Monday, July 23, 2012

"Catching Life"


(Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geralds_1311/3807444802/)

July 22, 2012

Luke 5:1-11
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.


SERMON: “Catching Life”

I’m going to begin this sermon with a bit of practical advice: the roof of your car is not a wise place to store your laptop computer (while I’m at it, you might avoid the washing machine and oven, too).  Here’s how I learned this:

Many of you know that I like to write my sermons on Thursday afternoons in Southern Pines at a coffee shop.  There is one particular coffee shop that has been very welcoming, not only to me, but to my furry Associate Pastor Hayden, as well.  It may just be owned by a daughter of this church.  Okay, commercial over (but this sermon is brought to you by Swank).

Back to my laptop blunder.  As I got out of my car, I placed my computer on top of it while I got the Associate Pastor out of the car and gathered my things.  I went into Swank and got my coffee and, a few minutes later, two women came in asking if someone drove a red bug.  I said that was me (not realizing why they would be looking for me).  They told me that there was a laptop sitting on top of my car.  Confident that it was not in fact raining laptops, they wanted me to be sure and get it. 

I was so grateful that I bought them coffee (did I mention how good the coffee is there?).  One of the women told me that her laptop is so important to her because of all the pictures of children and grandchildren on it, so she understands how important my laptop is to me.  As they left, she gave me a hug and said, “God bless you.”  Because of their intentional kindness to a stranger, God did bless me.

We do not very often hear stories like these.  The only way this story would make headlines is if I was running for President and my opponent had a smear campaign, “If she can’t keep up with her laptop, how can she run the country?” 

But the kindness of those two women in actually thinking of how it would feel to lose something precious and caring for someone they had never met, should be newsworthy.  It is nothing short of a miracle.

Our story from Luke centers around a miracle.  Jesus is speaking to crowds and decides to hop on a boat so that it doesn’t have to be such a claustrophobic encounter.  That boat happens to be Simon Peter’s.  After Jesus’ voice gets hoarse from all that preaching, he tells Simon to push out into the deep water and let down the nets. 

But Simon’s had a long night.  He is just coming in from a fruitless night of fishing, he’s filthy and exhausted.  He had just finished cleaning his nets, was ready to go home for a little pulled pork and put his feet up, when this Preaching Stowaway came on board. 

Now, after making him listen to a long sermon (is there anything worse?), Jesus wants him to go back and fish again.  And then clean his empty nets all over again. Simon Peter gives a perfectly petulant answer, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”  Jesus must have given him one of those “do what I say looks”, because next thing we know, those nets are in the water and teeming with fish.

Their glee is short-lived as the boat begins to sink from the weight of that great catch.  Simon’s anxiety rises to the surface as he tells Jesus that he is a sinful man and so it would be better if Jesus just left him alone.  Perhaps he really does feel inadequate.  Or perhaps he’s just trying to be a polite Southerner and give an excuse for needing this troublemaker to leave.

Either way, Jesus doesn’t give up that easily.  They somehow make it safely to shore, and when they do, he says, “Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people,” literally in the Greek catching live people. 

I think there was a reason that Jesus didn’t ask them to come catch live people first.  He needed to take them into deep water, to push them beyond what they thought was possible, to have them net-work together to bring in the greatest catch of their lives, and only then could they be called.  This wasn’t to prove their worth to him: it was to prove their worth to themselves.  And, believing that they were capable of more than they ever imagined, they left everything, and followed him.
That is the miracle of our tale.  A boat full of smelly fish is not so thrilling.  But people leaving everything familiar to journey into the unknown so that complete strangers would know real, abundant life is a miracle.  The miracle of letting go of their delusions of control and following Jesus into the lives of others not tomorrow, or next week, but today.

Frederick Buechner writes of the power of each day, saying,
"In the entire history of the universe, let alone in your own history, there has never been another day just like today, and there will never be another just like it again. Today is the point to which all your yesterdays have been leading since the hour of your birth. It is the point from which all your tomorrows will proceed until the hour of your death. If you were aware of how precious today is, you could hardly live through it. Unless you are aware of how precious it is, you can hardly be said to be living at all…
Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.”

“Fishing for people” means this exact way of living: that we leave behind autonomy and self-sufficiency to live for and in and through each other.   Following their Stowaway Savior, Jesus’ disciples discovered community that transcended all barriers, and in moments of utter miracle, they stumbled upon full, precious life, in all its glory. 
Life in a paralytic walking again, in a sermon that changed everything they thought they understood with the simple words, “Blessed are the poor,” in a woman washing Jesus feet with her hair and tears, in a high official’s daughter risen from the dead.

Messy, teary, inconvenient, startling, beautiful life. 

It is tempting to think that this sort of abundant life is something of a bygone era, when God worked in more extraordinary ways than God does now.  But that day along the sea of Galilee, there were nothing more than ordinary fishermen, a desperate crowd, and a choice to follow or not.  They had no more or less breaths than we do, no more or less doubts and fears, no more or less obligations than us.  And they said yes to a journey into the lives of strangers, and there discovered the miracle of this life: living it for others.

The same Spirit who moved Pete to follow that day, stirred two women in Southern Pines to seek me out and return my laptop.  God is God, always has been, and always will be.  And for some reason, God chooses to work through us humans.  We have always been a bizarre mix of frenzied and hopeful, compassionate and selfish, and so it will always be.  The miraculous is shared through the ordinary because God chooses us.  The overflowing, everlasting grace of God is experienced here on this day, because God chooses now.  The completeness of our lives found only in seeking wholeness in the lives of others, because God designed us for each other.

May we follow our Savior with the foolishness of a fisherman who dared to believe that real life—for all—is something worth catching.  Amen.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

"Dance Like Someone's Watching"

July 15, 2012

Old Testament Reading: 2 Samuel 6:12-23
12 It was told King David, ‘The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.’ So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing; 13and when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed an ox and a fatling. 14David danced before the Lord with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. 15So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.  
16 As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.
17 They brought in the ark of the Lord, and set it in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it; and David offered burnt-offerings and offerings of well-being before the Lord. 18When David had finished offering the burnt-offerings and the offerings of well-being, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts, 19and distributed food among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, to each a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins. Then all the people went back to their homes. 20 David returned to bless his household.
But Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, ‘How the king of Israel honoured himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!’ 21David said to Michal, ‘It was before the Lord, who chose me in place of your father and all his household, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, that I have danced before the Lord. 22I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in my own eyes; but by the maids of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honour.’
23And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death. 
Sermon: “Dance Like Someone’s Watching”

I suppose I should feel honored that I’m even mentioned by name at all.  After all, in that international bestseller, there are an estimated 1,181 men mentioned by name, and only around 94 of us women who make the cut to be named (unlike the unfortunate “hemorrhaging woman” and “adulterous woman.”) 

I suppose I should be grateful, instead of frustrated by how my name is constantly mispronounced, like “Michael” Jackson, or “Michael” Jordan.  It’s Mee-chal, y’all.  And you’ve probably heard something of my story from the perspective of the men in my life who passed me around like a political pawn: Saul, my father, and David, my husband.  Now him, I know you’ve heard of. 

Today, I’m setting the record straight.  These days you have a phrase that describes a bit of my story, say it with me: “Hell hath no fury like…a woman scorned.”  I might have written that when I watched David bring in the ark of the Lord, and then proceed to lewdly dance around it, more aware of the ogling slave girls around him than the presence of God, the King of all.  Hell hath no fury, indeed.

As he came home to “bless” our household (the nerve!), I marched right out and gave that arrogant man a piece of my mind.  History has recorded it as the rant of an “emotional” woman who couldn’t appreciate the joyful worship of God.  Please!  That’s absurd.  I don’t worship like a bellydancer, and so I expect my husband not to worship like someone paid only in one dollar bills! 

My outburst was the cumulative effect of years of frustration with David.  (We women do know how to hang onto past irritations, you know.)  With how we started, I never imagined we would wind up where we did. 

I fell in love with David the first time I saw him.  Sure, I knew that our marriage was a political transaction between my dad Saul and him to form an ally.  But even being handed over to David like a prize (which he paid my father for in foreskins, ah romance) I was smitten.  David approached all of his life with absolute passion, and that was infectious.

I suppose I should’ve realized just how infectious that passion was with other women.  Of course, I wasn’t David’s only wife, in those days we didn’t get a man all to ourselves.  Marriage was sort of a hobby for David: there were also Abigail, Ahinoam, Maachah, Haggith, Abital, Eglah and, oh yes, Bathsheba.

I know it sounds naïve to say, but David and I had something special.  I don’t think I ever stopped loving him.  Even when I despised him.  That love led me to protect him when my father went crazy and tried to kill him.  I snuck him out the window and took an idol that was in the room already (boy, have theologians had a field day with that impulsive action) and put it in his bed to deceive his attackers.  I protected him.  I wish he had done the same for me.
When he decided to marry Abigail, I was cast off like yesterday’s dirty laundry and given to Paltiel as his wife.  No “thank you” for all I had done for David, that he wouldn’t even be alive without me.  No acknowledgement of my love for him.  Just traded like a baseball card.  Though I lost respect for David, I still wept for him.  I missed him.  The text doesn’t tell you that, of course.  You see, I was never intended to be the center of this story: David was.  If I’m not around him, I’m not in the picture at all.

But I did come back into the picture.  I got traded again, like Jason Kidd to the Knicks.  David was going to be King now that my dad had passed away and wanted me back.  For a fleeting moment I hoped it was because he had missed me, too.  Of course, his motivation was political: to establish himself as the new king he had to own all the property of the last ruling king, including me.  Hell hath no fury.

So you see, that day when the man I loved, even though he rarely showed me any love, marched into the city wearing nothing but a flimsy linen loincloth and leapt around for all to see, it was the last straw.  My only hope of dignity as a woman lay in that man, and it was lost as he paraded himself in that way.  I did not take offense to the ark of the Lord.  I took offense to a husband who knew no limit to his arrogance.

His response to my rant was as expected, he was a politician after all.  He spun it to all be my fault, my misunderstanding of what was happening, like I was just criticizing his “contemporary worship style.”

It was before the Lord, who chose me in place of your father and all his household, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, that I have danced before the Lord.” he said.  I think the reference to my father was just meant to hurt me. 

And then he continued defensively, “I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in my own eyes; but by the maids of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.”  Held…in… honor.   Oh, I bet those maids held him in all sorts of ways. 

And then my story in your famous book ends by telling you that I, Michal, daughter of Saul, wife of David, only remembered because of the men who used me, was barren, had no children and died.  Your version makes it sound like my barrenness was my punishment for confronting my husband, or for not appreciating the worship of Yahweh.  A final insult to my memory.

I tell you the truth of my story not because I want to be seen as the hero or the victim (Lord knows I made plenty of mistakes in my life).  I tell you my story, so that you will understand what really happened that day David danced, when years and years of pain were brought to the surface.  That I spoke up not just for myself but for the right worship of God, that is about acknowledging the greatness of the King of the Universe, and not the greatness of earthly kings. 

You may call it “decently and in order” these days, but it simply means that following God in a way that alienates and dehumanizes others is not following God.  A community that lets politics trump compassion is not being faithful.  Worship that baptizes our worst habits of pride and ego as “holy” is not worship. 

So, I urge you to remember me, Michal, not just as David’s wife or Saul’s daughter, but as a woman who spoke up when women didn’t speak up, who protected those she loved even if they didn’t return the favor, who knew what was, and was not, true worship. 

May the God who was long before any of us existed, who was there the day David danced and I spoke up, and who has continued to breathe hope and light into troubled human history from my time until yours and beyond it, bless you.  And may you dance with joy and dignity as you worship God, our true King.  Amen.

"This is God"


July 8, 2012

Psalm 48
1Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised
in the city of our God.
His holy mountain, 2beautiful in elevation,
is the joy of all the earth,
Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.
3Within its citadels God
has shown himself a sure defense.
4Then the kings assembled,
they came on together.
5As soon as they saw it, they were astounded;
they were in panic, they took to flight;
6trembling took hold of them there,
pains as of a woman in labor,
7as when an east wind shatters
the ships of Tarshish.
8As we have heard, so have we seen
in the city of the LORD of hosts,
in the city of our God,
which God establishes forever.
9We ponder your steadfast love, O God,
in the midst of your temple.
10Your name, O God, like your praise,
reaches to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with victory.
11Let Mount Zion be glad,
let the daughters of Judah rejoice
because of your judgments.
12Walk about Zion, go all around it,
count its towers,
13consider well its ramparts;
go through its citadels,
that you may tell the next generation
14that this is God,
our God forever and ever. 
He will be our guide forever.


Sermon: “This is God”

Our Presbyterian Hymnal has some gems, but there is one hymn that wins the great honor of the…Most Depressing Award (beating out Why Has God Forsaken Me and Throned Upon the Awful Tree): It is…By the Waters of Babylon.

 It says in a Jewish chant, “By the waters, the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept, and wept for Zion.  We remember, we remember, we remember Zion.”  But you really need to hear it to understand why it wins this award…

This old hymn from Psalm 137 is heavy with the tears of a people mourning for home in Zion, God’s great city.  Zion is wept for, in the same way that lost hopes are wept for, or missed opportunities, or deep oppression.  All that is is not as it should be, and the fitting response to living in a place that feels far from Zion is grief.  But remembering Zion doesn’t always have to be such a sad endeavor.  Just listen to Bob Marley’s version of this song, and you’ll see!

One of the more bizarre experiences of my life so far was spent in Marley’s home country of Jamaica one January several years ago, in the middle of a Rastafarian village as they met for worship.  I sat on a roughly-hewn wooden bench, with my feet on the bare dirt floor and a welcome breeze coming in the open doors of what was more a shack than a church.  The drums never stopped: constantly reverberating off of the walls in changing rhythms until I felt like my heart was beating along with them.  There was singing, even some hymns I knew, a sermon of sorts about the promise of Zion and then we all departed to sit outside in the shade. 

I spoke with one man in the village and asked him why Zion seemed to be so important to them.  He explained that they were forcibly taken from their homeland (Africa) to be slaves in Jamaica and that Zion was for them a very real place: Ethiopia, to be exact.  Sounding an awful lot like the people of Israel bemoaning their slavery in Babylon and longing for home in Zion, he told me that, as they pray for Zion, they wholeheartedly believe that a boat will come (or an airplane), and that one day, God will take them home. 

They don’t know when this will happen (and they actually don’t worry too much about the details).  What they concern themselves with is remembering: remembering that they are not at home, remembering that there is a dwelling place for them that only God can lead them to, remembering their history of slavery but even more, the hope of ultimate freedom.  Remembering Zion. 
This is why every fence bordering their villages are painted with vibrant green, yellow and red, the colors of the Ethiopian flag.  Rather than weep at the memory of a home they’ve never seen, they rejoice in it, beating their drums with wild joy.

1Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised
in the city of our God.
His holy mountain, 2beautiful in elevation,
is the joy of all the earth,
Mount Zion, in the far north,
the city of the great King.

The people of Israel saw Zion as an actual place as well: Jerusalem, where God dwelled in beauty.  Zion is on a mountain, where the kings of the earth come and quake with fear before the glory of Yahweh, who is King over all the earth.  This Psalm from the descendants of Korah urges the people of Israel to also remember as the Rastas do. 

They are told to walk around Zion, to overlook no detail of it, counting its towers, exploring its ramparts and citadels, that they would see in every stone, every path, every height and depth that this is God, their Guide.  God is as real as the dirt road beneath their feet, the cool feel of stone towers, the sound of rejoicing from the daughters of Judah. 

If Zion is real, so is Yahweh.  This good news must be passed on to the next generation: that home is not just a comfy concept but a living reality.  That God is not some apathetic celestial deity but a King who stands against all of those powers and principalities that deny that Kingdom through slavery and oppression.

For each of us, we know a place of Zion: where God is as real as the shade of a favorite tree or the laughter of a beloved child, where we finally return to ourselves and our Creator.  Where kings of worry and princes of materialism shake with fear before the undeniable goodness of our King.  

Karen, Taylor and I experienced a bit of Zion at Camp Monroe this week.  Whether kayaking on the cool Lumber River beneath sleepy trees or worshipping together in shorts and t-shirts, we were constantly reminded of the realness of God around us.  It was at times challenging and at others exhilarating, but in exploring God’s kingdom in that place, we each left with the certainty that we had seen with our own eyes that this is God.  And while navigating shallow rivers riddled with logs or rocky rushing rapids, we certainly appreciated the power of God as our Guide!  Karen and Taylor, daughters of our church like those daughters of Judah in Psalm 48, would like to share with you a bit about how they saw God in their time at Camp Monroe.

(Karen & Taylor share)

Psalm 48 speaks about the need to experience God with our own eyes and ears so that we can tell the next generation who God is.  There is great value in this, for we must not keep our Zion moments to ourselves, but share them with those who come after us.  But as we’ve seen this morning, sometimes we need to pause and ask the next generation where they see God and have the humility and patience to listen to them. 

In their energy and enthusiasm, we just may find the antidote to the apathy of our days, the reminder in our times of captivity in the Babylons of our time--anxiety and busyness--that Zion is a real place: in our own hearts, in our own days, where the King of heaven and earth chooses to dwell in glory.  This is God, and God will be our Guide forever!  Amen.

"From Tears to Laughter"


July 1, 2012
Gospel Reading:  Mark 5:21-29, 34-43
21When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. 22Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet (descends from a higher place to a lower) 23and begged him repeatedly, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live." 24So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. 25Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. 26She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." 29Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. …. 34He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."
35While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" 36But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, "Do not fear, only believe." 37He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. 38When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39When he had entered, he said to them, "Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping." 40And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha cum," which means, "Little girl, get up!" 42And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. 43He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.


SERMON: From Tears to Laughter

I once read this morning’s passage from Mark in the emergency room waiting area of a large hospital in Atlanta.  It was part of what my seminary class called “dislocated exegesis”: good grief, we came up with ridiculous names for things!  That fancy title just means that we were assigned to read a Bible passage in a strange place.  People read on the bus, in restaurants, homeless shelters, and some probably just read in their dorm rooms. 

As I sat in that place where no one really wants to be, I read, “there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years…” and  I looked up.  At that exact moment, someone wheeled by a huge shipment of blood, in a white box with a big red cross on it. 

I suppose I was dislocated: I couldn’t read this passage the same way again.  Suddenly the real, physical, life-draining condition of that nameless woman (only labeled by her disease, “The Hemorrhaging Woman”) stared me in the face, and I could no longer sanitize this story as a simple healing. 

Yes, it is a story of healing, but also of deep desperation.  For, this brazen woman must have been desperate to push her way into that crowd that pressing in on all sides.   Willing to risk it all to be made well, she knew she would make them all unclean as she shoved her way to Jesus.  She was bleeding everywhere.   And in touching the hem of Jesus’ ragged robe, she made him also unclean in the eyes of the religious establishment (who happens to be named Jairus). 

That doesn’t seem to bother Jesus: he tells her that her faith has made her well and that she can go in peace because she is now clean, and he calls her Daughter, restoring her place with her people once again.   It’s curious that we continue to refer to her by her illness instead of the name “Daughter” Jesus gave her.

I wonder how Jairus felt about all this.  He was, after all, the head honcho of the strict synagogue and here came this wild, bleeding woman to interrupt a much more important healing: that of his twelve year old daughter.  Yes, we have two daughters here, one with a loving and desperate father to seek her healing and the other cast off because of her illness and orphaned as “unclean.”  One is twelve years old, far too young to be so sick.  The other has been suffering with her sickness for twelve years, far too long to endure it.

I would imagine that Jairus, sweating in his heavy opulent robe and emotionally ragged, was only thinking of his daughter, which of course any parent would do.  After this interruptive healing, he wanted to drag Jesus away to her bedside, but before they could even take a step, some less-than-compassionate folks from Jairus’ house come.  "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?"  And with those blunt words, Jairus’ whole world crumbles. 

But Jesus never forgot the other daughter.  Telling Jairus to not fear, only believe, he rushes to the house to find it as emotionally explosive as an emergency room: people are weeping and wailing over the loss of such a young girl.  Jesus then asks them the most ridiculous question, “Why are you weeping?  The child is not dead but sleeping.”  And with tears still streaming down their weary faces, they laugh at him.  They laugh with the bitterness of lost life, with sarcasm and derision.  They laugh at Jairus, too, for thinking that this crackpot rule-breaker could possibly heal his daughter.  They laugh because Jesus has given them a target for their grief: himself, just as he gave the first daughter a target for her suffering. 

Jesus puts them out of the room, takes the little girl’s hand and speaks the words she had probably heard every morning of her life, “Little girl, get up.”  And she does.  Everyone is amazed.  And the laughter dies on their lips as she lives. 

This story would be so much easier to digest if Jesus had just done things decently and in good order and first healed the person who was first in line (and most important). Or perhaps if he had formed a committee to deal with the hemorrhaging woman while he himself went on to Jairus’ house.  But Jesus doesn’t fit into how we like to do things: while we have ideas about being on time and late, he doesn’t.  Wherever there are people in need is where he needs to be at that moment, and it’s never too late to make people whole, even after death. 

While we understand economies of limit, where there’s only so much to go around (and if we give it away we won’t have it), he doesn’t see things that way.  His compassion is extravagant and never runs out, even if he has to use a bit of it on someone else on his way to us.  There’s enough grace to go around, and actually, if we really look at our lives, holding onto our gifts tightly doesn’t make them grow: giving them away does. 

While our world is categorized as the “first” and the “third” world, placing worth in numerical terms (with no “second world” to be found: you’re either first or last!), Jesus sees two equal daughters in this story, even if one happens to be from a wealthy, religious family and the other is a poor, shunned outcast. 

Above all of this, I see the heart of this compelling story in that involuntary laughter from the mourners.  The faith that God can and does work in this world, interrupting our sorrows with joy and our hardships with hope is utterly laughable. 

The belief that, in a world of war, wildfires and weariness, every person is a son and daughter in our human family and thus deserves our compassion is hilarious.    The notion that God’s favor turns our structures of wealth and worth upside down, to serve all without limit, is comical. 

Sometimes it is laughter that motivates us to become who we are meant to be.  Perhaps that laughter helped Jesus heal that little girl.  When I was in high school, I was once asked by a trusted teacher what I wanted to be when I grew up.  Without hesitation, I said, “I want to be a missionary.”  And she laughed at me.  (Did I mention she was actually a member of the Presbyterian church I belonged to?)  She responded, through laughter, “Nooo, Whitney, you’re too much of a bleeding heart to do that.”  Huh.  I kinda thought a bleeding heart for others you want to serve was a good thing. 

Her laughter, like the laughter of those grief-stricken folks in our story who could only see the obstacles right in front of them, motivated me to claim new life.  To commit to following my call, never allowing my heart to stop bleeding for people.  I did become a missionary in Northern Ireland.  And I still am a missionary.  We all are. 

Following our comical Savior means that we will at times have to walk the road of rejection that he walked: allowing the suffering of the world to actually touch us, allowing the grief of others to find a place of solace in us.  Even allowing ourselves to be laughed at, as we defy the categories placed upon us and others and seek instead the wholeness of all of our sisters and brothers in this world.  Amen.