Don't Look Down

Sermon for June 30, 2024
Year B, Proper 8
Mark 5:21-43

When I was a kid, every Saturday, I would wake up in time to watch The Bugs Bunny Show.  (Yes, some of us are old enough to remember a time when you couldn’t watch shows on demand but had to schedule your life around TV networks instead.)  Among those amazing cartoons was the ongoing pursuit of the Roadrunner by Wile E. Coyote.  And a recurring gag in those Roadrunner cartoons was a moment that, surprisingly, offers a lesson in following Jesus.  Hang with me.

Actually, “hang with me” captures that recurring moment in the cartoon precisely.  Over and over again, Wile E. Coyote would manage to run off the cliffs of the American Southwest in pursuit of the Roadrunner.  And over and over again, the coyote was just fine hovering there in mid-air, continuing to do whatever he’d been doing … until he looked down.  Once he looked down, of course, the magical suspension of physics was broken, and Wile E. Coyote would plummet to the rocks below.

Now, you might think I’ve messed up and written a sermon for the wrong Gospel reading.  Wile E. Coyote is a perfect illustration to go with the story of Jesus walking on the water on the Sea of Galilee and inviting Peter to step out of the boat to join him.  Well, it turns out that story isn’t in the Gospel of Mark, which is the source for most of our Gospel readings in this liturgical year.  Matthew is the only Gospel writer who includes Peter walking on the water.  But I think Wile E. Coyote can help us with today’s reading, too, these interwoven stories of Jesus healing a woman and a little girl – because in these stories, people are definitely stepping off the cliff toward Jesus.

First, I think it’s worth noting how strange this Gospel reading is.  This is a weird way to tell these stories, one healing coming in the middle of another.  It’s a miracle sandwich, the healing of the woman with the hemorrhage interrupting the story of the little girl’s healing.  So, it’s worth looking at these stories more closely to see what ties them together.

The reading opens with one of the leaders of the local synagogue falling at Jesus’ feet, begging him to heal his daughter who’s “at the point of death” (5:23).  The synagogue leader is named Jairus, but it’s interesting that the story only uses his name once.  Don’t you wonder why?  Why give him a name and then refer to him by his role all through the story – “the leader of the synagogue” (5:36)? 

I think it’s intentional, as a way to highlight the power differential here.  In each local synagogue, there was a person or two who was seen as the leader – not a rabbi but more like the top donor, a wealthy person “who could afford to provide or maintain the building as well as plan activities there.”¹  Without this guy, the life of the synagogue wouldn’t happen – so he called the shots.  And it’s this guy, the synagogue VIP, who’s seeking out the wandering rabbi, and bowing down before him, and begging for his help.  The synagogue leader has already pulled all the strings he could pull to cure his daughter.  He’s tried all his own resources, and now Jesus is his only hope.

So, Jesus agrees to go with the synagogue leader to help his daughter.  As they head off, the crowd follows, with everybody jockeying for position to be close to the miracle worker.  Among the crowd is this woman, who’s been struggling with hemorrhages for 12 years.  Now, if you, or someone you love, deal with a chronic health condition, you can identify with this woman’s situation:  “She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better but rather grew worse” (Mark 5:26).  Since Jewish healers hadn’t panned out for her, she might have even tried the Roman treatment of choice, offering money in the temples of healing gods.²  Either way, she’s out of cash and out of options.  But she’s heard about Jesus and the 10 healing episodes that have already happened by this point in Mark’s Gospel.  After doing everything she could through her own resources, she realizes Jesus is her only hope.  So, she reaches out and touches his cloak.

No one’s more surprised than Jesus by what happens next.  He feels divine power flowing out of him, but he doesn’t know where it’s gone.  “Who touched me?” he says (5:31), confusing the disciples who see all sorts of people bumping up against him.  But the woman knows the jig is up.  “In fear and trembling,” she falls down before Jesus and makes her confession (5:33).  But Jesus hears her words as a confession of faith.  He says, “Your faith has made you well” (5:34).

And now, the spotlight swings back to the synagogue leader.  People from his house have come to give him the bad news:  It’s too late for his daughter.  But Jesus catches his eye.  Maybe pointing at the woman, he says to the synagogue leader:  Hey – look what happens when you “do not fear [but] only believe” (5:36).

So Jesus, the synagogue leader, and a few disciples head off to find the girl.  As far as the people at the house are concerned, she’s clearly dead – and when Jesus says otherwise, they laugh at him.  But he presses on, leads the small group to the girl’s room, takes her hand, and speaks what sounds to us like a magical incantation – “Talitha, cum,” he says (5:41).  They would have sounded like magic words to the people hearing Mark’s Gospel back in the day, too – these words in Aramaic dropped into the Greek text.  But the irony is, those words were simply the language of the people who lived there, the everyday talk of the Son of God.  And the girl comes back to life. 

For both the synagogue leader and the bleeding woman, what happened wasn’t about magic.  It was about trust.  With the woman, Jesus wasn’t even trying to heal her.  With the little girl, the incantation was just Jesus inviting her to get out of bed and have lunch.  What mattered wasn’t Jesus’ skills as a miracle worker.  What mattered was that people like us turned to him and believed he’d provide the thing they needed most.

And, it mattered how they turned to him.  Literally and figuratively, both the woman and the synagogue leader got down on their knees.  They bowed down before him and said, Look, you’re the only one who’s got what I need.  Both of them had already done everything in their own power to bring about healing – spent the money, made the contacts, worked the system, all to no avail.  Now, they’ve let go of managing the situation themselves and stepped off the cliff – without looking down.  Instead, they’re looking Jesus in the eye.

And as they do, it’s good to note exactly what it is they’re looking for.  Interestingly, the Greek word translated in this reading as “healing” could just as well be translated as “saving.”  The woman and the synagogue leader aren’t just looking for Jesus to make them feel better.  The woman needs to be brought back into the society that for 12 years has excluded her as being ritually unclean.  The synagogue leader needs life itself restored for his beloved child.  They’ve got everything on the line.  They don’t just need healing; they need saving.  So, they’re stepping off the cliff and refusing to look down.

It turns out, this is the same image my spiritual director uses when we talk about trusting God with everything you’ve got.  Sometimes, you’ve got to walk off the cliff – especially when what you’ve tried on your own, maybe for years and years, just isn’t working for you. 

          For what it’s worth, that’s equally true for people in clerical collars as it is for anyone else.  You may have seen reports from The Episcopal Church’s General Convention this past week about the election of our new presiding bishop, the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe, who’s currently doing two jobs – serving as bishop of Northwest Pennsylvania and, simultaneously, provisional bishop of Western New York.  If he thought that was a lot, I think he realizes he’s just stepped off the cliff into something way beyond what he can manage on his own.  There was a picture of Bishop Rowe on social media the morning of the election – him walking to the convention center with a look on his face that seemed to say, “Oh, my God, what if they actually elect me…?”  But I think he knew precisely what power he’d need to draw on, because minutes before the balloting began, there was a Facebook post from one of the deputies from Northwest Pennsylvania – a photo of Bishop Rowe down on his knees, surrounded by his deputation.  The folks from Northwest Pennsylvania were gathered around him, laying hands on him, praying for him – all of them stepping right off the cliff, together. 

It is right, and a good, if not always a joyful, thing to set your trust on the living God.  For when we do – when we look Jesus in the eye and refuse to look down, when we walk out in mid-air, across the gap – we find ourselves following Jesus right on to the next piece of solid ground.  We find ourselves standing there alongside the synagogue leader and the woman with the hemorrhage – healed, and saved, and ready for the next time Jesus asks us to step off the cliff.

1.      New Interpreter’s Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon, 2003. 1817 (note).

2.      New Interpreter’s Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon, 2003. 1817 (note).