Lifeline

Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

I don’t turn on the television much at my house. In fact, I do it so rarely that it usually has to spend up to 30 minutes cycling through the universe of channels to re-establish connection to the ones I can watch if I want to!

But for a time not so long ago, a teenager lived with me, and that was a whole different story. The television was on ALL THE TIME. I’m sure many of you share that parental experience!

The consequence is that I have fragments of dozens of television shows cluttering up my brain! In many cases, I know very little about the show they came from because I rarely sat down and watched television. Rather, I gathered the fragments moving about the house doing my own thing while my son watched.

The fragment that is coming in handy this morning has to do with “lifelines.” My recollection is that there was a game show where people answered questions to win prizes, and they were allowed a couple of “lifelines,” that is people they could call when they needed help.*

And I think that is a great concept for approaching today’s Gospel stories. The leader of the synagogue named Jairus and the woman suffering from hemorrhage needed lifelines.

Clearly, Jairus was desperate. His daughter was near death. He hunts down Jesus, who has just crossed the Sea of Galilee, and falls at his feet begging for healing for his daughter. Parents of children everywhere surely can identify.

Jesus turns to go with him, but is interrupted by a woman who is at the end of her rope dealing with chronic illness. She had “endured much,” had “spent all she had,” yet grew worse. I can hear her exhaustion and desperation in those few but eloquent words.

The author of Mark does not say this, but artists throughout the centuries have depicted her on her knees, crouched on the floor, reaching with her last ounce of strength to touch—not Jesus himself—but merely his cloak, believing fervently that doing so will make her well.

Jairus and the woman need a lifeline.., and they do whatever it takes to find Jesus and put themselves in his hands.

I am always struck by the imagery used to describe what happens when the woman with hemorrhage touches Jesus’ cloak.

Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”

Now, electricity as we know it—a stream of colliding molecules—was unknown in the time of Jesus. But that is always what I think of when I read this story. “Current,” we call it, and it powers our world.

And, of course, it is not a coincidence that we use a related term­—“currency”—for money, that other powerful mover of our world. OR that we speak of water moving between the banks of a river as “current.”

And we know that if, in the case of water, something happens to stop the flow, if a pool of water gets separated from the flow, what can happen is stagnation. Nasty stuff, like disease-bearing mosquitos, can multiply.

Or if, in the case of electricity, something disrupts the chain of colliding molecules; we’re left sitting in the dark, sweating or shivering, with food rotting in the frig.

Current requires a source or origin, a conduit and somewhere to go. Jesus could be a lifeline to Jairus and the woman because his source was God and he responded to the needs of those around him. The love of God flowed through him into the world.

Brothers and sisters, we here at Grace Church are in a bit of a difficult time. We went from two priests to no priests in a matter of weeks. We feel a bit abandoned and forlorn.

Certainly I do not need to point out that we are nowhere near as desperate as the people in today’s Gospel stories. Yet our tendency to turn inward, to sort of curl up and hope the storm passes quickly, or to huddle inside our beautiful stained glass fortress.. is real and natural.

But we must not succumb. We must not do it. Because that is the path of stagnation and death.

Priests are not our lifeline. Bishops and Deacons are not our lifeline. Jesus is our lifeline.

Don’t get me wrong. Priests are vital. They gather us around the holy table where we connect with our true lifeline, Jesus, by feasting on “spiritual food in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood,” as our prayer book puts it.

That is as essential to my well-being as it is to yours! But at this moment, let us remember that we have many ways to connect with our Lifeline. The Holy Eucharist is one.

The daily office, this Morning Prayer we are doing right now, is another. Our own personal devotions are another. Living our lives as an ongoing and constant prayer of service to others is yet another.

Last week, Fr. Michael preached his farewell sermon and one of the many wonderful things he said was, “You don’t need a priest to share God’s love in the world.” I wanted to shout “AMEN!”

Unlike Jairus, we cannot chase Jesus himself across the sea and fall at his feet. Unlike the woman with hemorrhage, we cannot use our last ounce of strength to crawl across the floor and grab the hem of his cloak.

But friends, we have something that much of the world is literally dying for. Our Bishop has famously said, “People turn to the church looking for Jesus, and all they get is us.”

There’s proper humility in that statement. We aren’t Jesus. BUT… we do have connections—to Jesus, to God the source of all life, through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

More. As Christ’s body in the world, WE are part of the Lifeline. The current of God’s love, and healing, and peace, and joy, must flow through us into the world. How else can it flow?

Eric Law is an Episcopal priest who has dedicated his career to helping churches live out their baptismal covenant. In his book, Holy Currencies: 6 Blessings for Sustainable Missional Ministries, he talks about the fact that in times of travail, churches tend to turn inward, and to think that their life depends on conserving and focusing on themselves and not trying anything new.

And, Law argues, that kind of response to travail is deadly. It shuts off the flow. It doesn’t change God. God remains the gracious, indeed eager, source of all life and hope.

But it does change us. When we turn inward, when we start telling ourselves negative stories about how we can’t do ministry because we’re too small or too poor or don’t have a priest or whatever, we stagnate.

BTW, of Law’s six sustainable missional ministries, exactly one involves money.

However tempting it might be for us to just hunker down, now is the time to be bold, to turn outward, to become more purposeful than ever before in living into our role as part of the lifeline between God and the world.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.

*The show was "Who wants to be a millionaire?"