Scripture: Matthew 9:18-26
While Jesus was speaking, suddenly a leader [of the synagogue] came in and prostrated himself, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, along with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe on his clothing, for she said to herself, “If I could only touch his clothing, I will be healed.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take courage, daughter, your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that hour. Then Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a disturbance. He said, “Leave, for the precious girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put out, he went in and took her by the hand, and the precious girl arose. And the news of this spread throughout that district.
Sermon
Early in my time as a minister, I had several trusted and beloved mentors, and they all had different kinds of wisdom to impart. One was a highly organized person who blocked off 90 minutes each morning during office hours, for the purpose of working on their sermon, a practice that caused consternation among some members of their congregation. Another mentor had a very different take on how to organize their time. This person said to me, “Ministry is in the interruptions.”
Jesus could certainly testify to this. There are at last three interruptions leading to the story we are sharing. In our passage, we find Jesus at dinner in his own home. Among his guests are tax collectors and those Matthew calls “sinners.” First, some Pharisees come along to question his choice of dining companions. Next, the disciples of John the Baptist come. They are not concerned about Jesus’s companions, but rather, what it is that Jesus eats and drinks. Jesus responds to all questions with grace and wisdom and tiny parables. Then, the interruption that kicks off our story: A leader of the synagogue comes to Jesus, and kneels before him, and tells him: “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” Jesus rises. He goes.
Jesus’s ministry is filled with moments like this: people coming to him in dire need, whether for their own sake or the sake of someone they love. Jesus always responds.
But, as I mentioned, Jesus is in his hometown. Imagine what that must be like for him. He is in his early thirties, and has been on the road, teaching, healing, and feeding people, for some time now. In fact, he is a minor celebrity, and the other gospel writers who share this story emphasize the great crowd swarming around Jesus as he walks the path to the dead child. It must be overwhelming—the push of bodies trying to be near him, voices crying out for healing, others, perhaps, disparaging him as the “carpenter,” or the son of Mary (which means, not Joseph).
Suddenly, a woman reaches out and touches Jesus’ tzitzit, the fringe on his prayer shawl. The narrator tells us this woman has endured a hemorrhage for twelve years. According to the law of Leviticus, anyone who is bleeding or has an open wound is considered ritually impure; they can’t enter the Temple or the Synagogue to worship. They must be careful about the clothing they wear, their linens—all of these must not be touched by anyone else. But the woman sees Jesus, and she deliberately touches his garment, not his hand or his arm. We hear her inner monologue: If only I touch him, I will be healed.
I believe the longing to be healed is one we all know very well. Whether the stories are our own, or those of our loved ones, or even those of our heroes and heroines, be they actors, or football players, or our favorite teachers. We all know the drill: the frightening diagnosis; the plan of treatment; the fervent prayers lifted; the reports telling us or them that things look good, or not so good. And it doesn’t have to be a big scary disease. This season the flu has knocked many of us and our loved ones to their knees, while Covid is still doing its thing. The common denominator is the longing to get through it to the other side, to have health and wellbeing restored, to return to a sense of normality, to the ability to take the functioning of our bodies for granted.
And then we have our hearts—and I am talking about the metaphorical use of that word, the part of us that feels all the big feelings, and breaks, and heals…We can long to be healed of the pain of a divorce, or an addiction, or debilitating anxiety or depression. We can long to be healed of the cognitive tricks and treats of later life. We can long to be healed of our grief. I would hope that we all would take advantage of the medical and therapeutic marvels that are now available for the many kinds of healing we might need—these are all gifts of God through the wonders of science. And I would hope that we would let God be our consolation and helper at such times, too.
The unnamed woman with the hemorrhage has faith that Jesus will heal her. And… this seems like a good time to ponder what faith is, after all. Many of us feel that faith is a thing, a noun, a solid block of thinking or feeling that never changes, never alters, is always right where we left it… until it isn’t. This can mean that when we have a change in how we experience our faith, it is unnerving, even frightening. Where did it go? Can we get it back? Presbyterian font of wisdom Frederick Buechner counsels,
…faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than a possession…it is… on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. [1]
Instead, he suggests that faith is, “not being sure where you’re going but going anyway.” It is “a journey without maps.” In this context, doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is a very natural part of it. We need to remember that. We need to trust the process that our faith may wax and wane like the moon, that, even when we can’t see or feel it, it is still a part of us.
The unnamed woman with the hemorrhage has faith, but that does not mean she has no fear or doubt. Hear how she talks herself into doing this bold thing. Jesus turns around and said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” The word “daughter” is important here. This woman’s life of illness has meant distance from everyone she loves, a life of isolation and separation from family and faith community. The word “daughter” welcomes her back into the household of that faith community. She is home.
Jesus proceeds to the home of the synagogue leader. The paid mourners are there with their instruments and their loud cries of distress. He comes to the daughter, whom he names as “the precious girl” (the Greek word indicates “the apple of one’s eye”). He encourages her father: “She is not dead but sleeping.” He chases out the crowd, and they laugh at him for saying such a thing. Then, Jesus does as the father has requested and touches the child: he takes her hand in his, and she arises, alive, just as her father’s faith told him she would.
This is a story about faith—the faith of the woman and the faith of the father, a faith, in both cases, that seems to surge within them and stirs them to approach Jesus. The gospels show us more than one story about the faith of one or more persons being the cause of healing for another. It is a story that encourages us to trust in our own uneven, wonky faith, which may seem as if it’s in good working order or seem as if it is as dead as this frightened father thought his daughter was. But faith is a funny thing, and it tends to surprise us from time to time with its willfulness. More than one atheist or agnostic I know has asked for prayers or prayed for someone they loved when something big was happening. I don’t want to dismiss this with the glib analogy of the foxhole; If someone is asking for prayer you can trust that the Spirit is at work. We don’t know the strength of faith, even when we think it’s gone.
But it is also a story about two women who are woven together in Jesus’ story; it enfolds them, the woman with the hemorrhage, who has been bleeding for as long as the precious girl has been alive: twelve years. And it is a story of how acting on faith, reaching out in faith, changes everything.
In a few moments we will proclaim together a statement of faith, whose opening gambit is “In life and in death we belong to God,” and shortly thereafter reminds us, that the Holy Spirit is “everywhere the giver and renewer of life.” We belong to God, in sickness and in health. We belong to God, in surges of faith and in dark nights of the soul that last for years. We belong to God, and by God’s grace, the Spirit is always with us, guiding us, putting certain people in our paths, providing a place to lay our heads when we are weary, and surging through us when we are inspired (a word that means, literally, the Spirit is in us). We belong to God, and God is with us in all kinds of healing, whether it is the overtly miraculous turn that gives us more time, more years, or the quiet knitting together of our fragmented souls that enables us to be at peace, whatever may come. We belong to God, and God is with us on every journey without a map, when we don’t know where the path will lead, but we choose to go anyway.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC (HarperCollins: New York, 1993).