Jesus Offers Systemic Healing

Deputies from the Missional Diocese of Navajoland and the Diocese of South Dakota offer a prayer for the Innocents

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Psalm 130
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43

©2024 The Rev. Seth Olson

This sermon was preached at The Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles in Hoover, AL on Sunday, June 30th (the Sixth Sunday after the Pentecost — Proper 8B) and video of it may be found here.

Holy God, let my words be your words and when my words are not your words, let your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.

What a gift it is to be home! Thank you for loaning me out to the work of the wider Episcopal Church. General Convention 81 produced 393 resolutions, we elected the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Western New York to be the 28^th Presiding Bishop, the House of Deputies reelected our president Julia Ayala Harris, and my friend the Rev. Steve Pankey was elected to serve as Vice President of the same house. If you want to learn more about GC81 the resolutions, elections, worship, fellowship, and future of the Church join me starting next Sunday at 9:30 here in the nave. We will spend three Sundays unpacking General Convention, and I don’t mean my suitcase. 

Have you ever noticed something that once you see it or experience it, you cannot go back? Maybe it is something small, like a kernel of corn stuck between your teeth that you just have to get out. Or, it’s a slightly off-kilter picture hanging in your living room that you simply have to fix. Or, perhaps it’s something more serious, like discovering that a child not far from where we are right now is going to bed hungry every night, or that citizens in our own state have no access to clean water, or that our denomination and especially our boarding schools have a sordid history with indigenous people. What do you do when you cannot brush a problem aside or quickly straighten the picture, so that things feel right again? How do you heal a broken system? 

On the surface, today’s Gospel lesson appears to be two interwoven stories of Jesus’ power to heal individuals. However, there is more to these tales of salvation than meets the eye. Jesus’ interconnected restoration of a hemorrhaging woman and a religious leader’s daughter taken together point to something much larger at work. This Gospel lesson informs us that the systems in our world, like the people in our world, require God’s healing, and this restoration to wholeness emanates from trusting not in our own power, but in God’s perfecting love. Let’s dive deeper into this good news by focusing on these two instances of healing.

This lesson opened with Jesus crossing over again into Jewish territory. Immediately we realize this more fully as a synagogue leader named Jairus fell at Jesus’ feet begging him repeatedly and profoundly to help the leader’s daughter. I have no doubt that Jesus did heal a synagogue leader’s daughter—this is a literal understanding of the passage. And yet, at the very end of this entire passage we get a clue that points to a larger healing at work. Once Jesus healed Jairus’ daughter we learn that she was twelve years old. This is not an extra detail—remember Mark used as few words as possible, so every letter matters. 

The number twelve possesses a profound power within the Jewish Tradition. It represents the twelve tribes of Israel, and when it is invoked it can be seen as a way of standing in for the People of God. In other words, when Mark utilized the number twelve talking about a synagogue leader’s daughter, he might not have just been describing her age, but the entire state of the People of Israel. If we make this interpretive leap, we can see that according to Mark, God’s People were suffering—even to the point of death. The offspring of a religious leader was dying—what a religious leader was producing was not thriving but lying on a death bed. Recall also that Mark wrote right after the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem, so many were wondering existential questions: What will happen to us as the People of God? What will come of this new way of Christ? How are we going to live?

This passage, of course, mentioned the number twelve another time too. The hemorrhaging woman had suffered for twelve years. She also represented the People of God. The way the sentence in Greek portrayed the woman is heart-breaking and poetic: “having suffered, having spent money, having not benefitted, and having gotten worse, having heard about Jesus, and having come from behind … then comes the long delayed main verb: she touched [Jesus’] garment.”[1]  Long delayed in her healing—it finally comes, but not from the broken system. Her healing came from her faith in Jesus, and we see restoration materialize more fully when Jesus calls her daughter!

Put another way, the powerful in place objectified her and isolated her as religiously impure, then required her to spend her last coin without providing any relief or restoration. By the time she heard about Jesus coming she was so desperate. Still, she remained so hopeful and so faithful. She believed that healing would happen if she would just touch Jesus’ cloak. When she did Jesus used the familial description of daughter to inform her, she was a member of God’s family. In truth, Jairus believed like the bleeding woman did. Not that his daughter would be healed if he touched Jesus clothes, but that healing would abound if Jesus came into his house. 

Do you see what Mark is doing here? He was pointing to the brokenness of the systems that were in place. This was not to say that Judaism was bad or wrong or that Jesus came to “fix” this errant religion. Rather, Mark was informing us that all systems will be broken if they have at their center the power of man! In this example, both those with access—a synagogue leader—and those without access—a bleeding woman—do not have the ability to be healed. The People of God are suffering—and not just long ago. 

This week at General Convention, our deputation from Alabama was seated next to the deputation from Navajoland. This was quite a gift! Our siblings in Christ were part of several of the most moving moments all week. They were welcomed as a missional diocese—meaning they can finally elect their own indigenous priests to be raised up as bishop. They also, put forth a resolution remembering the innocent children who were taken from native tribes to be enrolled in Episcopal boarding schools. This included a prayer written by an indigenous deputy from the Diocese of South Dakota.

When this resolution came to the floor in the House of Bishops one rather old, white, male bishop stood to ask if he could change the language. He thought it sounded a bit clunky. At that moment, the bishop of Alaska, another white man, but one who has worked extensively with indigenous folk in his diocese, this bishop stood up and said, “Don’t you think we have been telling native people how to pray for long enough? Isn’t it time we listened to their prayers for a change!” At this the House of Bishops erupted in applause! 

In the face of the systemic ills of this world, our state, our households, and our Church we may start to feel overwhelmed and think, how will we fix all this? Jesus will not say these words for another five chapters in Mark’s Gospel account, but it is worth mentioning how he answered a similar question, “Then who can be saved?” To this inquiry, Jesus responded, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”. All things are possible for God…

For God, in Jesus healed a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years—simply by her touching Jesus’ cloak…

For God, in Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter from death—just by telling that little girl to get up...

For God, in Jesus inspires us as a Church to confront the challenging chapters of our shared past…

For God, in Jesus all things are possible.

In our world it is easy to believe that things are impossible. We see all around us the signs of broken systems—problems too complex for us to see a solution. However, with God all things are possible. And in Jesus the healing of many starts with the healing of one. May we walk with Jesus into places where there is bleeding and death, so that the Holy Spirit may breathe new life. May we trust in God like the hemorrhaging woman and Jairus did. May we work with God to create systemic healing and restoration, so that all may be made whole. May each of us hear God calling us a son, a daughter, a child of God, like Jesus said to the bleeding woman. May we genuinely believe that with God all things are possible! Amen. 

[1] David Schnasa Jacobsen. “Commentary on Mark 5:21-43” https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-13-2/commentary-on-mark-521-43-8 [published 6/20/2021. Accessed 6/27/2021].