The Hem of his Garment
28 June 2015 Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8B)
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
28 June 2015 Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8B)
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Spoken Mass; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
8:00 a.m. Spoken Mass; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15; 2: 23-24; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians
8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43
God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of
flesh. Amen.
When
I came here to Trinity from Beijing in the Fall of 2011 for interviews for this
position, one of the questions I was asked was how I understood Church, and how
I saw what we do each week here. I could
only recite the lines of a hymn I had sung as a chorister as a new
Episcopalian. Though the text is by the
19th century Church of England priest Percy Dearmer, and it shows up
in the Presbyterian and Methodist hymnals, it unfortunately is not in the
Episcopal hymnal. For me, it captures
the sacramental approach to life and faith we Episcopalians hold dear:
Draw us in the Spirit’s tether;
For when humbly, in thy name,
Two or three are met together,
Thou art in the midst of them:
Alleluya! Alleluya! Touch we now thy garment’s hem.As the faithful used to gather
In the name of Christ to sup,
Then with thanks to God the Father
Break the bread and bless the cup,
Alleluya! Alleluya! So knit thou our friendship up.All our meals and all our living
Make as sacraments of thee,
That by caring, helping, giving,
We may true disciples be.
Alleluya! Alleluya! We will serve thee faithfully.
“Touch we now thy garment’s hem” the image is drawn from today’s Gospel reading. A woman, desperate after 12 years of bleeding that has consumed all her resources for a cure and made her unclean and an outcast, secretly tries to capture some of Jesus’ healing power for herself by touching the fringe of his robe. Jesus is on his way to heal the daughter of an important local leader, Jairus.
Touching the hem of his garment, she
is instantly healed. Jesus, however, notices that something has happened and
turns to ask who touched him. The
disciples are perplexed. The crowds are
pushing in, excited to have heard the news of Jesus’ healings. According to Mark 6:56, the crowds “begged
him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were
healed.” So when Jesus turns and asks
who touched him, it seems passing strange that he would concern himself with a
chance brush by. But he is adamant—he
has felt power go out from him.
The woman with the issue of blood
dare not ask Jesus to help her because she is ritually impure. Her unusual bleeding made her contagiously unclean:
she conveyed that uncleanness to anyone who touched her or things she had
touched. Such rules were a central part
of the religion that Jesus had been raised in, the varied Judaism of the period
of the Second Temple. Just after the rules about dealing with women with
unusual flows of blood, we read this in Leviticus 15: “You must keep the
Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in
their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them.”
The woman is an outcast. She wonders how a religious teacher like Jesus could be expected to pay her any attention, let alone touch her to heal her. So she takes things into her own hands and secretly touches his robe. She is cured, but he feels that some power has gone out of him, and he asks who touched him.
It is the woman’s uncleanness that makes her reluctant to ask for help, or even expect a reply. But she still reaches for his garment’s hem. And that is what Jesus praises, saying it is her trust in him that has healed her.
The woman is an outcast. She wonders how a religious teacher like Jesus could be expected to pay her any attention, let alone touch her to heal her. So she takes things into her own hands and secretly touches his robe. She is cured, but he feels that some power has gone out of him, and he asks who touched him.
It is the woman’s uncleanness that makes her reluctant to ask for help, or even expect a reply. But she still reaches for his garment’s hem. And that is what Jesus praises, saying it is her trust in him that has healed her.
When Jesus finally arrives at the
house of Jairus, the question of ritual impurity again intrudes in this
complicated sandwich of a story. Coming neat to or touching a corpse also transmitted
ritual uncleanness. When the crowd tells Jairus that his daughter is dead,
Jesus persists in going to try to heal her, and tells him, “Don’t be afraid,
just believe.”
He is not asking Jairus to sign on to a doctrinal program, or to intellectually assent to a set of propositions about the universe, morals, or society. He is asking Jairus to trust him. Remember that the Latin word credo, "I believe," from which we get the word "creed" originally came from cordem dare, "to give one's heart."
They leave the crowd behind, and come to the house, where professional mourners are already at work, ululating, weeping, and tearing their clothes. Their presence underscores the high social status enjoyed by Jairus. When Jesus announces that the girl is not dead, just asleep, and says he will go and wake her up, the crowd laughs at him. Instead of reaching for his garment’s hem, they laugh.
Some probably laugh at what they see as Jesus’ stubbornness in not listening to their announcement that the girl is dead. Some laugh at his foolishness in thinking that he can 'heal' a dead person. Most are probably laughing out of nervousness—this guy is not only going to cause a great scene involving a corpse, but is also going to break, right there in public, a great taboo. He would contaminate himself by touching the corpse, and then come out and contaminate them.
He is not asking Jairus to sign on to a doctrinal program, or to intellectually assent to a set of propositions about the universe, morals, or society. He is asking Jairus to trust him. Remember that the Latin word credo, "I believe," from which we get the word "creed" originally came from cordem dare, "to give one's heart."
They leave the crowd behind, and come to the house, where professional mourners are already at work, ululating, weeping, and tearing their clothes. Their presence underscores the high social status enjoyed by Jairus. When Jesus announces that the girl is not dead, just asleep, and says he will go and wake her up, the crowd laughs at him. Instead of reaching for his garment’s hem, they laugh.
Some probably laugh at what they see as Jesus’ stubbornness in not listening to their announcement that the girl is dead. Some laugh at his foolishness in thinking that he can 'heal' a dead person. Most are probably laughing out of nervousness—this guy is not only going to cause a great scene involving a corpse, but is also going to break, right there in public, a great taboo. He would contaminate himself by touching the corpse, and then come out and contaminate them.
Despite the privileged position the little girl had in life as the daughter of a religious leader, as a corpse she is just another source of ritual contamination, like the woman with the flow of blood earlier in the story.
After Jesus puts the onlookers all out, he takes the child's father and mother and his accompanying disciples, and goes in to where the corpse is. He then takes her by the hand and says, “Little girl, get up!” (Talitha qumi! It is recorded in the words he probably actually used in his own native language, Aramaic.)
We read, “Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.”
You see, in both cases, the woman with the unusual flow of blood and Jairus’ young daughter, compassion and service took precedence over a desire to remain pure.
Purity or compassion, Jesus, which
is it? Love, not purity, is Jesus’ consistent answer. This
really marks just how radical Jesus was. The religion of the day declared, with
the full authority of scripture literally cited and interpreted through
authoritative tradition, that impurity was contagious. It spread from the
unclean to the clean. People who want to please God must avoid it if at all
possible, lest they commit sacrilege against the Temple of God. If impurity is
inadvertently contracted, they need to purge it away through rituals.
As a Jew, Jesus respected the rituals. But he taught that goodness was different from purity, and far more important. In his view, moral goodness was spread to others by compassion and service. And the need for compassion and service trumped the need to avoid contamination at all times.
The theme is a subtext of almost all of Jesus’ public acts and teaching. He practiced open table fellowship with people that his religion labeled as the worst of the worst. According to the Law, the table where one ate was one of the easiest places to contract impurity. He taught that it was what one said and did, rather than what one ate, that counted. He tended to discount ritual washings as a core issue and said they did not necessarily touch what really mattered—the heart. He told stories of religious men avoiding contamination with what they thought was a corpse in contrast to a heretic and illegitimate man (a Samaritan) who, despite the same religious rules about corpses, still showed compassion and thus made himself the fellow countryman ("the neighbor") of the man who was near death.
In so doing, Jesus was following the very best of the Jewish prophetic tradition, which itself had consistently criticized the religious establishment’s concern with purity rather than justice.
Ultimately, it would be Jesus’ uncompromising insistence on this that so alienated the religious authorities that they conspired to turn him over to the hated Roman occupiers.
We need never think that our uncleanness or impurity is a barrier keeping us from Jesus. We need not fear that a disability we may have can keep us from the love of Jesus. Jesus loves us regardless, and wants to heal us and help us understand that we are forgiven all.
What keeps us from Jesus is our fear itself. Our fear may make us so nervous that we, like the professional mourners outside Jairus' house, end up laughing at God. But the woman with the flow of blood was so desperate that she overcame her fear. Taking things into her own hands she reaches out to touch his robes. We too need to reach out to touch his robes.
As a Jew, Jesus respected the rituals. But he taught that goodness was different from purity, and far more important. In his view, moral goodness was spread to others by compassion and service. And the need for compassion and service trumped the need to avoid contamination at all times.
The theme is a subtext of almost all of Jesus’ public acts and teaching. He practiced open table fellowship with people that his religion labeled as the worst of the worst. According to the Law, the table where one ate was one of the easiest places to contract impurity. He taught that it was what one said and did, rather than what one ate, that counted. He tended to discount ritual washings as a core issue and said they did not necessarily touch what really mattered—the heart. He told stories of religious men avoiding contamination with what they thought was a corpse in contrast to a heretic and illegitimate man (a Samaritan) who, despite the same religious rules about corpses, still showed compassion and thus made himself the fellow countryman ("the neighbor") of the man who was near death.
In so doing, Jesus was following the very best of the Jewish prophetic tradition, which itself had consistently criticized the religious establishment’s concern with purity rather than justice.
Ultimately, it would be Jesus’ uncompromising insistence on this that so alienated the religious authorities that they conspired to turn him over to the hated Roman occupiers.
We need never think that our uncleanness or impurity is a barrier keeping us from Jesus. We need not fear that a disability we may have can keep us from the love of Jesus. Jesus loves us regardless, and wants to heal us and help us understand that we are forgiven all.
What keeps us from Jesus is our fear itself. Our fear may make us so nervous that we, like the professional mourners outside Jairus' house, end up laughing at God. But the woman with the flow of blood was so desperate that she overcame her fear. Taking things into her own hands she reaches out to touch his robes. We too need to reach out to touch his robes.
We do that by living in the spirit,
by coming together and praying and eating the bread and wine that Jesus shared
in open table fellowship. We do that by
serving and loving and showing the same preference for love over purity that
Jesus showed. Draw us in the Spirit’s
tether. Touch we now thy garment’s
hem.
When Jairus learns his daughter is dead, Jesus tells him "Don't be afraid, just trust in me."
Jesus is saying this today, to each of us, "Don't be afraid. Just trust in me."
When Jairus learns his daughter is dead, Jesus tells him "Don't be afraid, just trust in me."
Jesus is saying this today, to each of us, "Don't be afraid. Just trust in me."
Let us touch the hem of his
garment.
In the name of God, Amen.
In the name of God, Amen.
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