Keeping the Faith on Memorial Day

 Over there is your great-uncle Francis and here is your great-great-uncle Thomas. Your great aunt Maud is there and Mary, your second cousin twice removed, is here. And you are standing on your great-great uncle Mark. I jumped! Great aunt Carol had taken me with her on her annual Memorial Day visit to the cemetery where her family, and mine, were buried. I have not taken up her practice but I think of her every year. It is some comfort to me, not just for the people whom I had never met and whose names I heard for the first time that day, but for all the people I have known that have passed away.

Memorial Day - Scouts decorate veterans’ graves with flags. People barbecue. And sometimes we remember.

This year I am thinking about the girl in the gospel, twelve years of age, who lay on her death bed as Jesus tarried on the way, to heal a woman of seventeen years’ affliction. He came, but apparently too late: “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” Jesus nevertheless went to the child’s bedside, saying, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” They laughed at him. But he dismissed the crowd, and took the girl by the hand: “Little girl, get up!” (Mark 5:21-43)

William Temple says, maybe Jesus wasn’t wrong. Maybe Jesus knew what he was doing. Maybe the girl was at the point of death. 

Or maybe “sleeping” was just a figure of speech. In any case, the father was in distress, and anticipating the end of his daughter’s life, when he came to Jesus in the first place. 

Anticipatory grief, grief in advance of the expected loss, can take many forms. The desperate plea of a father - not so desperate, as he had faith that this faith-healer could make his daughter well - or the casual disbelief of the onlooking crowd. 

What we are assured of is that those who are going before us into that good night are, like us, in the hands of God. There may be no great-aunt Carol for us to remember us, but we are held in an eternal embrace, which has not just started but has always been. For God is love, and that love is eternal. And in it we dwell.

"For the Lord will not cast off for ever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies." (Lamentations 3:31-32)

"For God made not death: neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living. For he created all things, that they might have their being: and the generations of the world were healthful; and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor the kingdom of death upon the earth: (For righteousness is immortal:) For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity." (Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15; 2:23)

"Remembering loved ones lost," Arizona Daily Star, Keeping the Faith, June 6, 2021. https://tucson.com/lifestyles/remembering-loved-ones-lost/article_dd5e2100-bdb6-11eb-a65a-7b667ac3ff6e.html

world of wonders

She would not wait; she would not hold back.

Jesus was on his way, to heal someone else – an urgent message, a plea from a desperate father – Come: save my daughter – she’s dying!

And yet the woman pressed forward, touched his cloak, the hem of his garment.

The bleeding she had suffered under for a dozen years had made her ritually unclean;

at this point she should not be touching anybody—

But there she is, defiling him, making him unclean, just as she was—

If only, if only—

She thought only of this: that his touch would heal her, however unworthy, however unwell, however unclean she was.

And so it was – he felt the power go out of him – the power to heal.

Her faith had opened a channel, a way, for his healing power to move to her and do its work.

‘Who touched me?’ he exclaimed.

C’mon, Rabbi, everybody touched you.

But it was something more, not a jostle in the crowd, a deliberate reaching out, in faith, that she might be well, whole, saved… in secret—

But the secret was out: and in fear and trembling she confessed. It was I.

For twelve years she had suffered – as many years as the number of the tribes of Israel, as many years as the number of the Apostles –

She was unclean, maybe unwelcome—even cast out; but now she was restored: to health, to wholeness— completed in the love of Christ.

But what had saved her?

He said: your faith has made you well.

It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t power. It was trust, trust in God— so that God could work, in her, a miracle: a renewal of life.

So Jesus paused: and moved on, to the home of Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, where his daughter lay—

Don’t bother him now. It’s too late; she’s gone.

CLEAR THE ROOM

They left him, with the girl, her father and mother, and his friends: the only witnesses, to what was about to occur.

This girl— all of twelve— again, that number, as if she were Israel, sickened unto death— lay there, apparently dead, as dead as dry bones in a riverbed—

And he said, she’s sleeping

And they laughed.

And he said, 'Little girl, WAKE UP!'

And she did.

As Israel would, as we will, —as people of God, his people— WAKE UP

We wake up— to new life, given us in Christ, as we follow him, trusting him on the way, trusting him to BE the way, and the truth, and the life.

God’s life-giving power, as Tom Wright points out, comes to us when we open the channel of faith. Through that opening God’s kingdom bursts in, to our world, bringing life, abundant and eternal, working through the everyday things of life, redeeming them, turning them to a new depth of purpose.

Bread and wine, body and blood; water and oil, baptism and unction; everyday things turned to a new depth of purpose work in us a world of wonders: God’s world –

God’s world at last is here, among us, working already, if we are open to it.

If we watch for it, waiting with hope and expectation, we will see that new day dawning; as we wait for the Lord, more than they that watch for the morning; as we call to the Lord, out of the deep places of the soul; more than prisoners in a dungeon led into the light, we will be free.

There is more to come. Being the people of his redemption we are set free not for ourselves alone but set free to be in the world the sign of hope, to open the channel for redemption: to allow faith to enter into other lives.

As Rita Bennett will tell you, we are now ‘the hem of his garment’. We are the visible presence of God’s graceful power in the world, the agents of love’s redeeming work. As faith begins to flower, we testify to the work of love in our own lives; as we carry on, bearing forth his gospel, we bring the good news of Christ to the world.

What we do, what you and I do, individually, collectively – a bunch of us going in together on some common project, or communally – as a work of we the people of God as a whole congregation; as we do God’s work in the world, and come together as his people, we witness to his power at work among us, making us the people who show his faithfulness, his truthfulness, his lack of guile or subterfuge, his kindness, his steadfast love— keeping faith with us.

May he revive us, restore us, to fullness of life. May we witness to the power of his redeeming love. May we follow him, in the way of justice and peace. Amen.


Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (The Third Sunday after Trinity)
Proper 8: Year B, RCL

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Psalm 130
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43

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