And that’s because I have to begin with suffering—acute suffering. Human anguish of body and spirit.
We in this room are all old enough to have been there. We’ve been through deaths and some of us divorces, jobs that ended, businesses that failed, economic crises.
A couple who are friends of mine both used to have their own businesses, and they made decent money for many years. They own a nice, middle class home. Then suddenly a few years ago, both businesses failed at the same time. They discovered that their pockets weren’t as deep as they had thought.
The older we get, the more suffering we have seen and survived. Like David, we have lost and grieved beloved family and friends (2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27, NRSV). Having suffered is one of the defining differences between “young” and “old.”
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| King David mourning Saul and Jonathan. |
Of course, sometimes children suffer too. And those who care for critically ill children often comment on how wise beyond their years those children become.
Suffering is part of the human condition, in our day just as in Jesus’ day, and every day in between. One of my spiritual mentors, a Franciscan monk, priest and writer by the name of Fr. Richard Rohr, defines human suffering as loss of control.
We humans strive to control our lives. We in this individualistic society especially take seriously the cultural value that each and every one of us is responsible for our own lives and those of our families.
But we lose control a lot.
We lose control when people we love change in ways that fundamentally change their relationship to us, and sometimes take them out of our lives.
We might be able to influence the aging process by making healthy choices, but we ultimately cannot control it.
We lose control when illness takes over our bodies at any age.
We lose control when a huge, complex economic system, dependent on activities of many people with many motives, some good, some not so good, deals a blow to our own economic security.
And we suffer. And then comes the question, what do we do with our suffering? And the answer to that is the measure of us as people of faith.
If we do not deal with our suffering creatively.., if we do not embrace it and seek the lessons it has to teach us, we will merely pass it on to others.
Suffering is isolating. We feel alone in our suffering! Like no one else really, fully understands. Why me? we ask—and it’s God we are asking!
But you know what? God can handle that question. God can handle our crying out. God can handle our lamentations. Our anger. Our accusations. Go ahead! The Psalms model exactly how to do it!!
But know that God is not necessarily going to give us an explanation. I believe explanations and “reasons” for things are human needs and behaviors. WE are accountable to each other. God is not required to give an account to us.
But God is with us. That’s what we were given in the person of Jesus the Christ! God with us. That’s what we are continuously given in the Holy Spirit! A bit of God within us.
And somehow knowing that, and even in the midst of desperation and despair and feelings of utter alone-ness, reaching for God’s healing—like the woman in today’s Gospel story—is the very definition of faith.
How do we do that? How do we reach for God when Jesus is not walking among us? Maybe just by being still and open, both to our suffering and God’s response to our suffering.
Episcopal priest Suzanne Guthrie wrote this about it:
When despair has obliterated ordinary prayer; when the psalms fail and all words are stupid and meaningless, the mantle of loneliness surrounding me becomes a mantle of dark and wordless love. This darkness reveals the paradox of prayer: in the absence of God, all there is.. is God. (from Grace's Window: Entering the Seasons of Prayer)
The great value of suffering is that it strips us of all illusions of self-sufficiency. And for some of us who really, really believe we are self-made people, it can take a lot of suffering to get our ego out of the way. It feels like dying.
It IS dying. That lesson is in the Biblical account over and over again. Saul had to die for David to become king. A seed must die for a new plant to grow. Jesus had to die so that we may live. Our own Gospel story (Mark 5:21-43, NRSV).
I wonder how you imagine this story? How do you see it in your mind’s eye?
If you do a Google images search using a phrase like "woman touching hem of Jesus," you'll find lots of artistic interpretations of the scene. Virtually every one features a woman on her hands and knees--no pride, no self-sufficiency, no ego—arm outstretched, fingers splayed. I urge you to try on that posture!
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| A woman touches the hem of Jesus' garment. |
It might come to us in a private moment of utter stillness before God. It might come to us through the beauty of the sky or a leaf or a rock or the smell of rain or the sound of kids playing. It might come to us through the touch of another person.
It might NOT take the form we hoped for—like physical healing, restored wealth, reconciliation and renewed relationship. But God’s healing will come, some how, some way, in some form.
And then the greatest miracle of all happens: We become God’s healing touch in a hurting world. We become what the Native Americans called the wounded healer, the one who can heal precisely because of our own wounds and the grace of God we know because of them.
Mother Teresa said, Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.
AMEN
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