Being ready to die is seldom our goal, yet in time it is an important goal. Saul is not ready to die and yet here he is in his final battle when he and his sons will lose their lives. Being Israel’s first king has not be an easy learning curve. Saul is not settled or right with God but his time is up. To spare himself humiliation and sport in an enemy’s hand he falls on his own sword.
In the Gospel today a young girl, Jairus’s daughter is dying as is a more mature woman, though she slowly. Both reach out to Jesus for healing and time. The girl through her father, the woman on the street through her own desperate hand reaches out to Jesus. The father asks for Jesus’ aid and Jesus heads in the direction of the child. The woman made poor by doctors who can offer her no final healing, seems to steal her health. "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." We can but admire her faith and hope. What is odd is how important it is to Jesus to find her in the crowd. He has somehow felt not the tug but the draining of healing power. What seems essential is to say to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." Here is the physician of Mark’s Gospel who will always point back to faith and thus God. It is never about Jesus the person. It is always about hope met, about faith in a Higher Power. It seems that the leader of the Synagogue already has made the faith connection, the God connection. So when a deeper miracle happens, the child restored from death, all that needs to be said is, “Feed her and keep silent about what is done here.” Is that because people will confuse Jesus the man as disassociated from God the healer? Who will get the glory?
I was raised with two grandmothers. One I could be close with, my Grandmother Lewis, the other not quite so much, my Grandmother Holland. Both were at separate times diagnosed with cancer. Grandmother Holland at a younger age and I remember the Sunday we were told and that she would live maybe six months. I remember later being told the cancer had disappeared and it inexplicable according to her doctors. Was this a God miracle? It seemed so and was received as such.
My Grandmother Lewis would years later be diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer. She sought a miracle, believed God would spare her. I was often there as we cared for her until her death. I loved her much and deeply regretted her death. Yet I admired her faith and hope and somehow held to the idea she was now safe with God. Perhaps it was because in her house I had to read the Bible daily and go to Sunday school whenever I stayed there, and thus knew her faith.
Few people of faith want to die. Yet some are ready to die when the time comes. It has mostly with having made your peace with the reality that we are time limited, that we have gifts of love to give and have given them. It has to do with being right with the Source of life and having made your amends with any you have hurt. It has to do for most Christians with having known times when you reached out to God and found your way, been healed sometimes by a faith that is satisfied with just the hem of Christ’s garment, the fringe of his care that comes to us in sacrament, or quiet, or scripture, or unmerited love like a Grandmother Lewis. It is knowing these that have helped me know that if I die tomorrow I am right with life and God.
I hope tomorrow is however a long way off. I like living. I like knowing God on this plane and growing. Perhaps just this knowing is a continual reaching for Christ’s hem, so I guess I am a bit like the woman in the crowd desiring life. That works too.
No comments:
Post a Comment