Sermon Series: The Stories That Shape Us – August 3, 2014

Sermon Series: The Stories That Shape Us – August 3, 2014

August 3, 2014

Luther Memorial Church     Seattle, WA

Psalm146: 5-10

Mark 5: 25-34  The Stories That Shape Us:  Bold Faith! 

The Rev. Julie G. Hutson

Give us bold faith, O Lord, and courageous hearts that we might hear your word and share it with the world you so love.  Amen. 

We continue in our sermon series this morning, The Stories That Shape Us, with a story that begins in desperation and ends with boldness.  It’s important to understand how desperate the woman in the story was.  The writer of Mark’s Gospel doesn’t give her a name, which is not by accidental omission.  By remaining nameless, she is stripped of any power from the very beginning of the story: “Now there was a woman..”

Not, now there was a woman named Eleanor or there was a woman named Rebecca….that would legitimize her and draw the community into relationship with her.

But this woman would have been shunned.  Banished from the community.  She would have been cast out to protect the community from her unclean state, but only half of the community.  You see, this type of blood was considered dangerous….dangerous….to the men of the community.  Not to the other women, only to the men.  And so in Leviticus 12 and 15 we read about all of the health laws surrounding bleeding women.  These laws were designed specifically to protect the men in the community and to shame the women.  Young boys were taught to shout at women such as this “Be gone filthy woman!”  And in order to be restored to the community the male priest had to absolve her of her sinful state, making expiation before the Lord for her unclean discharge, according to Leviticus 15:30, an ultimate act of shaming.

It is easy for us to pat ourselves on the back and be glad that we no longer live with such ignorance around the subject of a woman’s worth.  After all, you have a woman preaching right now.  But it should be noted that not every denomination or church would allow such, even here in this country, while they would ALL allow a man to serve as pastor.  Perhaps we’ve not come as far as we think.

Globally the shaming and oppression of women has been prominent in the news.  From Malala, the young girl shot in Pakistan for daring to go to school to the missing girls abducted from school in Nigeria.  Annually thousands of girls endure mutiliation to their bodies forced upon them by the patriarchy of their culture.

So, despite our eagerness to believe we have left behind a time when women are nameless and therefore worthless, where they are shamed or ostracized based only on their anatomy, we have much work to do.

Let’s return then, to the woman in our Gospel reading today.  She would have heard of Jesus’ healings – they are plentiful in the chapters leading up to this story.  And so putting literal feet to her faith, she sets out walking to find Jesus.  She was desperate.  She’d spent all she had on doctors who had put her through long and painful treatments and she was only getting worse.  In body and in spirit, she was failing, but in faith she looks for Jesus.  She doesn’t ask for a private meeting with him, she doesn’t ask for lots of publicity, she thinks to herself that if she only touches his clothing, she will be healed.

When we were working on scheduling the stories for this sermon series, based on your suggestions, I had no way of knowing that when I stood to preach today, the stories of so many others with bold faith would be resting among us.  Stuart’s story and Bobbi’s story and Sarah Marie’s story and my beloved grandmother, Kathryn’s story.  The lives of these saints are filled with bold faith.

Bobbi, who continued to grace her family and friends with optimism and humor even as she endured years of illness that often kept her away from her community.  Sarah Marie, who in just two months of life reminded her doctors and nurses at Children’s Hospital that a fighting spirit goes a long way in the face of hopeless odds.  Stuart who, upon his retirement, said “Here am I, send me!” and was subsequently sent to a series of adventure filled, often difficult interim assignments.  And my grandmother, who taught me that I could do and be anything, even if the church said I could not.

We don’t know what happened after the unnamed woman was healed.  We don’t know whether she went back to her town and community and was greeted warmly.  We don’t know if she struggled to find her place again.  Did her family recognize her?  Did she tell others what had happened to her?  Did she join her voices with all of the others who had been healed of their infirmities?

But what we do know is that she did not remain unnamed.  Jesus called her by a term of endearment and esteem that he uses no where else…daughter.  Daughter.

This month I’ve written more sermons for memorial services and funerals than I care for.  It’s hard to experience that much loss in such a short amount of time.  And time and time again I’ve sat at bedsides or in living rooms planning services or in the services themselves and heard the stories of these lives shared.  And it’s made me wonder again about this daughter and her story of bold faith.  When she died was her story told?  It must have been, because here we are….thousands of years later…hearing it again.  It’s a story that shapes us because it reminds us that very often the desperate circumstances of our lives will call for us to dig down into our faith…to search for even that mustard seed sized speck of boldness that will allow us to just…reach….out….and know that Jesus will be reaching back.

Well, that seems pretty good.  A nice place to conclude our reflection on this story.  But it would leave this elephant in the room:  what about those people who reached out boldly to Jesus for healing and died anyway?  What about Sarah Marie and Bobbi and Stuart and Kathryn and the others like them?  What about those school girls in Nigeria?

Where was Jesus then?  Where was the hem of his garment?  Did their grasp fall just short?

What we know is that the random stuff of life happens.  Babies and grandmas die.  Cancer sometimes wins.  Terrible accidents happen.  Crazed, power hungry people do horrible terrible things while the world looks on in horror.  And in the midst of that, God is there.  As surely as Jesus was on that crowded road that day, God is there.  God is here.  With us, now and always.  We are reminded in Romans that nothing can separate us from God’s love – not trouble, calamity, persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger, violence…nothing.  Not death and not life.  Nothing separates us.  Nothing.   It is this truth that allows us to live with bold faith.  As the bad country song says “to live like you were dying.”  To live desperately in the best possible way.  Desperate to touch Jesus.  Desperate to share Jesus.  Desperate to have a part of our life story be that we were bold in our witness.

And then here is the Gospel turn in this story.  To be bold in our witness, to follow the example of Jesus in this story, means that we speak peace and wholeness to the nameless and oppressed and outcast and shunned.  That the very people in our society who are forgotten or shamed or scorned are the very people to whom and for whom we turn back to and to whom and for whom we speak peace and to whom and for whom we find healing.  We do this not for our glory or because it’s easy or because we hope it will be noted of us.  We do this because when we reached out in desperation and with our bold but needy faith, Jesus reached back to us, and said Daughter, son, beloved child of mine…go in peace…your faith has made you whole.  This is the Good News in this story that shapes us.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.