Sermon: Stange Priorities

Mark 5:21-43

Strange Priorities

James Sledge                                                                                                   July 1, 2018

Jairus was an important man, was well to do and influential. People cultivated friendships with him and took him out to expensive dinners. He rode in a black SUV, often accompanied by a security detail, and could always get a good table in the best restaurant.

Some of us know people like Jairus. All of us know who they are. When my wife and I recently flew to Austin, a well-known politician was on the flight. When we landed, all us regular passengers had to wait while she departed. I could look out my window and see the motorcade parked under the wing. Jairus got that sort of treatment.

The woman with hemorrhages was not important. Her name didn’t matter, and Mark doesn’t bother telling it to us. She was simply a nameless, faceless member of one of those groups typically precede by “the.” The poor, the sick, the uninsured, the homeless, the hungry, the foreigner, the prisoner.

We’re less likely to know such folks. We know of them, but not typically as individuals. They’re “that homeless guy who panhandles in such and such intersection” or “that woman with her stuff in the  shopping cart.” We don’t often cultivate friendships with such people. More often we avoid eye contact or move away from them. That’s what it was like for the unnamed woman in our gospel passage.

But this woman had even more problems. Not only had she been sucked dry and bankrupted by the health care system, but she also bore a horrible religious stigma. Her constant menstrual bleeding made her ritually unclean. She couldn’t enter the synagogue or attend public events. This had been going on for twelve years, so even if people didn’t know her name, they knew to avoid her.

Jairus and this woman live in completely different worlds. They could not be more different, but the gospel writer weaves together their stories. Jairus comes right up to Jesus. The great crowd is no barrier to him. People move out of his way as he heads toward Jesus. Jairus is used to being treated with honor and respect, but at this moment, he is a desperate man. His daughter is dying, but he’s heard about this rabbi who can heal, and so he bows before Jesus. He begs.

No one is surprised when Jesus goes with him, and the crowd parts and falls back in behind as Jairus, his security detail, and Jesus head to the house.

The woman  dares not approach Jesus directly Hidden in the crowd, she hopes to get near him. She won’t risk speaking to him or telling of her disease. If Jesus learned she was unclean he might shun her. So she tries to sneak a healing by touching his clothes. He’s in a hurry to help an important person. He won’t notice, and even if he does, he is in a hurry.

Her plan works, to a point. She touches his clothes and immediately she can sense that her long years of suffering are over. Oh how wonderful. She turns to make her way out of the crowd. But Jesus stops and wheels around. “Who touched my clothes?”

What an absurd question, as the disciples are quick to point out. Who hasn’t touched him. There’s a crowd all around him, bumping and jostling. And then there is Jairus, whose daughter could die at any moment. Why is Jesus delaying? But Jesus just stands there, scanning the crowd, looking for the one who had snuck a healing.

Realizing she’s been found out, the woman must do what she tried to avoid. Like Jairus, she now falls at Jesus’ feet and tells her story. Our reading says she told him the whole truth. Does that mean she told all about her disease, the twelve years, and the health care system that had bankrupted her? If so, imagine Jairus standing there, having to wait all this time while Jesus listens to the life story of some nameless, unknown, unimportant woman.

“Daughter, your faith has made you well/saved you; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” She’s already been healed, but Jesus makes it official. It’s not snuck or stolen. It is given by Jesus, along with his blessing, and the designation “Daughter.” Daughter, not one of the poor or the sick, but beloved daughter, child of God, restored member of the community.

Jairus looks on anxiously, impatiently, perhaps angrily as Jesus enacts the priorities of the gospel, of God’s new day. These priorities are upside down by the world’s standards. Important people like Jairus have to wait while Jesus restores an unimportant, nameless, broken woman to wholeness. Jesus engages her, invites her to tell her story, announces she is made whole, saved, made well, and embraces her as “Daughter.”

Jairus and his own daughter, who not so coincidentally has been alive the same number of years this woman has suffered, are not forgotten. But in the priorities  of the Kingdom, Jairus is not at the front of the line, but the back. Jesus, God, has compassion for all, but the needy, the poor, the outcast, the sinner, the oppressed, the marginalized, the immigrant, the stranger are the object of special divine concern. 

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There’s a TV commercial for an investment firm where everyone walks around wearing a big tag showing the amount in their retirement account. A woman with a relatively small number sits in a brokerage firm lobby and watches and waits as people come in after her get attended to because their numbers are bigger. The commercial works because we all know exactly what it’s talking about.

But the good news of Jesus works exactly backwards to this. The first are last and the last are first. Jesus says that those who are rich, those with the most, have the hardest time becoming part of God’s new day.

On one occasion when the disciples argue about who is greatest, Jesus tells them that greatness is being last of all and a servant of all. Then he puts a small child in their midst, and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Young children were viewed very differently in Jesus’ day. They were about as unimportant as you could get, at the very bottom of the social pecking order, but to see them as important is to see Jesus.

So if you’re ever tempted to think that because you aren’t important enough, good enough, been a church member long enough, or a big enough church donor or volunteer, that God has less concern for you, remember that God’s list is ordered completely backwards to the way we humans tend to order such things.

And if you’re ever tempted to think that someone doesn’t deserve your compassion, care, or embrace because they are unimportant, an addict or alcoholic, not a long time church member like you, a foreigner or immigrant, a member of the wrong political party, or part of any group you somehow deem bad, unworthy, or a problem; if you ever think someone doesn’t deserve a place at the table, remember that God’s guest list is ordered very differently from yours and mine. Thanks be to God!