I've created this as a space where you can view a sermon I've preached and learn a bit about me in a way that's accessible and convenient for you.
Sermon from whitney wilkinson on Vimeo.
I tell you this story because this morning’s text is one of those that we like to gloss over, to use as an example of trusting God so that God will heal us. We flippantly throw around Jesus’ words to Jairus “Do not fear, only believe” and say that if we really trust God, God will heal us. I’m pretty sure the family in the hospital had been told this by someone at some point. I think sometimes the way we read scripture can do more damage than we realize. Sometimes, we can read scripture as a rule book of what to do and what not to do and then this story would go something like this: If you have enough faith, and act on it, God will heal you. We can also sanitize or spiritualize this story. We can say that this hemorrhaging woman wasn’t really sick, she just represented spiritual sickness and then she wasn’t “healed” she was through Jesus forgiven of her sins. If you’ve heard this story before, you probably read it like I sometimes have, sanitizing it a bit like this:
So, here’s Jesus, walking among a crowd of people that is pressing on him at every side and Jairus, the synagogue leader breathlessly comes to him. His daughter’s so sick that forgetting his religious and political power, Jairus throws himself at Jesus’ feet and begs Jesus to lay hands on her so that she will be saved and live. Jesus agrees and so they rush through the crowd to his house but it’s like trying to rush through mud, there is such a huge crowd following and pressing in on him it’s hard to move. It’s smelly, dirty, loud, chaotic and is about to get worse.
Well, the text says she has suffered under many doctors trying to cure her and has in the Greek, spent ALL of herself and instead of getting better has gone further into the bad or evil. She wouldn’t have even been allowed into the synagogue to worship for 12 years because she was unclean. She’s at the end of her rope and she’s so desperate to be saved she’ll risk her life for it. Hoping to be saved from the torment of this bleeding, she touches Jesus’ dirty, worn garment and immediately her fountain of blood dries up. Jesus, feeling power go out of him, asks who touched him. The sometimes-slow disciples cheeky response of “look at the crowd! How can you ask who touched you?” is pretty spot-on because everybody’s touching everybody, it’s a mob scene. The woman, afraid of what will come of her, trembles and falls at Jesus’ feet and tells him the whole truth. Why is she trembling? It’s Jesus, she’s healed! She should be dancing, not shaking! Except that by touching Jesus with her blood, she’s made him unclean in the eyes of Israel, especially in the eyes of the Jewish ruler Jairus who he’s walking with. No wonder she’s shaking.
While this miraculous healing of daughter and community is happening, Jairus receives bad news that his daughter is dead. Jesus refuses to listen to these words and says to Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.” They continue to Jairus’ house and find not just some mild grieving but a scene even more intense than my experience with the family in the hospital. The text says that the house was in uproar, that the family were rioting, weeping and wailing in grief. Jesus tells them that the girl isn’t dead but only sleeping. Then, they ridicule him, because it really is a ridiculous thing to say. As ridiculous as letting an unclean woman touch him to heal her. He takes the little girl’s parents in to her and takes her hand saying, talitha coum. Little girl, get up, and she did and the ridiculous became the amazing as she began to walk about and Jesus, proving she really was alive, told them to give her something to eat.
How different this story is from the sanitized, spiritualized version we might be familiar with. In this story we find people so desperate to be made well and saved that they ignore cultural, political and religious customs to do it. Jairus, a great leader of the synagogue, throws himself at the feet of this wandering, trouble-making traveler. The hemorrhaging woman risks making everyone unclean including Jesus because it’s her last chance to be healed, and touches him without even asking first (because she’s sure she would never get permission). And what happens is healing not just for those bold individuals but for an entire community and an entire family. The woman’s relationship with the people who have shunned her for 12 years is repaired, she is again a daughter of Israel. The family who are rioting in their grief are amazed to have their 12 year old daughter back. This kind of extravagant grace is utterly ridiculous, but so is Easter. That Jesus who was killed would be resurrected from the dead to forever conquer death and sin and to raise the whole world with him is utterly ridiculous. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
So what truth can we find in this story? Personally, I have no desire to believe in a God who would just heal the worthy, those who pray hard enough and leave the rest to sickness and death. But I also have no desire to believe in a God who has nothing to do with people who are suffering or facing death. So where is God in this? In Jesus, we see that God’s healing is about not just an individual but about healing broken religious, cultural and political systems. We see that Jesus did not shy away from the unclean but allowed himself to be labeled as unclean so that all would be made clean and the practice of shunning people would be overcome. We see that even death does not stop the power of God to bring wholeness and make people well. I still have so many questions about this story and about my experience with that family in the hospital. But if our faith is not concerned with questioning then it is very weak indeed. If in the resurrection we truly believe that God conquered death and sin, why would we think that our questions could possibly conquer God? So, I’ll share my questions with you, hoping that we can discover parts of the answers together or perhaps even more questions that lead us to knowing God and ourselves more fully.
I am a P.C.(U.S.A.) minister who spent the last 2 years serving as a Mission Associate at Fitzroy Presbyterian Church in that lovely wee green country with far too much bad press, Northern Ireland. While at Fitzroy, I was privileged to lead worship, provide pastoral care, work with young people, help the church engage its local community, develop work with Roma people, get to know those who may have been overlooked in my congregation and work for peace and reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics and people of varying ethnic backgrounds. It was a challenge and a joy to be in Belfast, and I look forward to what God calls me to next. Since returning from Belfast, I have been supply preaching, working with differently-abled students at a local college and serving with the World Council of Churches in Geneva. I was invited to speak at a local church on my experience in Geneva, which was covered by our local newspaper. You can read that article here. I was also asked to write an article about my time at the World Council of Churches for the most recent Presbytery of New Covenant newsletter, which can be found here (page 3).
I've been invited to guest preach frequently and have made documents of some of those sermons available to you online at the following links:
Sermon April 24, 2011 (Easter) "Do Not Fear, Go and Tell..." preached at Nicea Presbyterian Church, Victoria, Texas
Sermon May 1, 2011 "Trusting Thomas" preached at First Presbyterian Church, Victoria, Texas
Sermon May 8, 2011 "Love One Another Deeply" preached at First Presbyterian Church, Victoria, Texas
Below, you'll find video of a sermon I preached at Fitzroy Presbyterian Church in Belfast based on Mark's account of the hemhorraging woman. The reading is done by Andrea Kuhla, a German friend of mine who is training for the ministry in the Lutheran Church. So, sit back with a cup of coffee and have a listen. I hope you find this sermon video helpful and would love to hear from you with any questions or comments. I can best be reached at wlw04@hotmail.com or 361-389-1916.
Thanks for stopping by; I hope you enjoy it! Also, my main blog "Glimpses of Grace" is linked to on the right. It's a place where I record moments of encountering God in everyday ways. That will also tell you a lot about me. I look forward to getting to know your congregation better! My prayers are with you in your time of discernment.
Peace,
Whitney
Sermon: "Being Made Well" based on Mark 5:21-43
Sermon from whitney wilkinson on Vimeo.
"Being Made Well", a sermon by Rev. Whitney Wilkinson
As part of my training for ministry, I spent a summer 3 years ago working as a Chaplain in a large inner-city hospital in Atlanta. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the presence of the chaplain didn’t always create the calming effect we hoped for. Sometimes I would enter a room while making rounds and just smile saying, “Hi, I’m Whitney, I’m the Chaplain, can I sit with you?” which would get the response of a stricken face and “Nooo!” like I was the angel of death, only there to bring bad news. In some ways, this wasn’t totally off base, though, because a large part of my role was doing just that: going with doctors to tell families the worst news they’d ever hear. Some nights were longer than others, but I remember one terrible night.
I had two families to tend to at the same time, they were both placed in family rooms in the emergency room and were sitting on the hard, plasticy couches, both were stricken with grief, but in different ways. The first room had a small family who were mourning the loss of their 90-year-old Mother, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother and while they were very distraught, she had suffered with a long illness and they felt “she was ready.” They quietly mourned and we read Psalm 23 several times. A few doors down, and a world away, was the other family. This African American family had at least 12 people crammed into the tiny room as they awaited news on the 19-year-old boy who had suddenly collapsed while playing basketball with his friends. I stood there, outside the door, with the doctor who was wiping tears away from her eyes (as was I) and waited to enter the room and tell that family that their world had just collapsed. We waited because they were praying. Clearly from a charismatic, Pentecostal tradition, they stood in a circle in the tiny room with their arms raised in the air and all prayed out loud at once saying things like “RESTORE him! HEAL him! SAVE him!” We had to wait until they finished and then go in to say that their prayers weren’t answered. Terrible. When the doctor told them, through tears, that the boy had an undiagnosed heart condition and didn’t make it, chaos erupted. The father threw himself on the floor, beating his fists and wailing. A sister tried to throw a chair. The mother crumpled into a chair, shaking and keening. As I sat with them for a long time, all I could do was hold their hands, and just be there. I couldn’t tell them that it was God’s will for their son to die. I couldn’t tell them that they would be whole someday, because I didn’t know that. I couldn’t tell them why God didn’t heal their son. All I could do was sit with them, cry with them, be with them on the worst day of their life.
I tell you this story because this morning’s text is one of those that we like to gloss over, to use as an example of trusting God so that God will heal us. We flippantly throw around Jesus’ words to Jairus “Do not fear, only believe” and say that if we really trust God, God will heal us. I’m pretty sure the family in the hospital had been told this by someone at some point. I think sometimes the way we read scripture can do more damage than we realize. Sometimes, we can read scripture as a rule book of what to do and what not to do and then this story would go something like this: If you have enough faith, and act on it, God will heal you. We can also sanitize or spiritualize this story. We can say that this hemorrhaging woman wasn’t really sick, she just represented spiritual sickness and then she wasn’t “healed” she was through Jesus forgiven of her sins. If you’ve heard this story before, you probably read it like I sometimes have, sanitizing it a bit like this:
Okay, so there’s this woman and she has a little problem with bleeding. So she puts a wee plaster on it and marches out to Jesus with her long blond hair flowing behind her and she walks up to Jesus—who also has long, flowing blond hair--and with a flourish grabs the hem of his long, purple velvet garment that’s miraculously dust-free and then shazaam her little problem stops (with maybe a little blast of light) and she’s healed. Oh and there’s also a cute little girl with a bow in her hair and she gets healed too. Oh, that’s so nice. But, friends, that’s not this story. We’re going to look again at this story and hear what it’s really saying. And then when we’re tempted to glean easy answers out of it, we’re going to remember that family in the hospital and not come away with any conclusion we wouldn’t tell them to their face in their moment of grief. But still, we will learn some important truths about God and people here.
So, here’s Jesus, walking among a crowd of people that is pressing on him at every side and Jairus, the synagogue leader breathlessly comes to him. His daughter’s so sick that forgetting his religious and political power, Jairus throws himself at Jesus’ feet and begs Jesus to lay hands on her so that she will be saved and live. Jesus agrees and so they rush through the crowd to his house but it’s like trying to rush through mud, there is such a huge crowd following and pressing in on him it’s hard to move. It’s smelly, dirty, loud, chaotic and is about to get worse.
A woman who has had a flow of blood for twelve years (remember Jairus’ daughter is 12 years old, these stories are meant to go together) has forced her way into the crowd. But this is very dangerous. There’s no wee plaster, the text in Greek says that this woman had a fountain of blood. And knowing Jewish cleanliness codes this means that this woman was most likely making everyone around her unclean by bleeding all over them. They could have reacted violently against her because of this and probably would soon. So why would she risk it?
Well, the text says she has suffered under many doctors trying to cure her and has in the Greek, spent ALL of herself and instead of getting better has gone further into the bad or evil. She wouldn’t have even been allowed into the synagogue to worship for 12 years because she was unclean. She’s at the end of her rope and she’s so desperate to be saved she’ll risk her life for it. Hoping to be saved from the torment of this bleeding, she touches Jesus’ dirty, worn garment and immediately her fountain of blood dries up. Jesus, feeling power go out of him, asks who touched him. The sometimes-slow disciples cheeky response of “look at the crowd! How can you ask who touched you?” is pretty spot-on because everybody’s touching everybody, it’s a mob scene. The woman, afraid of what will come of her, trembles and falls at Jesus’ feet and tells him the whole truth. Why is she trembling? It’s Jesus, she’s healed! She should be dancing, not shaking! Except that by touching Jesus with her blood, she’s made him unclean in the eyes of Israel, especially in the eyes of the Jewish ruler Jairus who he’s walking with. No wonder she’s shaking.
But Jesus, willing to take her uncleanness upon himself to save her, says “Daughter (remember there are 2 daughters in this story), your faith has saved you, go in peace and be made well, whole, healthy from your affliction.” The language in Greek’s really important here: Jesus says her faith has saved her. This word is similar to being saved from mortal danger, from an enemy. But then he proclaims that she’s been made well: this word means something more, this is linked to a Hebrew word used in Leviticus, the very holiness code that would’ve condemned this woman as unclean. Jesus tells her that, being made well, she is now clean. She is restored to full standing in the Jewish community, no longer an outcast. Jesus has not just healed her, he’s healed her relationship with the entire community.
While this miraculous healing of daughter and community is happening, Jairus receives bad news that his daughter is dead. Jesus refuses to listen to these words and says to Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.” They continue to Jairus’ house and find not just some mild grieving but a scene even more intense than my experience with the family in the hospital. The text says that the house was in uproar, that the family were rioting, weeping and wailing in grief. Jesus tells them that the girl isn’t dead but only sleeping. Then, they ridicule him, because it really is a ridiculous thing to say. As ridiculous as letting an unclean woman touch him to heal her. He takes the little girl’s parents in to her and takes her hand saying, talitha coum. Little girl, get up, and she did and the ridiculous became the amazing as she began to walk about and Jesus, proving she really was alive, told them to give her something to eat.
How different this story is from the sanitized, spiritualized version we might be familiar with. In this story we find people so desperate to be made well and saved that they ignore cultural, political and religious customs to do it. Jairus, a great leader of the synagogue, throws himself at the feet of this wandering, trouble-making traveler. The hemorrhaging woman risks making everyone unclean including Jesus because it’s her last chance to be healed, and touches him without even asking first (because she’s sure she would never get permission). And what happens is healing not just for those bold individuals but for an entire community and an entire family. The woman’s relationship with the people who have shunned her for 12 years is repaired, she is again a daughter of Israel. The family who are rioting in their grief are amazed to have their 12 year old daughter back. This kind of extravagant grace is utterly ridiculous, but so is Easter. That Jesus who was killed would be resurrected from the dead to forever conquer death and sin and to raise the whole world with him is utterly ridiculous. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
So what truth can we find in this story? Personally, I have no desire to believe in a God who would just heal the worthy, those who pray hard enough and leave the rest to sickness and death. But I also have no desire to believe in a God who has nothing to do with people who are suffering or facing death. So where is God in this? In Jesus, we see that God’s healing is about not just an individual but about healing broken religious, cultural and political systems. We see that Jesus did not shy away from the unclean but allowed himself to be labeled as unclean so that all would be made clean and the practice of shunning people would be overcome. We see that even death does not stop the power of God to bring wholeness and make people well. I still have so many questions about this story and about my experience with that family in the hospital. But if our faith is not concerned with questioning then it is very weak indeed. If in the resurrection we truly believe that God conquered death and sin, why would we think that our questions could possibly conquer God? So, I’ll share my questions with you, hoping that we can discover parts of the answers together or perhaps even more questions that lead us to knowing God and ourselves more fully.
- Does God heal people, political and religious systems?
- Is God present in suffering even when physical healing does not happen?
- What is the power of prayer to engage us with God and each other in our moments of deepest despair even if our prayers aren’t answered as we would like?
- Does the resurrection change or impact any of this? If Jesus not only was raised to new life but redefined what living is all about, how can we value life in new ways?
- If Jesus was willing to be made unclean in order to heal, are we? Who do we call “untouchable”? Who are we afraid to engage with because of religious, cultural or political systems? What of our own selves do we consider untouchable and ignore rather than let be healed?
These are some of my questions, and I have many more. But returning to the story I began with, there is one thing I am certain of. In the midst of weeping at failed prayers and wailing over lost life, God was with that family. And they were with each other. And God is still with them, even if their child isn’t. I don’t believe God brought about the death of that teenager and I don’t know why God didn’t heal him, but I do know that God was mourning with that family that day, I felt it. And a God who mourns with us, a God who is present in suffering, a God who will one day make all things well and calls us to participate in healing of systems of separation and oppression, a God who is not dead but alive, is a God I can believe in. Amen.
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