Extraordinary Hope

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
June 27, 2021

8 Proper B 

          Several years ago, a group of Christ Church leaders gathered in the Parish Hall one Sunday afternoon to talk about how Christ Church had survived some major challenges over the previous 10 years or so.  I had not lived through those challenges, so I wanted to hear the stories for myself.  I also thought, and still think, that perhaps the story of our church could give hope to other churches facing similar challenges.  That afternoon, we talked about motivation and hope; disappointment, grief, and financial challenges; the power of relationships, taking risks and being deliberate about a plan forward.  While perhaps at one dark point the hope was a desperate hope for survival, eventually an extraordinary hope in the future emerged, a future that would not look just like the past but would be a new future as God called the church forward into new life. 

          This morning, we hear two stories of great hope in our gospel reading.  Jairus is a leader of the synagogue, more like a vestry member than a rabbi.   We can hear the desperation in his voice as Jairus begs Jesus to come and heal his little daughter who is at the point of death.  Jesus is the only hope for the little girl’s healing.  Jesus agrees to leave the crowd behind and follows Jairus on this urgent mission.

          While Jairus and Jesus are rushing off to get to Jairus’s daughter before she dies, a woman who had suffered from a hemorrhage for 12 years, reaches out in both desperation and hope and touches Jesus clothes.  Immediately she is healed.  Jesus and Jairus are in a hurry to get to Jairus’s daughter.  There is no need for them to stop.  The woman has been healed.  But when Jesus feels the healing power leave him, he stops to connect with the woman and hear her story.  The woman is terrified that her action will come at a cost and her healing will be reversed.  Jairus is terrified as the minutes tick away that this delay will cost his daughter her life.  And, in fact, Jairus receives word that his daughter has died and he should trouble Jesus no more. 

          Jesus has other plans, however. He takes Peter, James, and John, along with the child’s parents, goes into room where the child lies, and commands her to get up.  The little girl gets up and begins to walk around, and we are told that she is 12 years old.

          Two stories of a desperation and two stories of hope.  Two stories of risk, as the woman risked rejection as she was unclean due to the hemorrhage and Jairus risked losing his daughter.  Two stories of healing and the gift of new life.  Two stories that, if we are not careful, lead us to believe in Jesus as Santa Claus or as a magician, here to do whatever we demand, and two stories that can lead us to feel like failures when we do not get the results we want from Jesus.  We want to hear Jesus say “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.

          But I think these two stories are about more than getting whatever we want from Jesus, no matter how desperate we may be.  First, in each story, the two people do more than simply demand, and Jesus does more than simply heal.  The unnamed woman and Jairus both show up to engage Jesus.  Jesus establishes a relationship.  Jesus does not have to stop and talk with the woman who touched his clothes.  She has already been healed.  He could move on and get to Jairus’s daughter in a timely manner.  But Jesus does stop.  He acknowledges the woman as a human being.  He listens to her whole story despite the urgency to get to Jairus’s daughter.  He calls the unnamed woman “daughter” and commends her hope when he tells her that her faith has made her well.  And Jesus could have healed Jairus’s daughter from a distance.  He did not have to actually go to her house.  Jesus’ words alone have the power to calm water and turn small bits of bread into food for thousands.  But Jesus did go.  Jesus wanted a relationship with them, and Jesus wants a relationship with us.  These two stories are about a relationship.

          Secondly, both the unnamed woman and Jairus act on great hope that Jesus can heal.   In their cases, Jesus does heal exactly as they want.  And I wish all of our prayers were answered as quickly and completely as theirs were.  But sometimes we feel more like David this morning as he mourns Saul and Jonathan than we feel like either the unnamed woman or Jairus.  However, the hope Jairus and the unnamed woman have is not just the desperate hope that they will get what they need in the moment, but the extraordinary hope that the way things are now is not the way they will always be.  Their hope is the hope of the psalmist who sings “I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope.”  The gospel does not tell us what happened to the unnamed woman and to Jairus’s daughter and her family after their encounter with Jesus.  But we do know that both were made new and given new life, not returned to their old selves.  Both of these stories are about extraordinary hope in a new future. 

When the leadership of Christ Church gathered to talk about the ways they had met past challenges, never in a million years would I have guessed that we might be the congregation that would benefit from that story of extraordinary hope as we look to rebuild our life together after 16 months of a global pandemic.  Our question is not “How do we as a church survive a pandemic?”  Our question is “How is God helping us live and grow in new ways in 2021?”  As with Jairus and the unnamed woman, Jesus invites us to show up and be in relationship with him and with each other.  As with Jairus and the unnamed woman, Jesus offers us a hope that carries us not back into the past but into new life.  We are not people of a desperate hope for survival.  We are people of extraordinary hope for the future.

                                                Amen.