Midweek Lenten Lament for Illness

Mark 5:25 – 34

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

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Most of us know what I mean when I refer to “the world’s oldest profession.” I’m not sure what the sociology is behind that understanding, but I’ve often suspected that “healer” or “medicine man” or “sage” or “doctor” were a close second on the list of ancient occupations.

The desire for healing from sickness; and for comfort from pain; and for survival from dying is such a natural, instinctive, basic desire for living creatures that humanity, no doubt, has turned to ‘healers’ from the beginning of time for answers and rescue. And, as you know, we still regularly turn to medicine – whether it be a doctor, a nurse, a counselor, a pharmacist, or a drug – for healing, for comfort and even for our very survival.

(Raise your hand if you do or have worked in a hospital, in a doctor’s office, a pharmacy, lab, at Eli Lilly, or anywhere connected to the health care industry in some way? How many here have been to see a doctor of some kind, for any reason, recently?)

So, without a whole lot of work, we can see – or at least imagine – where the woman in this Gospel is coming from. If you need some help with that, consider the list of our prayer concerns we included in tonight’s bulletin. You won’t find “hemorrhaging for 12 years” anywhere on it, but you will find pretty much everything else, it seems – cancer, broken bones, lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, transplants, death, and more …

Like the woman in tonight’s Gospel, we’ve either been there ourselves or we’ve loved someone who is or has been … sick for years, I mean; sick and tired of wrong answers; sick and fed up with expensive treatments that may or may not work; sick and out of money, out of energy, out of patience, and out of time, even.

You name it and we need to be healed of it. You name it and it’s in our life or in our family or in our house or in our bodies. You name it and we want it gone – or fixed – or healed.

And the temptation is to read tonight’s Gospel and pray for a miracle – and we have likely done that. The temptation is to search for a quick fix or a magic pill – and maybe we have tried that, too. The temptation is to reach out and try to touch someone or find some thing that will make the sickness and disease just go away.

And that’s why faith healers are a thing. I don’t see them on TV as much as I used to – they were really a thing back in the 80’s and 90’s – these men and women who feed that temptation. And they’re still around. On my way to Vegas a few weeks ago, I saw a church sign advertising a “Miraculous Night of Healing,” sometime in March – like there was a time and a place and a party planned for when your healing would come. (That church wasn’t in Vegas, by the way. It was off of I-74, in Indiana, between here and Cincinnati.)

Anyway, while Jesus played doctor and miracle-worker in some really wonderful ways, as far as the Gospels tell it, he never claimed to be an easy answer or a quick fix or a magic pill for anyone and everyone. Jesus was smart and sensitive enough to know that for every hemorrhage that stopped, for every demon that was quieted, for every crippled person who walked, and for every blind man that regained his vision there were plenty of others left bleeding, screaming, stumbling, and lost in the dark.

And it’s no different today. For every tumor that shrinks, for every surgery that’s successful, for every addiction that’s under control, there are millions of others left suffering and hurting and, literally, dying to be healed.

So, the answer for Jesus wasn’t easy because it wasn’t always, only about abracadabra or hocus pocus or magic of any kind – otherwise, I think he would have healed everyone, all of the time, and made a big show of it like some sort of televangelist. No, the answer for Jesus – and the answer for the bleeding woman tonight – was about faith, really, in a way that this story hit me differently during this season of “Lenten Laments,” than it has in the past.

See, I’ve been wondering if what healed the woman in this Gospel story – as much as whatever happened with her body when she touched Jesus’ cloak – was that her utter desperation, her total vulnerability, her powerful lament that she was at the end of her rope, out of options, entirely at the mercy of whatever grace she could receive from God, in Jesus … that that depth of humble faith … is what healed, not just her broken, bleeding body – but healed her soul and her spirit, too.

And there’s hope in that for me, because isn’t that what we need as much as anything when we’re falling down, sick and suffering, fear-and-trembling kind of scared?

When the pain and suffering and terror are so great… When we’re sick or scared and lonelier than we’ve ever been… When we’re in need of real healing – or when we care for someone who is – we’ll do anything to get it – just like the woman who touched Jesus’ cloak. She fought the crowd. She broke the rules. She forgot about her pride and her safety. She didn’t care about what all those people might have said about her. It was at her moment of greatest despair and lament when she found Jesus. And that’s when she found her healing, too.

And maybe that’s where we’ll find it – some measure of healing – not just in our bodies, but in our minds, our souls, and our spirits, too. Maybe the cancer won’t disappear, or go away forever. Maybe the surgery won’t fix everything. Maybe the addiction will be a constant, ever-present struggle. Maybe the cure won’t come in time, or as soon as we would like. And maybe our desperate lament can only be that that sucks; that the pain of it is unbearable; and that none of it seems fair. And God knows that’s true.

So let’s lament the illness and disease that plague us in so many ways in this life. And let’s let God receive the full measure of our anger, frustration, fear, trembling, and desperation for that – because God can handle the full measure of our anger, frustration, fear, trembling and desperation. And let’s make this lament because it really is an act of faith, after all – like it was for the hemorrhaging woman – that we aren’t in control of this; that we are humbled in the face of whatever afflicts us; but that we are more than our bodies and that God is more than all of it.

Because as unfair as all of our illness and disease can seem, it’s also not fair that we are loved so deeply and that we have the chance to experience and share that love with others. It’s also not fair that we are forgiven so graciously in ways we don’t deserve to be. It’s also not fair that we have been given the gift of faith in and hope for something greater than what our physical bodies can always endure on this side of heaven.

So let’s pray mightily about whatever healing we long for and need, here and now. And let’s expect God to do something good – miraculous, even – with those prayers and our deepest desires.

But let’s let our lament be honest and mighty, too. And let’s allow it to inspire or lead to faith that we will be well and healed … that we will be whole and redeemed … by God’s grace, on the other side of it all, come what may.

Amen

Jesus, the Gardener

Luke 13:1-9

At that very time there were some present who told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the Tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I can dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”

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Today’s Gospel always makes me feel like we’ve walked into the middle of someone else’s conversation. It’s that weird parable about the fig tree and the gardener, this stuff about the “blood of the Galileans,” and about those people “killed by the Tower of Siloam” … events not mentioned anywhere else in all of Scripture. So most of us need a little history and some context in order to make some sense of it all.

It’s helpful to know that there was more than one occasion where political unrest under Pontius Pilate led to ugly confrontations and uprisings between Roman officials and the local Jews, Samaritans, and other people of Galilee living under Roman rule. As you might imagine, these uprisings often led to the deaths of many people. So, when Jesus talked about “the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices,” he was probably talking about something like that.

By the same token, nowhere else in the Bible is there any account of the Tower of Siloam collapsing. We do know that the Pool of Siloam – where Jesus once gave a blind man his sight back – was a ritual bathing pool, somewhere on the south-side of Jerusalem. Apparently, at some time in the days prior to this Gospel story, a tower in the city wall near those pools collapsed and killed 18 people.

So, Jesus is asking rhetorical questions about these events – and answering them for whoever wants to know. They were things anyone hearing him would have known about, of course. “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” In other words, “Did the Galileans bring their fate upon themselves?” “Did they deserve to die because they were trouble-makers and rabble-rousers?” “Should they have kept to themselves?” “Should they have known better than to get into it with the Romans?” “Should they have turned the other cheek?” According to Jesus, the answer is “no.”

And what about those people who were crushed by that falling tower? “Do you think they had it coming to them?” “Was their number up because they deserved something the rest of the city’s people didn’t?” “Was God waiting for those 18 particular people to be in that particular place at that particular time so that they could be smited for their particular sins?” Again, according to Jesus, the answer is “no.”

If we’re still having trouble making sense of this – if we can’t quite get ourselves back into first century Palestine – let’s fast forward to the 20th of March, 2022. The Gospel of Luke, the 13th chapter, might sound something like this…

“At that very time, there were some present who told Jesus about the Ukrainians whose blood Putin had mingled with their sacrifices … what about the ones who died in the basement of that theater in Mariupal?” And Jesus might have said, “Do you think that because they suffered in this way that they were worse sinners than all other Ukrainians, or Russians, or anyone else for that matter?”

Or, “What about those 6 college golfers and their coach who were killed in the car accident in Texas on Tuesday? Did they deserve it?”

“Or the 5 people who died in 5 separate car accidents in and around Indianapolis, just this Friday? Could they possibly have had it coming?”

Or “What about the six million souls – give or take – who lost the pandemic battle with COVID-19?” Is their suffering a sign that they are somehow worse sinners than any of the rest of us?”

And what about the long list of prayer concerns in our bulletin? What about all of that cancer? How about all of those surgeries? What about all of the sickness and struggle sitting right here beside us today? At some point – and in instances so close to home – the rhetorical questions Jesus asks are hard to swallow – and maybe even a little offensive.

But that’s how Jesus means to get our attention and to assure us of something powerful and good and full of hope. No, God has not arbitrarily chosen to punish some and not others. No, when people die by the sword or by accident or by natural disaster, God isn’t trying to teach them a lesson or heap vengeance upon them or show them who’s the boss. No, when bad things happen to good people it’s not a test or a sign or a chance to weed out the good, from the bad, from the ugly.

Jesus is just acknowledging that bad stuff happens and, even though he’s Jesus, he doesn’t try to explain it, or rationalize it, or pretend we can avoid it. What Jesus does is hold it up before our eyes and remind us that, more often than we’d like to admit, the gift of our lives is fragile. And, more often than we’d like to admit, our lives come to their end – or at least encounter all kinds of struggle and sadness and disappointment along the way – without warning, without notice, without preparation, and without a whole lot of apparent mercy, enough of the time.

And then because of all of that… and because he’s Jesus... when he tells that strange story of the fig tree and the gardener and the owner of the vineyard? … he gives us something faithful and loving and gracious to do about it all in the meantime.

See, too many in the world would chop down the tree that wasn’t producing fruit and, so, too many expect God to do the same. Which is why, I think, we are so inclined to blame collapsing towers and unexpected disasters and deadly diseases on “fate” or “doom” or “the will of God” or God’s desire for more angels up in heaven.

But Jesus reminds us that “God’s will” is really all about second chances. God is like the owner of the vineyard, who gives us another year, or another day, or another minute to try again. To repent. To turn over new leaves. To plant different seeds. To try new ways of being in the world. To live new lives, in spite of ourselves.

Because repentance means to change, remember. To be turned around. To live differently. In many ways, I think repentance might mean we let ourselves be changed by the struggles of others; that we open ourselves up to the hardships that surround us; that we change our lives in order to make a difference in the lives of others.

We can repent by acknowledging that our lives – however long or short they may turn out to be – are blessed, generous, grace-filled gifts from God. And we can repent by not pretending we’re owed any of it and by not taking any of this for granted, for one more second.

And Jesus shows up to inspire all of that. Jesus, the Gardener, has our back. The love of Jesus means to care for us; to tend to us; to nurture and nourish us, like a Gardener tending to a bunch of less-than-fruitful fig trees, until we begin to turn things around, until we begin to live with that kind of repentance, more often.

As we continue making our way to the cross … as we continue to repent and to receive the forgiveness that’s promised to us there … we continue to draw close to this Jesus who doesn’t deny that evil exists, who doesn’t deny that death will come, who doesn’t pretend that this life of faith is an easy one every step of the way. (Calvary and his crucifixion make that clear.)

What we are promised is that ours is a God of second chances: second chances for turning and repentance and for change; second chances for love and forgiveness. And second chances – in spite of ourselves and the world where we live – for new life, for hope, and for God’s love in Jesus Christ, who keeps tilling the soil of our hearts; who keeps working the land of our lives; who keeps patiently planting seeds and pulling weeds and choosing to give us another chance, until we get it right…until we rest assured in the hope of God’s life everlasting, in this world and the next.

Amen