June 28, 2009 | 8:00 a.m.

Healing Touch

Alice M. Trowbridge
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 130
Mark 5:21–43

“If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”

Mark 5:28 (NRSV)

Let the whole world see and know
that things which were cast down
have been raised up
and things which had grown old
have been made new.

Janet Morley
All Desires Known

In his classic book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner shares his story of the loss of his son. It is such a powerful book, because Rabbi Kushner has traveled the way of deep sorrow and loss and yet he emerged whole. He explains how as a young rabbi he had this image of God as an all-wise, all-powerful parent figure: God would take care of him. God would reward obedient behavior and discipline him when he was out of line. God would protect him from being hurt or from hurting himself and would see to it that he got what he deserved in life (p. 3). Even in the tragedies of life, when people died by some tragic means (and this week in our news we have several examples to draw from), even in the tragedies of life when people were taken too soon, Rabbi Kushner never questioned God’s justice or fairness–until he learned of the illness of his own son. Rabbi Kushner writes his book for people who find themselves in a predicament in life, when we are going along just fine and then suddenly there comes news of illness, news of loss of a longtime job, news of the death of a loved one. When we have been in such situations, our faith is challenged, and often there is anger, resentment, fear. It can be hard to hold on to faith and to be comforted by religion. Kushner says, “I am fundamentally a religious man who has been hurt by life, and I wanted to write a book that could be given to the person who has been hurt by life, by death, by illness or injury, by rejection or disappointment, and who knows in his heart that if there is justice in the world, he deserved better.”

I wonder what the hemorrhaging woman felt about justice in the world. For twelve years she was bleeding, life was literally leaving her, and because of this she was, by Levitical laws, deemed “unclean” and unfit to participate in community. It is hard to imagine her long suffering. And what about Jairus, a religious leader who was, in this text, a desperate father who was willing to step aside from the narrow norms of religious law and plead his case to this itinerant rabbi who was known to be a healer and who could perform miracles? I’m sure Jairus spent many a long night by his daughter’s bedside wondering about the justice of the world, wishing he could take her place.

We know of other suffering places in our own lives or those of friends. Our economy has jolted many out of gainful employment, sharply disrupting the routines and rhythms of daily life we had come to enjoy. There are the relationships where communication is minimal and the love that once kindled warmth barely survives or has grown cold. And of course, there is the sudden news of illness that troubles us, brings us to our knees, our deepest fears.

Challenging and difficult things do happen to us, and they do not have meaning, nor do they happen for any good reason. We ask ourselves, “Why did this happen to me?” But a better question to ask, suggests Rabbi Kushner, is, “Now that this has happened to me, what am I going to do about it?” (p. 136).

Kushner tells a story about Martin Gray, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust. He tells how, after the Holocaust, Gray rebuilt his life, became successful, married, had a family. Life seemed good after the horrors of the concentration camp. Then one day, his wife and children were killed when a forest fire ravaged their home in the south of France. Gray was distraught, pushed almost to the breaking point by this added tragedy. People urged him to demand an inquiry into what caused the fire, but instead he chose to put his resources into a movement to protect nature from future fires. He explained that an inquiry or investigation would focus only on the past, on issues of pain and sorrow and blame. He wanted to focus on the future. An inquiry would set him against other people—“Was someone negligent? Whose fault was it?”—and being against other people, setting out to find a villain, accusing other people of being responsible for his misery, only makes the lonely person lonelier, he reasoned. Life, he decided, has to be lived for something, not just against something (p. 137).

In the text for this morning, both healing stories are about people who have been hurt by life. There is long suffering; there are tragic circumstances; there is ostracism, loneliness, profound fear by a father for his young daughter and by a woman for her own well-being. In both cases, the pain and the suffering are severe: these are dire situations. And in both cases, we can sense the human desperation—these people have been brought to their knees. In both stories of healing, the first reaching comes from the suffering one. The hemorrhaging woman in the cacophony of the city square, in an act of true daring for her time, enters the place reserved for men and, in her unclean condition, presumes to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment. Likewise Jairus, defying his title and going beyond the bounds of religious protocol, pleads with Jesus to come and save Jairus’s dying daughter. And in both circumstances, in which two desperate people have reached for Jesus, how does Jesus respond? He reaches back. Gently, quietly, treating each case separately and with the utmost care. He is on his way to Jairus’ house when he is interrupted by the hemorrhaging woman, and yet he is not hasty with her. He is careful and takes time to understand her and to restore life in her, not only in her body through healing her condition, but in her spirit by bringing her into right relationship with the community and restoring her standing among her neighbors. Likewise Jairus’s daughter, who has died now, by a simple gesture of Jesus’ hand upon hers is restored fully to life and life abundant.

Jesus’ power to heal defies death, despair, division, and the present darkness. The Gospel writer wants us to understand that whatever our situation, wherever we are wounded, wherever there is pain and suffering in our lives, Jesus came to restore us to life, to renew our vigor, and to make us whole again. Sometimes when we have nowhere else to turn, we finally embrace that truth, that promise, and we live into the life abundant that is God’s design.

This abundant life does not look like the one we design for ourselves. And there is nothing we can do about chance, tragedy, misfortune, or bad luck when it falls upon us. But we can take the situation and allow it to bring us to explore the limits of our own capacity for strength and love and hope. It might even lead us to discover sources of support and comfort we never knew before (Kushner, p. 138).

When people are given a terminal diagnosis, I have watched how God has given that person the strength to take each day as it comes, to look for the good and hold on to it and give thanks for it. When people who would never have thought themselves strong become strong in the face of adversity, when people find the capacity to act heroically in an emergency, where do they get these qualities that they would freely admit they did not have before?

Our answer is in today’s text: it is God’s healing grace in Christ that reaches us when we need it most. It is what Rabbi Karyn Kedar calls true healing, which she says only comes when we realize that deeply implanted in our souls is a spark. “It is God’s light; it is who we really are.”

In his poetic drama, J.B., Archibald MacLeish retells the story of Job in a modern-day setting. Much of the story is like the biblical version. J.B., the Job figure, is a successful businessman surrounded by a loving family. Then one by one tragedy hits: his business fails, people die, his own health fails him. With our psalm for this morning we know in the story of Job the predominant theme of waiting, the feeling that God is silent, that God may have forgotten about Job’s circumstances. Friends come to comfort J.B., and finally, just as in the biblical story, J.B. confronts God, and God answers out of the whirlwind, that extraordinary theophany we know by heart: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”

Up to this point, MacLeish has followed the biblical story of Job in this modern setting. The ending, though, is radically different. In the Bible, all of Job’s fortunes are restored. In the play, no heavenly rewards are restored. J.B. goes back to his wife, and they quietly commit themselves to set about rebuilding, picking up the pieces, and moving forward with hope. They want to live. His wife says, “You wanted justice, but there isn’t any; there is only love.” J.B. then forgives God for not making a more just universe and decides to take it as it is. He stops looking for fairness and looks for love instead. MacLeish explains what he is trying to say at the end of his play: He says that human beings depend on God for all things. God depends on us for one thing, and that is love. Without our love, God is locked inside us. Love is a free gift or it is nothing at all. And it is most itself, most free, when it is offered in spite of suffering, injustice, and death.

We do not love God because God protects us from harm or from bad things happening to us. We love God because God is the author of all that is true and good and beautiful in us and in the world, and God is our source of strength and hope and courage and of other people’s strength and hope and courage by which we are helped in our time of need. We love God because in Jesus Christ we have known a love that will never let us go, a love that comes to us individually, despite the chaos in the crowded street or the frenzy outside a small bedroom, and with a gentle healing touch, God restores life to us. God rights past wrongs. God leads us to the path of hope, of possibility, of new life. Jesus gives us the courage to forgive, to move forward, and to love again, to love the world with his love, entrusting our very lives to God’s hands.

All praise, honor, and glory be to God.

Amen.