What’s the Work?

Preached at Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church on June 30, 2024.

Scripture

Mark 5:21-43

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him, and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue, named Jairus, came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and pleaded with 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.” So he went with him.

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that 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 cloak, I will be made well.” Immediately her flow of blood 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 cloak?” 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.”

While he was still speaking, some people came from the synagogue leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the synagogue leader, “Do not be afraid; only believe.” He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the synagogue leader’s house, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And 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. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl stood up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat.

Sermon

So summer worship is a little more informal, and though I had dozens of terrible, awkward ideas in store, only one idea seemed to stick. Today, you’re going to have to listen to the sermon. I’m going to know whether you’re listening, because there’s a little call and response with which I need your help. So… throughout the sermon, I’m going to say part of a phrase, and all of us are going to finish it.

Stay with me for a minute. Here’s what you’ll say: Interruptions are the work. Let’s try that: 1, 2, 3… Interruptions are the work. Great. We’ll all say that after I start the phrase. I’ll say this: “For faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul…” Whenever I say “For faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul,” we’ll all finish it off. “Interruptions are the work.”

For faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul: Interruptions are the work.

For faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul: Interruptions are the work.

Great. Stay on your toes.

Every time Gretchen reads my bio, which seems to be increasingly frequent these days, she reads my job title at Catonsville Presbyterian. And my job title is very long and very boring, and like all good Presbyterians, we have to use an acronym. It’s “Communications and Operations Manager.” But what’s fun about the position is that it uses a weird mix of my pastoral and administrative skills. And what’s also fun about the position is that people tell me different things than they tell their pastors.

I’m physically in the church office four days a week, Tuesday through Friday. And I really never know who or what is going to walk through the door. Some days, there’s no foot traffic. It’s just me and the church accountant, and on those quiet days, we can move mountains. We kick butt and get a lot done. On other days, it might be a constant flurry of activity, where my attention is divided a hundredfold. Those days are fine, too, and I accept that it’s going to be a hectic day and I might not make progress on my projects.

In-between, however, are my less favorite days. These are the days where I’m plugging away on something, starting to immerse myself, and right when I’m about to crest a hurdle, the phone rings. An urgent email dings in. Or someone unexpectedly shows up with a trove of paperwork. And poof, back to square one. I lose my focus, I lose my concentration, and I feel like my work is fruitless. UGH!

Henri Nouwen felt some similar frustrations. Henri was a Dutch priest who was a very complicated man, but whose inner life was full of depth, insight, and beauty. Fortunately, he constantly wrote about his experiences and his inner life. Henri was often frustrated by interruptions in his ministry, like his attention was bifurcated and often distracted from his vocation as a priest and pastor.

In reflecting on this, however, he penned the following words. Henri said, “I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted; then I realized that the interruptions were my work.” [1]

Henri realized that for faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul: Interruptions are the work.

Sometimes those phone calls I take are unexpectedly intimate. Sometimes the armful of paperwork is a chance for someone to leave the house that day and get a small moment of human connection. Sometimes the urgent email is the only way someone can express their deep, overwhelming feelings when they can’t say it out loud. For faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul: Interruptions are the work.

Today, we have a story that is all about interruptions. They’re everywhere. Let’s start with the most obvious one.

Every Gospel account has its own flavor and idiosyncrasies. The Gospel of Matthew is focused on Jewish cultural nuances and Messianic identity; the Gospel of Luke-Acts is focused on historical record and narrative; and the Gospel of John draws on the mysticism of Johannine communities. The Gospel of Mark has its own idiosyncracies, one of which is called the “Markan sandwich.” This is when the Gospel starts by telling one story—like Jairus pleading at Jesus’ feet—then telling a different, discrete story—like the woman touching Jesus’ cloak—and finally returning to and finishing the original story. And unlike sandwiches, where the bread is a delivery system for what’s inside, the buns and the guts are equally important. we should take all of the Markan sandwich together.

This is the first interruption. Jesus hears Jairus’ pleading and has pity on him. And Jairus is a husk of a person, coming face to face with the reality that his privilege, his power, his status, his education, and his wealth—everything that has insulated him from suffering—none of it can save his daughter. The person he loves the most in this world is dying before him, and he is powerless to stop it. All he has been able to do is witness his daughter’s suffering. Jesus hears Jairus’ words about the suffering of this young woman, and Jesus is moved to go to her.

It’s life or death. And we have to imagine the energy around Jesus—the urgency, the terror, the hurried movement—with everyone deeply concerned for this young woman who is dying. It’s that tunnel vision we get during an emergency. But this other anonymous woman—the one who has been suffering for twelve years—gets in the way. She interrupts. She becomes so disruptive that Jesus stops in his tracks. 

“Who touched me.” 

You can feel the energy shift in this moment. Everyone’s eyes, everyone’s thoughts turn against this woman.

And yet, Jesus doesn’t rebuke her — Jesus does something profoundly beautiful. He says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” He names her, not in some abstract or generic way. He calls her “daughter,” an expression of deep, personal intimacy that Jesus does not often use. 

What else? Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.” This precedes any mention that her disease is cured. It is only after that wellness that Jesus says, “go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” Which begs the point: faith is not what cures the hemorrhaging woman; It is what makes her well. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly cures people of diseases without tying it to their spirituality or belief. What the Gospel writer might be suggesting instead is that faith is what brought her to Jesus; Faith is what propelled this woman’s actions and what made her unshakably captive to hope in God; Faith is what compelled her to interrupt the story of her life and to interrupt Jesus. She is cured, yes, but that wasn’t what brought wholeness to her life. It was her tenacity and bravery to interrupt Jesus, her desire to interrupt the narratives about her body and her family and her life. She was brave enough to risk her self-understanding and expectations of the future.

What did this woman know? For faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul: Interruptions are the work.

“Faith is what compelled her to interrupt the story of her life and to interrupt Jesus. She is cured, yes, but that wasn’t what brought wholeness to her life. It was her tenacity and bravery to interrupt Jesus, her desire to interrupt the narratives about her body and her family and her life. She was brave enough to risk her self-understanding and expectations of the future.”

In this moment, Jesus shows us something else. In this moment, where Jesus makes the interruptions his work, we come to know that God wastes nothing. Nothing is let go to waste; nothing perishes into the void; nothing disappears untouched by God’s grace. Jesus did not let this woman go unnoticed or unnamed. This interruption—what his disciples and the crowd may have considered insignificant—God fashions into grace. This woman’s small act, that may have felt too small to matter, or too meaningless to make a difference, God didn’t let it go to waste. This woman was made well from a fleeting touch of a dirty part of the thin hem of a garment. And God fashioned it into grace.

Throughout the Scriptures, we come to know that God lets no interruption go to waste. It is Esther, who interrupts the violent authoritarian King Ahasuerus, ending a plot to destroy her people! In the conception of Jesus, it is the weak, insignificant, disenfranchised Mary who casts down the mighty, interrupting the despair of God’s people and the powers of this world! It is the resurrection of Jesus which interrupts thousands and millions of years of death, breaking its uninterrupted chain through the power of God! At Pentecost, it was the Spirit that interrupted the disciples’ own fear and trepidation about the future, interrupting their hopelessness and despair and supplanting it with ferocious courage! 

In ways great and small—especially small—we join the ministry of God’s people throughout time and space in interrupting all that is wrong. All that is unjust. All that is longing for wholeness, even if it’s been a dozen years of bleeding. Even if there’s no end in sight, and no reason to expect otherwise. For faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul: Interruptions are the work.

…

After this woman’s interruption, we get to the final part of the Markan sandwich. The flat, bottom bun, if you will.

Jesus arrives at Jairus’ home, even though there seems to be no point. Jesus will not be performing a healing anymore. There is no one to heal. The Gospel writers recount that there is wailing, weeping, despair beyond belief. Jairus, his family, everyone who knew and loved this little girl, they are now forced to imagine the unimaginable; to live through the unimaginable. Whatever expectations they had for Jesus were pointless.

But Jesus, without seeming to think twice, resurrects this girl. There is no earthquake, no thunder and lightning, no roaring winds. Jesus shows up, he sees this girl, and helps her up from her bed. 

Despite the seeming simplicity of this act, this girl almost missed an encounter with God. As Jesus and Jairus are going to her home, they were told it was hopeless and fruitless; she had died. 

The question for us is whether we will let God interrupt us.

Will we open ourselves to interruptions in our expectations? In our hopes? In what we believe about ourselves our our churches our our country or our neighbors?

The biggest barrier to pastoral care isn’t that pastors don’t want to provide it. It’s that people don’t want to “interrupt” their pastor from ministry.It’s why people feel more comfortable telling administrators and music ministers their problems than their pastors. And I think part of the other problem is that we don’t want our lives interrupted by God. We don’t want to meet uncomfortable truths, or have our visions of the future tossed out the window. We often struggle to accept God’s faith and love and hope, because we’ve been hurt so long that we don’t know any other way.

But for faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul: Interruptions are the work.

“Will we open ourselves to interruptions in our expectations? In our hopes? In what we believe about ourselves our our churches our our country or our neighbors?”

If we pull the camera back from this Gospel reading, we find that we are asked both to interrupt the trouble of this world, and we’re asked to be interrupted by God ourselves.

Every person in this room has a sermon in their pocket about something they care about. It might be about food insecurity; the right to safe, free housing; or maybe it’s smaller, like ministry with youth or accessibility for public buildings. Mine right now is about apathy in faith communities. But I would make a wager that everyone has a sermon in their pocket today.

I can’t answer what today’s encounter with Jesus means. All I can say is that for faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul: Interruptions are the work.

Spend time figuring out what God is trying to interrupt in your life. What is the merry-go-round of hurt, or assumptions, or fear that is longing for Jesus to interrupt? Talk to your therapist. Talk to your spiritual director. Talk to your pastor or friend or colleague.

Because for faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul: Interruptions are the work.

Look around the world, and ask yourself what sermon is in your pocket. And pull that sermon out, and peer through it at the world. What is God calling you to interrupt? What injustices are holding this planet back from God’s love? What conversations need to happen to interrupt bias or social scripts or structural obstacles? And how can you pull on the hem of Jesus’ garment, reaching out in courage?

Because for faith, for hope, for recovery of the soul: Interruptions are the work.

Now go and do so.

Sources

[1] Henri Nouwen, Turn My Mourning Into Dancing, Finding Hope in Hard Times (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson 2004).