Proper 8B, 30 June 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
- 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27. O daughters of Israel..
- 2 Corinthians 8:7-15. It is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need.
- Mark 5:21-43. They were overcome by amazement.
O God of the whole truth, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after that truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
If I asked you about the Parable of the Three Women, you would probably look at me blankly and say you’ve never heard of it. You have actually just heard it in our reading from the Gospel of Mark, but you’ve never heard it called the “Parable of the Three Women,” because I just made that title up. Now you might be thinking, “wait, that Gospel lesson was about two women – an older woman and a girl. Who’s the third?” The third woman is the girl’s mother. Part of problem is that none of the women are named, so they’re easily forgotten. I thought about this when I noticed today’s opening prayer which speaks to God Who has “built [their] Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.” I bet that a lot of you could name men who were foundational apostles and prophets, but would be at a loss to name many women who were foundational apostles and prophets. Some of you have heard church leaders say that only men can be ordained priests or pastors because Jesus only called men. That’s just not true. A few women apostles and prophets are named in the Bible, but many more are not named, and that has more to do with the patriarchy of the Church than it has to do with Jesus’ life and teachings. You know, someday I think we should base a religion on following what we know of the teachings and behaviors of Jesus! (Just saying.)
I’m going to propose names for three women in today’s reading to help us remember them. First, the woman seeking healing, I’d like to call Nevia, which is the Hebrew word for a woman prophet. Nevia, in this story, was like women prophets in the First (or Old) Testament: Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Hulda, Abigail, Esther, to name some prominent women who bravely transmitted the Word of God (which is what a prophet does). Nevia the prophet boldly reached out in faith and hope, prophetically sure that she only needed to touch Jesus’ clothing to be healed. She told Jesus the whole truth, and experienced healing against all odds.
Next, the daughter of one of the leaders of the synagogue, I want to call Stella. It’s short for apostella, which means one who is called up and sent out. When Jesus calls her up, the Gospel says she got up (or that’s what it says in English). In Greek, it says she was raised up, using the very same word that we use for resurrection. Maybe you have heard the Greek Easter proclamation, “Christos anesthe” (that is, “Christ is risen”) and the response is “allithos anesthe” (that is, “he is risen indeed”). Here, buried in this story of the healing of a young woman, are resurrection words: “korasion anestheke” (the little girl rose up). Although Jesus told the witnesses to this uprising that nobody should know, the Word (capital W) has clearly gone out, and we can imagine it was because of Stella’s response, and give thanks!
The third woman in the story is the mother of Stella. I want to call her Mariah, a mashup of the words for mother and witness. When Jesus sent the crowd of mourners away, putting them all outside, he took Jairus, Peter, James, and John with him into the room where Stella was. He also took Stella’s mother. Why? Why not just tell Mariah to start getting some food ready because Stella would be up and ready to eat shortly? He didn’t say, “excuse me, ma’am, only men are allowed in the room for this miracle” (or any miracle for that matter).
It’s ironic that this Parable of the Three Women, originally intended to inspire trust in the healing power of Jesus’ love, becomes an obstacle for so many who get stuck in the traffic jams of scientific or socio-historical analysis of whether or not these things could have really happened. You know the type! You might even be the type! To that I respond, welcome to Emmanuel Church where I often remind folks that, yes, it might not have happened, but “just because it didn’t happen, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
What is opened up to us by studying these three women? Well, nothing less than heaven’s gates! I think that their stories teach us that if the healing power of Jesus is available to folks on the extreme ends of the spectrum of honor and shame, surely it is available to you and me. This healing power of Jesus is wildly inclusive of people who normally would not associate with one another. And there seem to be no obstacles too great or ailments too inconsequential for the healing power of Jesus. The three women become free to live their lives in thanksgiving. They become free to excel in their own generous undertakings in the expanding community.
It’s ironic (and wrong, in my opinion) that this message of hope about how the healing love of Jesus is for everyone, gets used as a perverse measuring rod of people’s faith, which is then used to find “belief” lacking. Sometimes the measuring rod is external and sometimes it is internal. I want to remind you that in Mark’s Gospel, the disciples consistently lacked trust, and regularly failed to understand what they had witnessed firsthand. And the message and ministry of Jesus was entrusted to them! Despair and fear are the norm throughout Mark. So if you are frequently feeling despair or fear, or feel that your trust in the Love of God is very small, Mark is the Gospel for you. The healing and transformative love of God through Jesus goes on, believe it or not, understand it or not, consciously permit it or not! I think the message in Mark is that if you hang around Jesus, you just might experience healing whether or not you have faith, whether or not you put your whole trust in his love. The narrative arc of the whole Bible is about God’s trust, God’s faith, in people, no matter how untrustworthy and unbelievable we are).
I want to say something about what I think hanging around Jesus could mean for folks who are sitting in an Episcopal church on a July Sunday morning. I don’t think it has anything to do with giving intellectual assent to a fairy tale, but it does require a leap or two of the imagination. For example, it might mean imagining that Jesus’ body is no longer in the world except through communities of Christians, as I suggested last week. It might mean imagining that the Church is the body and blood of Christ, that is, the form and the life of Christ. The late Godfrey Diekmann, OSB (a Benedictine monk) once asked, “what difference does it make if the bread and wine turn into the Body and Blood of Christ and we don’t?” The difference might mean claiming our healing power.
Being the body and blood of Christ does mean exercising discipline. Exercising the discipline of community is the difference between going to church and being the Church. We have a call, an invitation, to be powerfully healing and transformative in a place where the person you least want to live with always lives, with the awareness that sometimes that person is your very own self, as Henri Nouwen once said. [1] Being the Body and Blood of Christ is about submitting to being interrupted, about being jostled and pressed by the crowds, and about going out of our way for people who are desperate for healing for themselves or for others, whether they are prominent, honorable, and going through the proper channels, or they are anonymous, shame-filled, and grabbing for whatever they can get their hands on.
In each and every one of us lie both the hunger for healing and the power to offer healing to one another. Maybe you remember the parable told by Rabbi Chaim of Romshishok, who often began his talks with this description of hell and heaven. [2]
I first went to see Hell and the sight was horrifying. Rows of tables were laden with platters of sumptuous food, yet the people seated around the tables were pale and emaciated, moaning in hunger. As I came closer, I understood their predicament. Every person held a full spoon, but both arms were splinted with wooden slats so no-one could bend either elbow to bring the food to their own mouth. It broke my heart to hear the tortured groans of these poor people as they held their food so near but could not consume it.
Next I went to visit Heaven. I was surprised to see the same setting I had witnessed in Hell – row after row of long tables laden with food. But in contrast to Hell, the people here in Heaven were sitting contentedly talking with each other, obviously sated from their sumptuous meal. As I came closer, I was amazed to discover that here, too, each person had arms splinted on wooden slats that prevented elbows from bending. How, then, did they manage to eat? As I watched, one picked up their spoon and dug it into the dish before them. Then they stretched across the table and fed the person across from them! The recipient of this kindness thanked them and returned the favor by leaning across the table to feed their benefactor. I suddenly understood. Heaven and Hell offer the same circumstances and conditions. The critical difference is in the way the people treat each other. I ran back to Hell to share this solution with the poor souls trapped there. I whispered in the ear of one starving person, “You do not have to go hungry. Use your spoon to feed your neighbor, who will surely return the favor and feed you.” “You expect me to feed the detestable person sitting across the table?” said the person angrily. “I would rather starve than give that one the pleasure of eating!”
The other day when Bishop Sean Rowe was elected to be the Episcopal Church’s next Presiding Bishop, he spoke to the convention about this moment in our Church and in our country, quoting Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk (I’m on a monk-quoting roll today.) Merton wrote: “In a time of drastic change, one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case, one loses touch with the present and its obscure but dynamic possibilities. What really matters is openness, readiness, attention and courage to face risk.” I’d add, for the sake of healing, in other words, for the sake of the Gospel. Nevia, Stella, and Mariah all had openness, readiness, attention and courage, and we are called to have it too.
You know, Jesus followers were called “the people of the way.” What is the way? My wise brother-in-law (not a monk) once said, “However far out of your way you are willing to go, that is the way.” It’s about the practice of supporting one another, of learning how to disagree in love, of developing trust-worthiness in one another and holding ourselves and one another accountable, of forgiving (and forgiving and forgiving), and of celebrating one another’s gifts, and of healing one another. Exercising the discipline of community is about experiencing the joy, the honor, and the privilege of making burdens light for other folks and noticing when the power of healing has been transferred, when it has gone out of us with or without our permission, we are simply serving as vessels of God’s grace. As Paul exhorts the Jesus-followers in Corinth, we are to excel in generosity in what we undertake, so that the one who has gathered much does not have too much, and the one who has gathered little, does not have too little, and everyone has what they need in a fair balance. (Paul was reminding the people of the Torah, by the way.) This is the Biblical vision of the beloved community.
- Henri Nouwen, “Moving from Solitude to Community to Ministry,” Leadership, Spring 1995.
- Rabbi Chaim Elchanan Tzadikov of Romshishok, Lithuania, is credited with this story known as Allegory of the Long Spoons. Adaptation from Yiddish by Grian A. Cutanda, 2019, available online.