Faith Power
The Venerable Joan Clark
Mark 5:21-43
If it weren’t for faith and trust, we would have no exploration, discovery, feats of wonder, inventions, advances in medicine, or relationships. Every step we take toward something new, unknown, or unexplored leads us into a territory of faith. Like the leap across the gaping ravine or the step into utter darkness believing in a floor beneath us, faith and trust allow us to step out of our current known and into the unknown, believing it is knowable.
Faith is trust in things we do not know in our sensory experience but believe in our minds to be true. It allows us not only to imagine something but to dare to go there. Faith allows us to access unreachable places.
Think about the times that faith or trust has allowed you to enter into a new place and put down roots, believing you will adapt and make friends, or about the times you have entered into a new friendship or relationship, trusting you will be loved. Think about a time when you have taken a risk –to ask for a promotion, to seek a better job, to say something on your mind, to help someone in need, to try an experimental drug, to trust in the knowledge of others. These are all risks based in faith.
Some of those risks we’ve taken in faith have defined our lives. But nearly every step we’ve taken in life has involved some degree of faith. In truth, there is little we can be sure of.
Think about a typical day. How much of that day can you be sure of? How sure are you that everything will go the way you imagine? Chances are, surprisingly little will go the way you planned. We continuously adapt in our lives based partly on what we know and partly on faith.
When we as Christians choose to believe in the power of Jesus, when we put our trust and faith in Jesus to direct our lives or heal our brokenness, we are simply consciously acknowledging the act of allowing ourselves to step into the realm of the unknown, trusting that Jesus is there, that His power exists, and that He will choose to use it in some way on our behalf or on the behalf of someone else.
Faith allows us to risk healing and wholeness, life, and a better world.
The power of faith is exemplified in our scriptures for today, as we see two inter-connected stories of Jesus’ healing, one inside of the other.
The first is a story of a request by Jairus, one of the local synagogue’s leaders, to heal his daughter, who he says, is near death. We no sooner learn of the girl’s plight when another story inserts itself into the narrative.
Jesus is followed by a large crowd. A woman suffering from hemorrhages came up behind him in the crowd, reached out, and touched his robe, believing she would be made well, if only she could touch him.
Immediately, she feels the change in her body. And immediately also, Jesus feels power going forth from him and knows someone touched his clothes.
As usual, the disciples are clueless. But Jesus seeks out the woman, who comes fearfully in front of him, admitting to the touch, which for a woman, especially an unwell woman, would have been unpermitted. She would not have been allowed to approach and touch a man, let alone while she was ill and bleeding, something that would have been considered highly unclean.
But Jesus does not scold her but praises her, noting that her faith has made her well, and declaring her healed.
As this story concludes, Jesus continues on his way to Jairus’s home, while people surrounding him tell him not to bother, that the child is dead. Yet Jesus encourages Jairus not to fear but to believe. As people surrounding the household continue to scoff and laugh at Jesus’ determination to go in to the child, he locks them outside and allows only a few disciples, along with the child’s parents, to go in with him.
Then Jesus asks the girl to rise, and rise she does. It is almost as if the enormous faith of the haemorrhaging woman, whom Jesus calls daughter, has enabled the rising of this other “daughter,” despite the unbelief of the synagogue folk surrounding Jairus’s house.
What does this tell us?
Intercessory prayer is mysterious. Prayer is powerful, doesn’t have to be focused on a single person, and can empower great healing. Prayer can be initiated even by an unrelated person, even by someone outside of the synagogue, perhaps especially by someone outside of the synagogue. A little bit of faith can, as Jesus told his disciples, move enormous mountains.
The enormous faith in this story doesn’t come from the pious Jewish men of the synagogue, nor even from Jairus himself, who makes the petition, but is easily swayed in doubt by his unbelieving friends and family. Jesus needs to shut out those voices from Jairus’s head in order to keep him focused on the faith needed at hand.
No, the enormous faith in this story comes from an outcast, ill woman, who “knows” that if she even just touches Jesus’ clothing, she will be made well. The juxtaposition of these stories tells us something about faith that we sometimes don’t want to acknowledge: it may come from unexpected people in unexpected circumstances in unexpected places and yield unexpected outcomes. And, sadly, the church may sometimes be the last place we find it.
The most powerful faith comes most often from those in the direst of circumstances, people who are willing to take great risks in order to find healing, acceptance, community, and hope.
Like Jairus’s well-meaning synagogue friends, we in the church, as we have embraced the ordinary, the expected, and the status quo, have often become “risk-averse.” We are people dedicated to keeping things “the same.” We believe, we know exactly what to expect in our lives and attempt frequently to try to maintain those expectations, so as to keep the order that gives us continuity and comfort. But in a sense, by doing so, we are the ones laughing at Jesus, as though truly believing in His power to heal and change us borders on the absurd.
How strong exactly is our faith?
Do we recite the creeds, confess our faith, and yet work daily to plan our own way in the world? And in our churches?
Or do we truly put our trust in Jesus? Step forward into unknown futures in which we have no clue what will come?
Do we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us in our decision-making? Do we as a church spend more time praying than in meetings of strategy, finance, and form? Or do we truly believe more in our own abilities than in the ability of God to change us, our church, our communities, and our world?
As always, the scriptures challenge us to look at ourselves and who we confess to be. They challenge us to examine our hearts, our minds, and above all our faith. And they challenge us to be risk takers, not only in word, but in deed and in mission, believing that Jesus still today has the power to heal and the power to resurrect.
Who are your haemorrhaging women? The ones whose faith astound so much that it jolts you into seeing how your faith has failed? Perhaps they are among you. Perhaps they don’t belong to your church at all. Perhaps you will find them in your community, in your neighbourhood, in your hospital, or in your past. These are your teachers.
Go out into the world church, and learn from these.