While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, 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, with his disciples.
Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.’ Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.’ And instantly the woman was made well.
When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute-players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, ‘Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout that district.
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I thought I would have the perfect example to preach - the doctors didn’t find the polyp they thought they saw and I had stopped bleeding for weeks. So the doctors decided to wait, and I decided it was a miracle, leaning into this scripture, and my friends saying, “If it came suddenly, it can go likewise.” But yesterday morning, dark, old, blood stained my cream colored sheets, and my hopes likewise. What am I to do with this scripture, and the hemorrhaging woman whose faith has made her well, when I am bleeding again?
Similarly, what are we to do with this scripture, and the little girl coming back to life, when we had a middle-school girl in our community commit suicide? I watched the community kneel before Jesus and say, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her and she will live.” Why didn’t Jesus correct us, that she was just sleeping, and go in and take her by the hand, and help her up? What are we to do with this scripture? When life is easy, so is this scripture but when life is hard, so is this scripture.
It gets a lot harder when we are waiting for the miracle, or when the opportunity for one has already passed. It gets hard not to be angry at God and to ask why, “Why couldn't you just increase my faith with this same healing miracle the hemorrhaging woman got?," I ask and blame God. “Why did a youth have to die and where were you the moment she did?” We ask and blame God. It's also hard not to blame ourselves, searching for questions without answers, “If only I had done a better job focusing on God rather than my own desires for health and love and a family - maybe my faith would’ve healed me.” or “If only we had reached out to the girl and her family more maybe she wouldn’t be dead.” It's hard not to get wrapped up in asking unanswerable questions, in blaming God, or ourselves, when scriptures like this make us believe that when we ask, Jesus will instantly heal.
Scriptures like these make us believe that God and we have more control over life than we do. My birth-mom had to have a hysterectomy to stop her bleeding, genetics are involved here. My bleeding didn’t just suddenly come, nor is it likely that it will suddenly disappear, even if I believe in miracles and my friends likewise believe in chance.
Similarly, the middle-school girl was long troubled, struggling with mental illness and a rough childhood. And while suicide always comes as a shock to the community, it is often pre-planned as it is the only way a person can see out of their grief. These things, these hardships, don’t just come and go in a snap, but miracle scriptures like these, make us ignore the rest of the story - that there were twelve years before the hemorrhaging woman was healed, and death was so common that mourners in Biblical times were paid to play flutes and were already outside the little girl’s home. Miracles make us ignore that our bodies fail and that people die. In the face of miracles, it is easy to ignore the reality of life.
So what are we to do with this scripture? How are we to live in this world where there are miracles and where there is reality. Where Jesus has come and healed, but not come again and all are not yet healed. Where there is already and not yet. Where there is Lent and Easter. What are we to do with this scripture?
I think we have to look for the ways this scripture was true and still can be true for us. Maybe its looking at the details and choosing whether to read them literally or as metaphor. Maybe “being made well,” is more than stopping bleeding and that, “living,” is more than not being dead. I look at this scripture, and I want what the woman has, to be instantly made well. I want to stop bleeding, to stop gaining weight, to stop being tired and out of whack, but all those things being healed aren’t going to fix my fear of failing health and life passing me by. So, what if to be made well, is for me to have peace, peace with the stains, peace with weight gains, peace with naps when I’m tired, and grace for feeling out of whack. What if to be made well is to reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak, and believe that no matter what, this man is looking at me saying, “Daughter, take heart.” What if to be, “made well,” is to have the faith to, “take heart,” when I worry about how long this bleeding will persist and consequently that life is passing me by? This faith, this peace, is a healing beyond physical healing, and if I was made this well, well enough to truly take heart, I would bleed for another eleven years because the present struggles would be nothing. This is how I want to live. Yes, I want to be physically healed and I know Jesus is working toward that too, but he is working on something so much bigger. He is working on teaching me how to take heart. He is teaching me to pray more, to talk to God more, to cultivate my friendships and relationships that fill me and let go of the ones that merely make me ignore the time passing me by. He is taking me back to calling on the phone and letter writing over texting and social media. He is reminding me that I have hobbies, like photography and decorating and adventuring and travel and listening to music and even reading. He is showing me that Spring and sunshine is a fulfillment of his promise. He is teaching me to take heart. I am not there yet, this takes some adjusting, but I believe it is possible and the ultimate healing, to have peace which passes understanding, and is beyond trouble. And so I am reaching out for the hem of Jesus’ garment and asking for faith to make me well, the faith to take heart.
I look at this scripture, and I want that little middle school girl to have Jesus go in and take her by the hand and for her to just get up, but physical death will still exist as will our grief and our questions. So what if when the father says, “lay your hand on her and she will live,” living looks differently than this middle school girl returning to the classroom. What if we knew that when that middle school girl was alone in that room, Jesus too was there? What if we knew that even as she took her life, he placed his hand on her and that she might live with him always? What if we had the assurance that he took her by the hand and she stood up and went with him, to another crowd and another flute and the commotion of heaven receiving a daughter? So what if to live was to have the assurance of the life Jesus has promised? And I think this is what this scripture is teaching and has taught us. I saw it when Shannon Moon asked if we could open the sanctuary for middle-schoolers to have a place and people with whom to process their grief. There is an assurance when you open up the doors of our sanctuary, and this assurance is stark after the death of a child. It says we believe that Jesus is with her and likewise with us, in the lighting of candles remembering, the coloring of pictures an offering, the stories told over cookies and milk. Even as the a gaggle of middle school girls with stuffed animals, blankets, and backpacks flitted around the sanctuary some with practiced hushed voices, others loud and boisterous unable to contain their feelings, all unfamiliar with communal grief, I felt like Jesus was saying to the young crowd, she is merely sleeping, dead is not dead in me. With me she will live. I likewise, watched Luke Burton, the Christian Church Youth Pastor, his own grief channeled to a stoic, supportive, welcoming heavy loving, heart. I watched substitute teachers exhausted emotionally from the school day get to sit and process even while being there for students. I watched Open Door Volunteers sit with students and stand as the entered in. And I felt there too Jesus was saying, to his disciples, follow me, and we followed into where the sanctuary was open and the assurance was there. That he has laid his hand on her and given her life.
Neither of these are what we automatically go to as the miracles of this scripture, but to be made truly well that we can take heart in the midst of hardship, and to have the assurance that unto and through death Jesus has laid his hand on us that we might live, is the greatest miracle of all, and it is for us all. We don’t have to wait twelve years, or until death is at our door, its happening now, its happening already. This is what we are supposed to do with his scripture. Alleluia, Amen.
