Sermon Cloud

DIVINE DELAY

There’s an old Norse word for religion that translates into English as “trying again.”  Perhaps we can learn a lesson from those old Vikings and see that perseverance grounded in faith can hold us together when life unravels around us.  Perhaps life – and faith – are really nothing more than “trying again” and then “trying again”, again.

 In today’s Gospel story, Jesus urged Jarius to continue to have faith and He told the woman with the hemorrhage that her faith had made her well.  Both characters had to overcome a number of roadblocks, setbacks and interruptions on their journey to healing– but they had faith and tried again and again. 

Jarius faced his first test when his 12-year-old daughter became ill and he went looking for Jesus to make her well. He hit a roadblock right away because Jesus was out of town – across the lake, moving a legion of demons from a possessed man into a herd of pigs.  Now Jarius was an official of the synagogue and, as such, he was a man of influence and prestige, but even his importance in the community could not bring Jesus back any sooner.  Still, Jarius had faith and decided to go down to the shore and wait for Jesus to return. I suspect that he used the fact that he was an important person to push to the front of the waiting crowd so he could get to Jesus first.  Well, it worked and Jesus did agree to go to Jarius’ home.  Ironically, Jarius had enough faith to believe that Jesus could heal his daughter, but (even though we know better), he couldn’t imagine that this healing could take place unless Jesus actually went to the house and touched the child. I can picture Jarius rushing ahead, urging Jesus to hurry and wishing the large crowd that was following them would go away!  Can you imagine his dismay when he looked over his shoulder and saw that Jesus had stopped walking and was talking to a poor woman that everyone in town knew to be unclean.   This woman wasn’t even supposed to be around proper people and here she was talking to Jesus, wasting His time AND slowing Him down!

Jarius was frustrated and went hurrying back to get Jesus going toward his house again.  But, at this point, messengers arrived saying that his daughter had died.  I think that Jarius was probably very angry at Jesus for stopping and I can imagine that he blamed that poor, dirty, unimportant woman for causing his daughter’s death by delaying Jesus.   At this point, Jesus ignored the hopeless comments of the messengers and held out a hand of comfort to the grieving father – Jesus said, “Do not be afraid; only believe.”  And then He sent the crowd and most of the disciples away.  He went to Jarius’ house, walked through the jeering crowd of mourners there, entered the house and simply raised the girl from the dead and, then, in a rather strange footnote, He told her astounded parents to get her something to eat!  This is where the story ends and we’re left to figure out what God want us to learn from it.

The woman who delayed Jesus had suffered from some kind of female hemorrhage for twelve years. She was already suffering while Jesus was still working in the carpenter shop in Nazareth – the cure she needed wasn’t even available yet, so she spent years trying the known cures of the day. The Scripture tells us she “tried again” so many times that she had spent all her money on doctors and potions and nothing had worked.  And, although she was totally embarrassed and completely alone, she didn’t give up.  She suffered as much from the cures as she did from her constant bleeding.  Pliny’s Natural History tells us that the physicians at that time prescribed medicines made of such things as ashes of burnt wolf’s skull, stags’ horns, heads of mice, eyes of crabs, owl’s brains, and livers of frogs.  The religious cures that the priests offered weren’t that much better.  From the Jewish Talmud, we learn that one remedy consisted of drinking a goblet of wine mixed with a powder made from rubber, alum and garden crocus, while another treatment consisted of a dose of Persian onions cooked in wine – it doesn’t even say what she had to do with the onions but only that a priest had to be there to intone a chant over her while she did whatever it was!  

The woman’s suffering was much more than physical, though that would have been enough.  To add insult to injury, this woman was also subjected to tremendous social pressure. The nature of her illness fell under the stipulations of the purity laws of Leviticus (15:19), which demanded that she be pronounced unclean.  Everywhere she went, she had to shout out, “Unclean, unclean” so that no good, ritually-pure, Jew would come too near – for if they were to touch her, they, too, would become unclean!  So she had been an outcast for twelve years, forced into isolation by something over which she had no control. She could not take part in any religious observances, nor could she have any public contact without defiling everybody she touched. If she had ever had husband or family, they were long gone.  And yet, she tried one more time.  She braved contact with the crowd and reached out to TOUCH Jesus – and she found healing!

 Jarius and the woman could not have been more different – he was rich and influential with a loving family, she was a despised and solitary woman.   Yet, they could not have been more alike in the things that really mattered and I think that’s the point of today’s story – they both needed Jesus and they both had faith.  They were completely helpless and hopeless.  But, Jesus was greater than all of their troubles and in Him they found what they needed.

We began a new ministry in our church a few weeks ago when we offered a “Service of Wholeness and Healing” to the community.  We had about 30 people in attendance.  We read some Scriptures and sang some songs.  We shared Holy Communion and participated in intercessory prayer for the needs of specific groups of people in our community.  Individual prayer and anointing was available to anyone who asked and we had quite a response; during the service, Pastor Deborah, Pastor Terry, and I prayed with and anointed a number of people. In a reflection of the cross of ashes we wear at the beginning of Lent to remind us of our mortality, we applied crosses of oil to their foreheads in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as a reminder of God’s absolute power over everything we can face in our lives.

 It was a powerful service and the act of being God’s agent in the actual prayer and anointing was humbling.  It led me to consider how God anoints His servants.  Pastor Deborah has been preaching about anointing all this month.  By definition, anointing signifies the act of installing a person into a special office.  It can also mean “to consecrate – to declare something as sacred – separate or set aside for a special purpose.”  We will be offering a kind of anointing to our youth at the end of the service as we commission them for their upcoming mission trip.

 First and foremost, God anointed His Son, Jesus Christ, with oil (Psalm 102, quoted in Hebrews 1:9) and with “the Holy Spirit and with power to do good and to heal all who were oppressed by the devil.” (Acts 10:38)  

 In the Old Testament, God commanded Samuel to take oil and anoint Saul (1 Samuel 10:1) and David (13:16) as the future kings of Israel. It is interesting to note that the Bible tells us “the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward” so we know that the Holy Spirit was involved in the process even then.  Ironically, God’s anointed kings failed - they grew to love themselves more than God and their anointing left them.  Saul and David faltered in obedience to God and were punished.  Today’s Old Testament reading reminds us to “see how the mighty have fallen.” (2 Samuel 1:17)  We can conclude that anointing is not always permanent but depends on the obedience of the one anointed.  We need to be mindful of God’s leading as we serve Him; we must continue to follow His will rather than our whims.

 In the book of Acts in the New Testament, God by-passed the anointing oil and just sent the Holy Spirit directly to the early church.  That fiery anointing lavished the ability to preach, teach, prophecy, interpret and heal on all the believers. Phillip Gulley, a Quaker minister in Indiana, is one of my favorite authors and I love his description of the Catholic School lesson about this anointing.  In his autobiography (I Love You, Miss Huddleston), he recalls, “Sister Mary John had shown us a flannelgraph of the apostles receiving the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.  They looked quite happy except that their hair was on fire . . . I was immediately suspicious of a religion whose highpoint was the igniting of one’s head, and my enthusiasm for church, which had never been great, began to fade. . . According to Sister Mary John, I was supposed to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, but I felt the same way I always felt in church – a cluelessness tinged with a vague fear.”    Do we sometimes feel that way? 

 Nonetheless . . .  we DO have the opportunity to be God’s anointed servants.  We can join our Savior and the ancient kings and the guys with their heads on fire in proclaiming God’s plan for His people.  Now you may not think of yourself as anointed, but that healing of soul and spirit that occurs when one accepts the gift of salvation is really an anointing – you are set apart – empowered – fit for service… Those of us who are so-called ‘Calvinists’ have been known over the years for our emphasis on the severity of God.  We are called to proclaim the bad news of the wages of sin, the righteous indignation of God, and the eternal punishment awaiting all men who don’t have faith in Christ.  But Paul reminds us to “Behold the kindness and severity of God” (Romans 11:22a). We musn’t forget that God offers healing and wholeness to His children even while He is demanding their obedience.  In fact, today’s miracles show us not only God’s power but also His compassion for His children.

 In the story today, Jesus offered healing of bodily ills and victory over death, but the more I studied the story, the more I saw parallels between the characters’ behavior and our relationship to our Anointing God today. 

1. First, the woman - This unnamed woman, like Jairus, had heard that Jesus was in the region and set out to seek healing from Him. Conditioned by twelve years of rejection and isolation, she knew that she dare not approach Jesus directly. She was unclean and so are we, but her faith in God’s goodness gave her the courage she needed to approach Jesus and be healed.  Our faith in God is all we need!  God will meet all of our needs AND use us to meet the needs of those around us.  We’re not told where the woman went after she was healed.  We do know that Jesus stopped and He took the time to let the whole crowd know that this woman had been healed so that they would no longer treat her as if she were unclean.  He didn’t have to do that and it upset the disciples. 
2. Ah, yes, the disciples - After her healing, the woman surely wanted to fade back into the mob. To the great dismay of Jairus, when Jesus felt the healing power leave Him, He knew what had happened because He IS God. But He still asked, “Who touched My garments?”  The disciples thought this was a stupid question. The rudeness of their thoughts was expressed by none other than their spokesman, Peter, who said, “You see the multitude pressing in on You and yet You say, ‘Who touched me?’” . . . Well, duh . . .  Everybody was touching, pushing, shoving, grabbing at Jesus – How could He ask such a dumb question?  But as we saw, Jesus asked the question to allow the healing to become public, and therefore, complete.  Do we ever question what God is doing in our church or in the lives of those around us?  Jesus gave the woman a chance to speak of her healing in front of others.  Do we ever offer testimony to others about what God has done for us and through us – or do we remain silent for fear of what others will say?
3.  And then there’s Jarius - If the disciples were irritated by Jesus’ seemingly unnecessary delay, you can well imagine that Jarius was fit to be tied. Jesus knew that his daughter could die at any moment – why didn’t He just ignore the woman? Jarius wanted to make God hurry!   How often do we want what we want RIGHT NOW?!?!?!?!  Jesus hesitated now just as he did when Lazarus died – so that there could be an even greater miracle and the people would see an even bigger demonstration of God’s power to overcome death. To add insult to injury, Jesus was wasting time on an unclean woman and ignoring Jarius who was an important person!  Are we ever that selfish?  How often do we question God’s compassion to people we don’t like?       I do it – don’t you?  When things go well for people we see as undeserving, we complain that life’s not fair! WE want God to pay attention to US!  Sometimes we even look down on those in our midst who are suffering – those who can’t speak our language, those who are poor, those whose lifestyles are destructive, those who dare to approach us looking for help.
4. Perhaps the most interesting character is the daughter - The healing of this little girl came without her knowledge or participation. She was raised from the dead because of the faith and intervention of her father. Because of Jarius’ efforts, Jesus took the young girl by the hand and lifted her up and back into life. When we pray for others, we are acting as God’s anointed and seeking His good intervention in their lives. Pastor Deborah has testified that she grew up “unchurched.”   She gives credit for where she is today to a faithful aunt who prayed for her every day.  Likewise, the Holy Spirit sometimes works in our lives outside of, and, sometimes, even in spite of ourselves. Sometimes, we pray for the prodigal and sometimes we are the prodigal and someone (we hope) is praying for us.
5. the crowd – The people in the crowd brushed against the Master, but most never reached out to Him in faith. Many of them had been following Jesus around for quite a while – hoping to see a miracle, looking for another meal, maybe even just waiting to be entertained.  They listened to his words, but they weren’t touched by the experience. What made the difference for the woman was that she recognized her complete and total inability to help herself. Many of you have heard the Gospel many times, and believe in Jesus in an “intellectual” sort of way.  Remember the demons that had Jesus occupied when Jarius first went to find Him?  Even they believed exactly who Jesus was and what He could do! (James 2:19)  Though they knew who Jesus was, they still ran off a cliff to their deaths.  How often have you sat through a whole church service and then walked out unmoved? Maybe you’re even bored sometimes – especially if the sermon is running long.  To have a genuine experience with Christ, you must reach the point of admitting your total helplessness and hopelessness. (Here’s that Calvinist theology coming through!)  We cannot become the anointed if we are only peripherally involved.  Just being a part of the crowd isn’t enough!
6. And finally, the mourners - When Jesus got to Jarius’ home, He saw that the commotion of a typical near-eastern funeral had already begun. The troupe of minstrels and professional mourners were vigorously performing their duties.  They were clapping their hands, playing their instruments and wailing mournful songs.  When Jesus told them that their efforts were premature – that the girl was not dead – they laughed at Him.  They knew death when they saw it and they knew Jesus was dead wrong. This kind of unbelief will never witness the power of God and so these people were left outside – they were still singing funeral dirges while Jarius’ daughter was enjoying her first post-death meal – and they didn’t even know that they were unemployed because of a miracle, even if it had been delayed!  There are many in the world today who will find themselves left out of heaven because of their refusal to acknowledge God’s awesome power – even when it seems too good to believe.  Always remember that we, as God’s anointed, are called to witness to unbelievers in our midst.

There is a lesson for us today in this story of two miracles.  It is a lesson in divine delays.  It is a lesson in holding fast to our faith and “trying again” as many times as necessary.  Perhaps our unanswered prayers are simply divine invitations to “keep trying.”  

We’ve all had times in our lives when we think everything around us is collapsing and yet God seems to be puttering around heaven, totally unconcerned about the trials and tragedies in our lives.  Maybe you’re even in the midst of one of those times right now.  God calls us to continue to be obedient to His calling even when we are crushed by the cost of serving Him.  Saul and David wandered away from obedience and lost their anointing – and we don’t want to do that!  As we commission our youth for their mission trip, we add a prayer that they will be obedient in God’s service as they labor in South Texas AND for the rest of their lives; that their faith and witness will bring hope and healing into the lives of many others.

In today’s story, Jesus did put the needs of Jarius’ daughter aside to help another.  He acted within His divine schedule – not by Jarius’ human demands.  He deliberately tarried with the woman, just as He did at the report of the sickness of Lazarus, so that when He did act there was no question of who should receive the credit and the glory.  Surely these miracles show us that delays are not the result of God’s lack of concern for us. Rest assured that He is sensitive to our most insignificant needs.  Rather, it is God’s stated purpose that these delays will result in greater glory for Himself, and greater faith and witness for us. As Paul tells us in Romans 8:28: “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose