Two for the Price of One

Have you discovered Groupon yet?  Are you a Craigslist or Angieslist fanatic?  We all love deals.  And 2 for the price of 1 store ads get our attention.  In Mark 5: 21-43, Jesus offers a 2 for 1 healing deal.  First, Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, a powerful position of status in Jesus' day, runs to Jesus, falls to his knees (amazing!), and begs Jesus (unfathomable!) to heal his critically ill 12 year old daughter.
As Jesus, Jairus, and the crowd head toward Jairus' house, Jesus' journey is interrupted when a woman who's been bleeding for 12 years (note the 2nd recurrence of 12), touches the hem of Jesus' robe and is healed.  As Jesus' healing power flows out from him to stop her flow of blood, Jesus asks of the crowd, "Who touched my robe?"  Typical of how Mark portrays the disciples (often clueless), they ask Jesus incredulously, "Whaddya mean, who touched you?  We're in a crowd with lots of people jostling you.  Lots of people have touched you."  But Jesus persists.  The woman, realizing she is the one Jesus seeks, comes forward trembling.  Like Jairus, she kneels before Jesus and tells him the truth of her life.  It's a truth of trying doctor after doctor for healing, paying medical bills that impoverish her, being isolated from her community because of the uncleanness of her hemorrhaging, and her desperation.  It's a truth of believing that Jesus can heal her.  It's a truth of taking a risk of faith.  And Jesus responds, "Daughter, you took a risk of faith and now you're healed and whole.  Live well, live blessed!  Be healed of your plague." (Eugene Peterson, "The Message," Mark 5: 34)
Jesus then goes onto Jairus' house, where the family and disciples dismiss him with disbelief and grief.  For the daughter has died.  Jesus, accompanied by her parents and 3 disciples, goes to her room and raises her up (resurrection foreshadowing), with the earthily practical command to give her something to eat.
This is a rich story of connections and contrasts among people of faith:  Jairus, his daughter, and the woman with hemorrhage.  We who yearn for healing for ourselves and our loved ones mine these 2 stories for tricks of the healing trade.  What are the magical words for healing?  What's the right belief to gain healing?  Where do we go?  What must we do to be healed?  How do we effectively pray for healing?
I think these questions fall short of the sense of wholeness (shalom; wellbeing) that Jesus intends for all people.  Being touched by Jesus is first, a reminder of the physical humanness that Jesus embodies.  His touch is real and concrete.  He raises the daughter up by taking her hands.  Second, Jesus' touch is relationship, trust, and faith.  He doesn't let the woman with hemorrhage off with just touching his robe.  He demands a face to face encounter with her.  And this encounter includes truthtelling.
The healing life that Jesus gives is our creaturely life - the life of the blood circulating through our bodies. The healing life that Jesus gives is also the truthtelling that exposes to the light whatever blocks our healing.  When Jesus' gift of healing is not an end to disease or illness, it's time to look for our wholeness and wellbeing in both the kin-dom (our need to be vulnerable, open, and truthful about our need within our family of faith) and kingdom of God (where we are face to face with Jesus).
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Shelley

The Healing Power of Touch

Disciple Simon told Jesus his mother in law was burning up with fever - a potentially dangerous condition in that time.  Jesus went to her, took her hand, and raised her up.  Next thing we know she is serving up the hospitality for which she is known.  Read Mark 1: 29-39 for this story of healing to wellbeing.

When was the last time someone "touched" you in some way and you experienced healing?  When was the last time you reached out to someone and she experienced a lessening of her pain, a dispelling of his fear, a decrease in her anxiety, or a sense of hope emerging out of darkness?  There are so many ways we are called to "touch" another and God uses our hands/feet/hearts/skills/caring to effect healing.  A touch on the shoulder to show we care.  A hug of comfort.  A massage of those tense shoulder muscles.  Our hands stirring nutritious chicken soup.  Our feet to serve at the soup kitchen.  Our minds to fight for justice for oppressed.  Our strength to build a home with Habitat.  Our lips to be a conversation partner at VIDA.  Our faith to plead with God in intercessory prayer.

Just as Jesus determines to heal, move on, and reach out to other villages, so we are called to move out of our places of comfort and confront the needs for healing all around us.  God uses our feeble efforts to do the impossible.  When we are weary or rationalize that we have no power for healing, prophet Isaiah reminds us (Isaiah 40: 21-31):  "Have you not known? Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  God does not faint or grow weary; God's understanding is unsearchable.  God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.  Even youths will faint and be weary and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."

It is our Lord's power and Christ's love that enables us to enflesh the healing - the wholeness and wellbeing - the shalom - that God intends for all humankind.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Shelley