Faithful Action

 

A Sermon preached on Sunday 30 June (Pentecost VI) at Christ the King, Frankfurt

Lamentations 3.21-33, 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, Mark 5:21-43

After the service today, Monica has kindly invited us to a “sweet celebration” on the occasion of Ivana’s first birthday and baptism. We are promised cake and finger food. I don't know if there will be sandwiches, but no matter, as I have a sandwich to offer to you from today's gospel reading, a so-called a Markan sandwich. This is a term used to describe a technique Mark uses in his gospel of sandwiching one story between two halves of another. This morning it is the woman suffering from haemorrhages who is sandwiched between two parts of the story of Jairus’ daughter. Mark uses this method because he believes that the two stories inform and enrich one another, and that is certainly the case today.

Both stories involve women who desire/need healing. There are also some differences, one involves a grown woman, the other a child. The girl has someone to act for her, the woman has to act for herself. It is somewhat ironic that on a day when we will be naming Ivana at her baptism the two women in the story are not named, which sadly is far too often the case, and not just in the Bible. We are still rediscovering the contributions of some hidden women to art and science. And yet, by making two women the focus of this story, Mark is saying women count, women matter, women have agency, and women have faith – strong faith. Most of all, both stories are about faith: faith as a response to a need, faithful action, and Jesus’ own faithful response – his love in action.

Jairus fears for his daughter’s life, but he also has hope. He has faith in Jesus’ power to heal her: “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live:” (Mark 5:23) His trust in Jesus and in Jesus’ power, as at least an agent of God, is not in vain. Even when she is supposed to have died Jesus first reassures him, “Do not fear, only believe,” (5:36) and then brings her back from the dead. Jairus’ great love for his daughter was rewarded by Jesus’ act of love.

The woman suffering from haemorrhages seems to have no one to care for her, no one who can come to Jesus and ask him to act. She acts on her own behalf but – like Jairus – still has hope and faith in Jesus’ power to heal her, even by just touching his clothes. And as we heard she is healed, immediately (one of Mark’s favourite words – 3 times in this passage alone). What does Jesus mean by “Daughter, your faith has made you well”? (5:34) It was Jesus’ power that healed her, but it was her faith in that power that brought her to that place and motivated her to touch his cloak. Without that faithful action, that physical movement towards Jesus, that coming into his presence, there would have been no healing for her, nor for Jairus’ daughter.

As you all know, we are celebrating a baptism today and in just a moment following this sermon we will renew our baptismal covenant. That covenant is also all about faith in action. First – in a series of calls and responses – we affirm our belief in the basic tenets of our Trinitarian faith. Then we promise to put that faith into action, to make it a guideline for how we live, beginning with the regular fellowship, worship, and prayer that sustains our faith.

More than ever, the world needs more true, genuinely faithful followers of Christ. The evil the baptismal covenant calls us to resist is real and present. We see it in terrorist attacks, in the ongoing wars, in antisemitism, racism, and all forms of discrimination. We need to set the proclamation by word and deed of the Good News of God in Christ up against those expressions of Christianity that have little to no basis in Scripture and in Christ’s life and teaching: those that preach Christian nationalism, teach hatred of the other, and proclaim selfishness, greed, and envy.

When a politician belonging to a party that calls itself “Christian” advocates sending people back to countries and places where they are in great danger, they are not loving their neighbour as their self. The Anglican Church of Canada has an extra question in their baptismal covenant, one that I wish we had in ours: “Will you strive to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation and respect, sustain, and renew the life of the earth?” Too often both politicians and people are only willing to take action against climate change and for the care of creation if and when it comes at no cost to us, and when no change in our lifestyle is required. Yet to help is always also to give of oneself. When the unnamed woman touches Jesus’ cloak and is healed, he is “immediately aware that power had gone forth from him.” (Mark 5) Later Jesus gives all of himself for us, on the Cross.

At the same time, while I’m a fan of our baptismal covenant and of the promises we make and reaffirm, we can also make ourselves too important! When we are confronted with a long list of things to do to save the world, we can easily get worried that we are not doing enough, or we feel that the world is not getting better, or we fear that we are too few to make a difference. That is why we need to strike a proper balance between our actions and God’s actions. In the end it does not depend on us, but on God who works in and through us, as well as directly in the world: “Do not fear, only believe,” Jesus says. We need to take that to heart.

In fact, sometimes the only faithful act possible is to place our needs and our fears in God’s hands. In that moment when we feel most lost or desperate or depressed our hope is our faith: Faith in God the Creator, faith in the God who heals, faith in the God of love, faith in the God who brings new life. The author of Lamentations, writing at one of the lowest points in Israel’s history, right after the fall and destruction of Jerusalem believed that God will make even this situation right again: “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.” (Lamentations 3:21) And in both Gospel stories we heard this morning, both Jairus and the unnamed woman react to a desperate situation, a beloved child who was dying, a debilitating and isolating illness that could not be healed, by placing their greatest need in God’s hands. The words of the first verse of the hymn “Abide with me” summarise our hope:

When other helpers fail and comforts flee

Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me

Today’s Gospel, as well as the OT lesson, are about faith: faith as our response to a great need, our own faithful action, and most of all the faithful response of God in Jesus. In the end, only God’s unending and unlimited love and faithfulness count. Finishing with the refrain from another hymn that I love, “Great is Thy faithfulness,” a refrain that is a paraphrase of the first lines from today’s reading from Lamentations:

Morning by morning new mercies I see;

all I have needed Thy hand hath provided:

great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Amen.

Who is this?

 

A Sermon preached on Sunday 23 June (Pentecost VI) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden and St. Christoph, Mainz

Job 38:1-11, 2 Corinthians 6:1-13, Mark 4:35-41

Have you noticed how both our first reading from Job begins and the Gospel passage from Mark Gospel ends with almost the same question? Who is this? God asks: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:1) and the disciples ask: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41) You might think that these two questions, one addressed by God to a pretty miserable human being and the other addressed by humans to the Son of God can have nothing to do with each other. But they do. The Bible has a lot to do with identity, its stories tell us who we are, or who we should be, who God is, and most importantly, how we – God and humanity - should relate to one another.

On the surface, the answer to those questions that the story of Job seems to give is not a good one. Humanity, specifically the human Job, suffers without any fault of his own, and when God turns up in chapter 38 of that book, he puts Job down. The book of Job is not usually where we expect to find good news. Job is a wealthy and God-fearing man with a comfortable life and a large family. At the beginning of the story, which we think has an ancient folktale as its basis, God asks Satan (literally “the adversary or accuser'') for his opinion of Job's piety: “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.” (Job 1:8) When Satan states that Job would turn away from God if he were to lose everything, “But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face,” (Job 1:11 God agrees to this wager and allows him to take everything away. And so, Job loses family, wealth, home, and health, and has to defend himself against three unsympathetic friends, who assume and tell Job that he must have done something to deserve this punishment.

Job does not turn away from God, but he does demand to speak to God to understand why he has been punished “O that I had one to hear me! Let the Almighty answer me! O that I had the indictment written by my adversary!” (Job 31:35) which he hopes to be able to answer “I would give him an account of all my steps; like a prince I would approach him.” (Job 31:37)

And so here, towards the end of the book of Job, we find him finally meeting God. But God doesn’t answer his question, God does not explain God’s actions, and God doesn’t apologize. Instead, God asks Job a series (38 in total) of impossible questions, that are meant to show how much Job, and we, do not know and understand and to put him, and his problems into perspective.

The Book of Job is good for a couple of things. It counteracts the idea that only good things happen to good people and therefore bad things to bad people, a notion that is not only contradicted by experience, but that has been much abused to justify oppression and discrimination and to place blame on particular groups of people.

The Book of Job also puts us in our place and acts as a useful corrective to the Genesis creation story and to Psalm 8 that I quoted from in my weekly email. We have abused the exalted position as beings “made a little lower than God and crowned with glory and honour (and) given dominion over the works of your hands.” (Psalm 8:5-6) to justify the excessive and sometimes irreparable exploitation of God’s works. We are not the centre of the universe, God is, and while we are made in God’s image, we are not God. Our relationship with God must be marked by humility.

And yet, God appearing to Job, God entering into a conversation with him, God giving him a unique experience of the divine – these are all pointers towards a key part of our identity: We are God’s Beloved, we are not the centre of the universe, but we are at the centre of God’s attention and love. On the one hand God appears as the unknowable creator, on the other as a God desiring relationship.

Turning to Mark’s Gospel, I can understand why the disciples were a little dissatisfied with Jesus’ initial reaction. How can he sleep when there’s a storm going on, how can he not understand and accept just how frightened his companions are? Their fear and lack of trust come from their lack of understanding of Jesus’ identity. This lack of understanding, as expressed in the final question, “Who then is this, that even the wind  and the sea obey him?” persists even after this demonstration of his power, even when he accesses the same powers that God wields, just as we heard depicted in the Psalm (107): “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.” (Psalm 107:28-29)

One answer to the question, “Who then is this?” is that this person, this Jesus is God. Just as the Book of Job corrects the idea that only good things happen to good people, we must avoid a new bad idea that Jesus in some way guarantees physical protection and freedom from harm – and idea that has proven to be fatal at times (e.g. when handling poisonous snakes). The disciples were saved from harm at this time, but that is not a guarantee for every occasion. We are not protected from pain, suffering and death – it might even be part of our path – but we are always guaranteed God’s loving presence. Wind and storms will come our way! In his commentary on Mark’s Gospel William Barclay writes. “When the disciples realised the presence of Jesus with them, the storm became a calm. Once they knew he was there, fearless peace entered their hearts. To voyage with Jesus is to voyage in peace even in a storm.”[1]

And quoting from a sermon[2] I read on today’s readings, “Like Job, we have caught the ear of the one who laid the cornerstone of earth; like the disciples, we are never alone, no matter what happens to that boat, or to us.”

Who are we? We are God’s creatures, God’s beloved, made in God’s image. Who is God? God is the unknowable, the creator and sustainer of all and the God who seeks relationship with us. Who is Jesus? Jesus is God and Jesus is relationship turned human.

What God in Jesus offers us, just as he offered Job and the disciples, is relationship, his presence and his love in the middle of whatever trials and storms we have to face. We only find our full identity only in relationship with God and one another.

Amen.

 

 

---

[1] The Gospel of Mark, 133

[2] By Rev. James Liggett. See https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/suffering-pentecost-5-b-june-23-2024/