have simply been healed by reaching out for him, but Jesus did something even more important than whatever physical healing might occur.  After 12 long years of being utterly alone, he offered her himself - a relationship.  This would not be some patronizing handout. This would be a two way street.

Jesus reaches down, and in my mind takes her hand to draw her up, standing face to face. He's the first person to look her in the eye in a dozen years. Jesus sees her as God sees her, through the eyes of love, not the eyes of law. Then he gives this nameless woman the name of highest honor, "Daughter" (used by Jesus for no one else), your faith has made you well.  Go in peace - shalom - wholeness and be healed of your disease."  "Daughter."  Can you imagine the sound of that word to her ears?  She belonged.  She mattered.  She had a family.  All of the wounds of the past 12 years began to heal with that one word.  Now she could re-enter the community.  Now she could finally imagine a future.

When you take time for the one in front of you, it sometimes means a change in course.  Jesus hadn't even finished speaking when folks from Jairus' house come running up, and tell Jairus, "No reason to bring him now.  She's already dead."  But Jesus will not be deterred. "Don't worry, Jairus.  Have faith.  Things are not what they seem." 

When they arrive the mourners have already begun their wailing.  Jesus scoffs at them saying, "She's only asleep!"  And taking only the girl's parents and three disciples, he calls to her, "Little girl - get up".  And so she did - much to the amazement and delight of her parents.

A story within a story.  An interruption within an interruption.  An outcast, penniless woman of absolutely no worth or value.  A wealthy leader of the religious community with important status.  Why are they brought together?  What do they have in common?  What can we learn?

To be sure, these are both stories of Jesus' healing.  Such stories raise all the standard questions about how the church understands what the Bible records as physical healing.  I don't know exactly what happened that day.  But I do know that physicians sometimes see things they simply cannot explain.  I also know that healing involves much more than the body.   When we pray for healing, as we do at our quarterly Services of Healing and Wholeness, we do pray for physical healing.  But the answers may come not in "cure" of the illness, but rather healing of the spirit.

A man had been praying for years for his Parkinson's to be healed.  Finally a friend asked him how he dealt with his prayer going unanswered.  He smiled slightly and said, "Why my prayer has been answered.  My Parkinson's is not cured, but the fear of it no longer has control of me.  I am whole."

But the way these stories are told suggests an even more important commonality between the unnamed woman, and Jairus, a very important man.  For regardless of their background, regardless of what the world thought of them, regardless of what they thought about themselves, in the end, the both found themselves at the feet of Jesus, asking, begging for the kind of healing and wholeness found only in the Holy One.  They are in need of relationship, one that will literally change their lives.

All of us here have had those moments when we are aware that we stand in need of someone greater than ourselves, when interruptions like illness or death or job loss or divorce or all of those things we didn't expect slam into us.  Those interruptions are precisely the opportunities when we are most open to the healing touch of God in our lives, because we can finally admit our need. So even as we baptized little Evelyn Kay this morning, part of teaching her the faith is to remember to tell her that no matter who we are, we all stand in the same boat:  in need of God.  And the best news?  God is just there waiting for us.  Interruptions it turns out, just might be one of God's greatest gifts to us.

Macrina Wiederkehr has penned a beautiful poem about this daughter in her book Seasons of Your Heart.  It reads:

Once there was a wound
It was no ordinary wound
It was my wound
We had lived together long.

I yearned to be free of this wound
I wanted the bleeding to stop
Yet if the truth be known
I felt a strange kind of gratitude
    for this wound
It made me
    tremendously open to grace
    vulnerable to God's mercy.
A beautiful believing in me
    that I have named Faith
    kept growing, daring me
    to reach for what I could not see.
This wound had made me open.
I was ready for grace
And so one day, I reached.

There I was thick in the crowd
    bleeding and believing
    and I reached.
At first I reached
    for what I could see
    the fringe of a garment,
But my reaching didn't stop there
    for Someone reached back into
    me.
A grace I couldn't see
    flowed through me.
A power I didn't understand
    began to fill the depths of me.

Trembling I was called forth
    to claim my wholeness.
The bleeding had left me.
The believing remained
And strange as this may sound
I have never lost my gratitude
    for the wound
    that made me so open
    to grace.