Sermon for Sunday, June 30th 2024 – Pentecost 6 – Overcome with amazement

St. Mark 5:21-43

“Overcome with amazement” 

So recalls St. Mark of the response to Jesus’ healing miracles, first of the woman with hemorrhages for twelve years so far, and of the ailing little daughter of Jewish official Jairus.

It is humbling for me to be invited to offer this sermon, as a retired Hospital Chaplain and Minister, in support of the sabbatical of my colleague Preston, as well as Deputy Rector James, and ‘Brother Andre’ (as I call him fondly!), the Venerable Ken, the Rev. Dr. Eileen – who (according to the website) was baptized at this font! – as well as Angus (2), the Choir, and Autumn et al.  James, Judy Shantz and I were among a team that shared in on-call Chaplaincy at Grand River Hospital, for many years!

For thirty years I was privileged to serve in Hospital Chaplaincy, first in Vancouver, and then at St. Mary’s General, retiring from neighbouring Grand River (and soon they are ‘getting married’, I’m pleased to say).   I was sometimes conscious of the expectations of some patients, families and colleagues that ‘a miracle was needed’.  And perhaps even more often, that my presence as a Chaplain might connote ‘the grim reaper’… 

When I was a Chaplaincy Resident at the Vancouver General Hospital, I was assigned to the Neurosurgical Program.  In those days, surgical patients came into hospital the night before, and were assigned to a room in one wing.  And post-operatively, they would wake up in a room in an adjacent wing.  Like the beloved Roman Catholic Chaplain who was remembered for visiting many patients ‘pre-op’ – and even after his own death, apparently a bedside would compress as if he was seated beside a wary patient! – I tried to visit the ‘neuro’ patients before their surgeries.  And one evening as we parted, I made the mistake of saying,: “See you on the other side.”  (meaning the other wing).  “Chaplain!” countered the patient.,   I’m not planning to die!”

And they didn’t.

But eventually, we all do.  These two remarkable episodes from St. Mark’s Gospel are sometimes equated with another of Jesus’ miracles, in the Gospel of St. John, namely raising his friend Lazarus – the brother of Mary and Martha –  ‘from the dead’.  Jesus is remembered for being so vulnerable in that moment, it is recorded with the shortest verse in the Bible:

“Jesus wept.”  (John 11:35, KJV). Because he did.

Jesus wept, just before Lazarus was restored to an earthly existence, from which he would still have to die.  In the meantime, to savour some more time with his sisters, and his friend Jesus.

As C.S. Dodds reminds us: ‘miracles take and create faith’.  Miracles take and create faith. It is also true that miracles are sometimes ‘in the eyes of the beholder’; and, as so many individuals and their families know too well, miracles don’t always ‘come’ … at least at the time, and in the way, hoped for.

These two remarkable Gospel stories – of a woman with a hemorrhage for twelve years so far, and the death and apparent resuscitation of the little daughter of Jairus, an official of the local synagogue – are woven together.  Indeed, Jesus was apparently interrupted on his way to Jairus’ family home, by the woman who touched his cloak in order to ‘cure’ her bleeding.

In Hospital Ministry, we are often ‘helping people to hear their own voice’ (Irene Fullerton), including on the distinction between ‘curing’ (which can happen, literally) and ‘healing’ (which happens, even more often, in various ways, including with new insights, acceptance, reconciliation …)  Not to minimize miracles back then – or since – both curing and healing have power.  Though, not in the same way, let alone the same frequency. 

Recalling the words of ‘A Surgeon’s Prayer’: “May God guide these hands that care for others.”  (Dr. Bob McClure).  And the story of the surgeon who ‘coined it’, serving in India, having begun an emergency surgery.  And one of his Hindu colleagues encouraged them to pause “because we haven’t said the prayer”.  I’m also reminded of a patient who though asked to leave their woven prayer shawl to await them in the room ‘on the other side’ (!) insisted on bringing it to the operating room.  A perceptive orderly agreed to bring it back upstairs, but only after the patient invited several staff members to ‘tie one of the tassels in the prayer shawl’, which several did!

Back in the interwoven miracles of St. Mark, there is such a contrast between the seeming powerlessness of a patient, and the optimism of Jesus.  An optimism that seems to nurture the confidence of others; in this case, the woman with the hemorrhages, and Jairus, the parent.

(Texts for Preaching, Brueggeman et al).  Sometimes, it is the example and encouragement of other patients, family members, friends or healthcare providers that can be … miraculous!

Marion Best was the Moderator of the United Church of Canada – its elected Spiritual Leader – from 1994-1997.  A Nurse, and a lay leader from British Columbia, Marion would go on to serve as the Vice-Chair of the World Council of Churches.  (In a bit of local lore, a United Evangelical Brethren Minister from Kitchener, the Rev. Dr. Kellerman, was among the delegates to the first meeting of the World Council, in Amsterdam, August 1948).  I was a student at the Ecumenical Vancouver School of Theology the year that Marion was elected as Moderator, and she preached at our Graduation Service.  Telling the story of her own precarious pregnancy, during which she so clearly recalls a sense of ‘touching the cloak of Jesus’ in that delivery room, and the safe arrival of her daughter.  For Marion, it was a moment of conviction, more than conversion.

Meanwhile, as Jairus – among other parents  – knew too well, in the words of poet Elizabeth Stone: “being a parent is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”  Worth repeating …  And to paraphrase the late Rabbi Harold Kushner (loosely!): 

‘Sometimes, (often with illness) bad things happen to good people … and sometimes (like in the recent U.S. Presidential Debate): ‘good things happen to bad people …’  And then we ‘try and make meaning, when the situation doesn’t make sense.’

It was Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States through World War Two – which we recently commemorated for the defence of democracy and freedom on the 80^th anniversary of D-Day, including the brave Canadians at Juno Beach in France – Mrs. Roosevelt used to frame challenges saying: ‘Sometimes we prevail in spite of the circumstances, rather than because of them.’ (unquote)

And sometimes, it is in spite of miracles that don’t come, and because of faith in the steadfast love of God, that we can find our way forward, together.  Mindful that eventually all our mortal lives give way to eternal life  … abiding with God, and in the lives of those we have loved and been loved by.  Until we all meet again, as Jesus promised.  (John 14: 3, alt.)

As the deeply rooted and open-hearted Parish of St. John the Evangelist continues in this ‘season of sabbatical’, with Preston and Karen (and St. Hilda!) away for a time of renewal these several months, may it also be a sabbath time – reCreational (with a capital ‘C’) – for the Parish, under the able leadership of Deputy Rector James, among many others.

And on this Canada Day weekend no less, mindful that the word sabbatical shares its root with the Hebrew word ‘shabbat’ – which literally means ‘to cease’ – may that be in the sense of this marvellous Jewish prayer, about sabbath:  (turning to face the high altar):

Let us pray.

Without sabbath, days pass and the years vanish.
            And we walk sightless among miracles.
Lord, fill our eyes with seeing
            And our minds with knowing.
Let there be moments when your Presence,
            Like lightening illuminates the darkness in which we walk.
Help us to see, wherever we gaze,
that the bush burns unconsumed.
And we, clay touched by God,
            will reach out for holiness
            and exclaim in wonder:
“How filled with awe is this place
            and we did not know it.!”

(Turn back) Perhaps because we’re ‘overcome with amazement’.

(Rev.) John Lougheed