Sixth Sunday after Pentecost 6
2 Sam 1:1, 17-27; Ps 130; 2 Cor 8: 7-15; Mark 5: 21-43
The Rev’d Dr. Deborah Meister, ODM
The poet Mary Oliver wrote,
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
(“The Uses of Sorrow,” Thirst)
Today’s readings take us to uncomfortable places: sickness, death, fund-raising — all the things we mostly want to put into a small box with a heavy lid and tuck into the far reaches of a closet we rarely open. We know — intellectually — that most of us will eventually suffer from serious illness, if only as we age; we know that all of us will have to mourn the loss of someone we love. Even now, many of us are bowed down by the weight of grief for things we cannot control: climate change, the rise of the far right, alarming things happening in our countries of origin, erosions in human rights (perhaps our own) — all layered on top of the ordinary griefs woven into the fabric of every human life. When it becomes too much, it can be paralyzing, send us home to try to soothe existential anxiety with nothing more than a pint of ice cream and a spoon. And so I want to ask you today, what do you do with your grief?
I mean, really: What do you do with your grief?
Other cultures — older cultures — seem to be better at making space for grief than we are. In today’s Gospel reading, professional mourners are wailing at Jairus’ house within about thirty seconds of the girl’s apparent death. In Victorian England, mourning lasted a year. A person would wear black to signal that others should be gentle with them; after a period of time, they could add grey or lavender. They’d take a certain number of months away from their social engagements, while friends visited them at home, so that they would not have the burden of keeping up a fake front, having to smile and laugh when their hearts were in the gutter.
Many cultures developed strong traditions of lament, such as the one we heard in our first reading. These poems or songs were places where people could pour their hearts into the container of rhythm, meter, and melody, at once expressing their grief and shaping it so that what seemed to be beyond words could, nonetheless, be shared. One reason country music has such a following, I think, is that it still has songs like this.
A few years ago, I heard about a school shooting in the States. The principal was proud that the next day, classes were canceled so that students could take part in therapy groups. But after that day, classes resumed — as if one day were enough time the feel the loss of several children, or to restore the sense of safety of the survivors.
Left unexpressed, grief numbs us out — saps so much of our energy that we are no longer able to be fully present to joy. Or, even, to God. It drains us, like a slow issue of blood. Suppressed grief can turn into rage or bitterness or distrust: after all, if God is supposed to be all-powerful, why are we going through this? Why is Ukraine fighting? Why are people mourning their dead in Gaza and in Jerusalem? Where even is God, when you need him?
The prophet Isaiah cried out, “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (Isaiah 45:15). Theologians call this deus absconditus — the hidden God. They mean that because we are limited, and God is not, there is only so much of God we can know or understand. With God there is always an overage, a part that remains in darkness: a part we can touch in silent prayer, but never see or articulate or name.
I have found that to be powerfully true in my own life. More than that: I found that the hidden God evokes a hidden humanity. We who cannot see all of God cannot often see and know all of ourselves either. Nor can we accept all the parts of ourselves that we do know. We thrust them into the shadows of fear or shame, hoping that others will not seem them, either. But to hide away part of ourselves is to live incomplete, to put ourselves into the shadow as well. To live in a closet of our own making, with no idea how to come out.
That’s what’s so powerful about the story of the woman with the haemorrhage, the one who had been bleeding for twelve years. Sermons often focus on the fact that blood rendered one unclean, so this woman had been cut off from society for more than a decade. More than that, though, she must have been alienated from herself; after all, her own body had betrayed her. She would not have known how this had happened, or why: only that her very lifeblood was pouring out of her, and would not stop. Can you imagine how scared she must have been when it started? How stunned, when she did not immediately die? She lived for twelve years with what ought to have killed her, lived with no obvious reason to go on. She struggled to be well: went to doctor after doctor, probably to healing-woman after healing-woman, tried every bitter herb and vile potion out there. And then, one day, she heard of one more chance. And she had not surrendered. It’s important to see that: she had not surrendered. She had not accepted that she would live, at best, half a life. She refused to accept that this slow death would be all that was.
And so, she came to Jesus. She, who was supposed to be under restriction, went to the heart of the crowd. She, who was supposed to touch no one, pushed through the packed square, the sweaty bodies, kept going until she could see Jesus.
And then, she froze. She just did not have it in her to go up to one more healer, one more physician, one more person, to lay out her problem, receive the advice, pay the money, and fail, again. And yet, she did not want to remain in living death. And so she crept up behind Jesus, darted out, and touched the hem of his robe.
How many times have we been there, you and I? Wanting Jesus, needing Jesus, but not really trusting Jesus, not really willing to put our faith on the line? Trying half-measures rather than candor, so that we will still have an excuse if we are disappointed? After all, if we sneak up behind Jesus, reach out for the briefest of moments, never name what we need — if we do that and nothing happens, we can still deny that the thing ever happened.: deny both our situation and our need for God. Hold onto our illusion that we are rational, self-sufficient, unbowed.
And yet, when the widow reaches out, even like that, she is healed. Instantly. And Jesus turns and asks, “Who touched me?” The woman was probably terrified. After all, she was unclean, and touching someone unclean would have defiled Jesus, too. And yet, when she comes forward and pours out her story — pours it out as she probably should have poured it out at the start, openly and with candor naming her need — Jesus does not condemn her, but calls her, “Daughter.” Daughter. Daughter. She is the only individual person (other than Mary) whom Jesus claims as kin. Not one of the disciples. Not the crowds. Not even, really, his sisters and brothers. But this woman, who has hoped against hope, who has crawled to him when she could not walk — this woman, he calls “daughter.” It’s important to see that: by calling on her to identify herself, to explain herself, Jesus is offering her the relationship she was too broken to claim. And she, naming herself amid the crowd, is restored not only to God, but to them.
And while all that is going on, Jairus is waiting. Waiting and squirming and probably muttering under his breath, because his little girl is dying. Time is of the essence, and Jesus, who began well by following him immediately, has stopped, turned around, taken time to talk with some woman, to hear her story while his own little girl is struggling to breathe. Can you imagine what those minutes must have felt like to Jairus? I mean, come ON man, come ON, she’s healed already, please, please, please, we’re running out of time, please, and now you’re unclean, O come on come on. And then, when Jesus finally does resume his walk to Jairus’ house, the dreadful words: It’s too late. Plunging Jairus, the powerful man, into the same abyss of doubt and faith and hopeless hope in which the bleeding woman had lived. And then, inexplicably, Jesus says, “Do not fear; only believe.”
My point is this: sometime in our lives, we all have to go there. Not because God is cruel, but because it is only in learning to hope when hope seems to be gone that we can know the full presence of the hidden God. The writer Suzanne Guthrie says, “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.” (Grace’s Window) In the absence of God, all there is, is God.
Friends, this is a tough time. And yet, God is not dead, not even sleeping. When we bring the weight of our heart to God, even if we can only creep up behind, half-hoping, God does bring healing — although perhaps not in the form we hope for. We hope for easing of grief, but sometimes, it’s owning it and living it that lends grief purpose. Greta Thunberg, Myrna Lashley, Cindy Blackstock are not silent about their grief: they use it to connect to others and bring about change. Sometimes, like David, we need to sing or wail or paint our grief, reaching out to the invisible God and to all the other people who are walking around with holes in their hearts. Sometimes, we need to pray in darkness, for even in darkness, God can be found.