Shuush
| Record Number: | 3 |
| Date: | Sunday, June 28, 2009 |
| Title: | Shuush |
| Author: | Pastor Ken Hilston |
Miracles, only a baby first step in the faith journey, made most people MORE, not less, self-centered, if their faith stopped, with the miracle. "Do a miracle, for ME!" And, if He doesn’t do what I want, He’s history. Because of all the misconceptions about them, Jesus after miracles, said, "SHUUSH, don’t tell anyone about this!"
I was fortunate enough to see a play in Boston about miracles, though it wasn’t the one I wanted to see that night. It was called, "Well of the Saints," by John Millington Synge (Sin). It begins with an old blind couple in Ireland who have built for themselves a marvelous dream world that cannot be contradicted, since they can’t see (obviously this has very little to do just with real physical blindness). In this fantasy world, they believe whatever they want to make up for their lack of sight.
Along comes a Priest with healing holy water. Of course they jump at the chance to have their sight restored. Of course, as soon as they can see clearly, they find their imaginative view of their spouse is a total fantasy, one they cannot bear seeing. The husband was the first one cured, and when sighted, is sure the youngest, prettiest maiden there at the healing, must be his wife, because that is what he imagined, and of course, wanted. Of course, she was not. Of course, that didn’t do too much to help their relationship. And when sighted, the wife wasn’t very enamored of her husband.
After the initial healing wears off, and they need a more permanent cure, they refuse. They want to go back to their previous state of blindness, and remain safely in the embrace of fantasy and soothing obliviousness. It was a tragically sad comedy.
As I saw in the play, among other things, *any kind of healing, needs a new life to go with their new reality, to truly take advantage of the healing. The cure, was only the very first, treacherous step. As Jesus saw with the healing of the ten lepers, for nine, they only received the minimum healing, where only their skin changed, and not their lives. For the couple at the well, they didn’t care at all about the faith, only the miraculous change, that wasn’t what they expected or wanted. The faith only made their life more difficult, rather than enlightening. After the miracle, they were less likely to start, let alone continue, on a faith journey.
Let’s see what the people could see of our Lord if they looked beyond that power and what they assumed was the importance of the miraculous. Tucked in-between the encounter with Jairus (JAI-rus) and his dying daughter, is a rather strange incident that provides a glimpse into a strange dusty corner of the life of Jesus which truly shows the deep abiding love of our Lord, more than just a healer.
There is a part of us that knows Jesus deserves our greatest respect, and we assume, He wants that and it is important. The crowd follows, a great crowd, first from His preaching and then from His support of the ruler of the synagogue. The crowd is showing great respect, impressed by Jesus in several ways. Jesus also however knows, that yes, *the crowd gives, but with a whim, the crowd can most quickly take away.
Then comes a strange interruption that reveals much about our Lord, yet also jeopardizes this crowd support: a woman with a recurrent hemorrhage. She interrupts the procession. Someone with a hemorrhage means she is ritually unclean, as well as a non entity, most unlike the importance of Jairus. She is not sophisticated enough to handle things in a proper way, either from the thoughts of society, or the faith. Here is a woman who only has, what one theologian called, a "mere trace" of faith. She only heard a rumor that he might be able to help. She knew nothing of His teachings or what a miracle does and does not mean.
Her only qualification is: she is a desperate, nobody. She is a nobody, that nobody would even give her the time of day. She is but a hopefully forgotten annoyance. She is an outsider, far outside the even marginally accepted boundary of life.
Whether she knows about the importance of what is going on with Jesus and Jairus or not, she sneaks up behind our Lord with the most rudimentary crude magical faith. "All I need to do is touch his garment, and the torment will be over."
She doesn’t face Him.
She doesn’t address Him by name.
She doesn’t ask.
She is afraid Jesus would treat her like everyone else once He got to know her.
She doesn’t want to take any chance her life story could get in the way of her relief.
She only wants to beat all the odds she had already lost in life, and sneak in and out of His life so fast, He doesn’t have a chance to ignore her.
If in all of life, even the lowliest of people ignore you, why could you ever assume a great person might be the exception? Her only chance was to try and trick Him into releasing some of His magical power before He knew what hit Him. She doesn’t even care anything about Him, only the desperate drive for some sort of healing from Him. She only sees herself as a type of petty thief, whose only hope is she doesn’t get caught! What you don’t deserve, you have to grab.
As Mark records, she only grew worse, with any other help she tried to receive. This Jesus was now the end of the line. She sneaks up behind Him because she heard some reports, and thinks, "If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well." Immediately she is healed from the touch. Immediately Jesus feels a loss of power. *She in the most ungracious of ways both invades, yet also deeply touches His life, and He touched hers. Initially, all Jesus knows is she touched Him when He says, "who touched me?"
In some ways, this is no different than riding a crowded subway car at rush hour and bump into someone you will never see again. *Yet, for our Lord, even incidental contact, a glancing blow, brings hope. For our Lord, it doesn’t take much to be a part of our lives, even when it was not our intention!
So yes, our Lord does have power, but it is used in most unusual ways, today in an interruption, an accidental encounter. He also has the power to call a halt to the great crowd’s procession in another emergency that all feel is of primary importance. Supporting Jairus would get Jesus points with the crowd. Postponing that support for a less than nobody, loses points with the crowd. Of course, our Lord has the power to lose points and antagonize the majority, not the kind of power that they want to see exhibited in Jesus. These are the kind of associations and lack of "proper power" that in the end, got the crowds to offer Him up to the Sanhedrin and Pilate for crucifixion.
And isn’t this a little disturbing to us, having such access to our Lord with only a faint trace of faith? We like to be able to predict what is expected of someone when they approach the faith. There should be at least a bit of proper and appropriate protocol that our Lord deserves. Here she is healed before our Lord knows who it is. We are always concerned, and somewhat rightly so, about what precedents we set in the church by an action that we take.
Maybe we are all in the faith, too much a part of the inside of the faith to truly know what precedent our Lord set with this "faith attack?" Just when we think we know what is what, our faith is tossed around, and once again, the faith humbles us by it’s inscrutability.
When it hits the woman that she has been healed, she trembles, falls to His feet, and confesses everything. Then there is the other part of the miracle. Not only is she physically healed, but saved, she receives God’s peace and shalom, the wholeness of life in the faith. The power of our Lord not only heals, the least important part, the part that many can do, but He also has the power to change our eternal destiny! It is that vast difference between the two types of power that sets our Lord beyond anything or anyone else. And, those powers cannot be confused!
Unfortunately, most who witnessed His healings, let the healings overshadow who He is! They are the ones who missed the Lord, completely! They wind up like the couple in the play, confused, upset, growing only more distant to the faith. The woman with the hemorrhage realized the rich grace of God for someone undeserving of the faith, not something that was owed her.
Here, they simply deeply touched each other’s lives.
AMEN
