Sermon Archive
Health, wholeness and salvation
Sermon preached by John Burdett at Holy Communion on 29 June 2003
2 Samuel 1.1, 7-27 ; 2 Corinthians 8.7-15 ; Mark 5.21-43
Anyone who sets out to write a life of Christ, a biography of Jesus, must run into difficulties very quickly, because the people who wrote the gospels weren't primarily concerned with historical accuracy or completeness, so that there are discrepancies between the four gospels and all of them leave tantalising gaps. The reason is, of course, that the evangelists' chief concern was to record the truth as they perceived it, so that the gospels are like a series of impressionist paintings, not a series of photographs. A painting by one of the great impressionists can convey something of the atmosphere of a scene which might well be completely missing from a photograph of the same place. And in the same way an evangelist's description of an episode in the life of Christ may well convey more of the truth than an accurate historical report. But that doesn't make the gaps any less tantalising.
None of the Gospel writers really describes Jesus. They tell us about what he said and what he did. But we've got no idea what he looked like. The evangelists didn't think that was important. All the same, they've left us quite a lot of clues about the sort of man he was, if not about his appearance. We know that he was quick-tempered and impatient with people who wouldn't use their brains. We know that he was charismatic and fun to be with. He must have been if a dozen or so young men were happy to leave their jobs and follow him round Palestine for three years. And if we look carefully we can pick up some other clues about him, too.
This morning's Gospel gives us two examples of what Mark wants us know about Jesus, through two well-known stories, or really one story inside another. Two lovely stories which tell us different things about Jesus and his ministry and teaching.
First there's Jairus, desperate with worry about his daughter, who's at the point of death. He appeals to Jesus, and his response is immediate, of course he'll come. But while they're on the way someone touches Jesus. Again the result is immediate, but in a different way. When Jairus appealed to him Jesus made a conscious decision to go with him. When the woman touched him his part in her healing was like a reflex action. I almost said that it was involuntary, but that would imply that Jesus had to heal her whether he wanted to or not; and that, of course, wasn't true. I think it would be more accurate to say that his love - not so much for all mankind as for each individual person - his love was so great that his healing power acted spontaneously. But he made it very clear that what had triggered that spontaneous reaction was the woman's faith.
And this is one of the occasions when we'll get more out of a Bible passage if we can go back to the original Greek. The New International Version of the Bible, the version that we've just heard read, tells us that Jesus said to the woman 'Your faith has healed you'. I've got only a slight knowledge of Greek, but I know that the word Jesus used can mean either heal or save or make whole. The Gospels tell us of three other occasions on which Jesus said the same thing. There was the Samaritan leper, the only one of the ten who came back to say thank you. There was the blind Bartimaeus. And there was the prostitute with the box of ointment who anointed him. And talking to each of these four people Jesus used the same Greek word. To three of them he was talking specifically about physical healing, and to the fourth, the prostitute, he was talking specifically about salvation, but I'm sure he meant the same thing to all four. 'Your faith has made you whole'. And that's important, because wholeness involves spiritual as well as physical health. You'll notice that in each case Jesus says explicitly not that he's made them whole, but their own faith has made them whole.
But of course all this argument is based on the assumption that Jesus spoke Greek. All four Gospels were written in Greek, but it's widely assumed that Jesus only spoke Aramaic. But I don't think that can be right. There's no doubt at all that Greek was extensively used in Palestine at that time for both commerce and administration, and there's strong evidence to show that a large number of Jewish families could both read and write Greek. And there are a number of places in the Gospels where Jesus must have spoken Greek. When he drove the devils out of a man into a herd of pigs the man went back to his home in Greek-speaking Decapolis, so if Jesus, a brilliant, highly intellectual, articulate teacher who lived in a bilingual area wasn't himself bilingual then the madman, who had no need to learn Aramaic, must have been. In the same way, the Syro-Phoenician woman, who lived in a Greek-speaking area and had no need to learn Aramaic, was able to carry on a fluent and witty conversation with Jesus. I've said that Jesus was bilingual. In fact he was almost certainly trilingual, because he would have studied the scriptures in Hebrew, but that's a digression that I don't want to get into just now.
Of course, it's very likely that even Greek-speaking Jews spoke Aramaic at home, just as, I'm sure, Gaelic-speaking Scots who have to speak English at their work revert to Gaelic when they get home. Which brings us back to our story. All this business with the woman must have taken a considerable time. We can imagine poor Jairus, already terribly worried about his daughter, wanting to take Jesus by the arm and make him hurry. His anxiety seemed to be more than justified when they were met by some people who told him that it was too late, his daughter was dead. But it's never too late to turn to Christ for help, provided - and Jesus makes the same point again - provided you have faith. Now we see Jesus in a different setting, but Mark seems anxious to link the two stories, because not only is one story inside other, but there's another link. The woman had been ill for twelve years and the girl was twelve years old. Perhaps Mark is suggesting that the woman was able to start living again after twelve years as a social outcast, just as the child died after twelve years of life.
But whatever Mark was thinking about, previously he'd shown love in action in a crowded, probably Greek-speaking, street with people shouting and jostling each other.
Now we're in a quiet if admittedly rather crowded room as a child wakes up to see her mother and father, with three men she's never seen before standing behind a fourth man who's sitting on the side of her bed. He smiles down at her and talks to her in the family language, Aramaic, which Mark translates for us because he knows we won't understand it. And he says: 'Little girl, it's time to get up'. This is the man whose spontaneous healing power has been triggered this time by her parents' faith. Faith can act as well for other people as it can for ourselves. It's prayer in action.
So Mark has shown us the Christ whose love and healing power can be found in action in the crowded street and the quiet room, in our concern for ourselves and our prayer for others - the Christ who has left us an example of love shown in the busy world, of love shown to strangers, but also of love shown in the intimacy of our own home, love shown for our family and friends. But that love demands a response - the response of faith. We're all in need of healing, of salvation, aren't we? We all need to be made whole. But faith is the prerequisite of wholeness - wholeness that implies health of body and spirit, not just absence of sickness - and we mustn't be so humble that we become obsessed with our sinfulness. We mustn't be like the hypochondriac who's always rushing off to the doctor to get cures for the ailments he thinks he has and preventatives for ailments he thinks he might get, when he'd be much better off caring for his body by taking proper exercise, eating sensible food and so on. We mustn't be spiritual hypochondriacs. We must care for our spirit as we care for our body, exercising it in care for other people, in prayer and Bible reading - feeding it with the food which God provides in the Eucharist - all this building up the strength and depth of our faith which is essential for our health, our wholeness, our salvation.
But all that makes it sound very easy, doesn't it? We mustn't ever forget that there are people who've been hit so hard by tragedy that faith for them is difficult or nearly impossible. But Mark tells us of another father whose son was epileptic, and who for years had suffered the torture of seeing his son burning himself and nearly drowning. And he said to Jesus 'Have pity on us and help us, if you possibly can!' 'Yes,' said Jesus, 'if you yourself can! Everything is possible for the person who has faith.' Which prompted the cry, which has been repeated by desperate people all down the centuries: 'Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief.' 'I do have faith, but not enough. Help me to have more!'
Everything is possible for the person who has faith, the prerequisite of wholeness.
And when we've come to this God-given state of health, of wholeness, we mustn't forget to follow the example of the Samaritan leper who turned back praising God at the top of his voice, threw himself at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.
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