Marilu Thomas, “Desperado”
Mark 5: 21-43
I recently got an Oura ring. A friend of mine loved hers, so I had to have one. The ring records body temperature, heart rate, movement, and sleep and creates great charts on stress and stress relief. For instance, it gave me a heads-up that my temp and heart rate were up, and my resilience was down, so I might be sick. And guess what? I was sick! I had Covid—again! It told me my heart rate was up between 9 and 10:30 pm Thursday night--- for some reason. This ring makes me feel like if I know about my patterns, I can fix them, which is an illusion at best. It didn’t prevent me from getting Covid, but it did tell me I was suffering from something.
As we look at the gospel of Mark today, we see two stories of suffering. Jairus, a leader in the synagogue, begs Jesus to heal his young daughter, who is at the point of death. An unnamed woman has been suffering from a blood disease for many years and is afraid to ask for healing. Jesus is the last resort for both of these people.
Imagine the desperation it took for Jairus to even think of Jesus as an option. His colleagues had been working with Herod to rid themselves of Jesus for months. Who knows what else he has done before this moment to save his child? With this one move, he gives up his public standing, ego, social status, and self-image as a father who can protect his children. He falls into the dirt to beg for help. His sweet daughter is near dying. He has tried everything he knows how to do and has failed. He is a very desperate father. This outlier rabbi is his last resort.
Jesus responds immediately to Jairus and begins walking, but the crowd slows him down. Then, he feels a thread of power go out of him and stops. “Who touched me?” he asks. If I were Jairus, my anxiety would become unbearable when Jesus stops. Are you kidding me? His little girl is at the point of dying, and they must go now. Jesus doesn’t seem to understand--timing is everything. If she dies, what’s the point of living?
Meanwhile, a desperate woman has touched Jesus. A mural by Chilean artist Daniel Cariola in Magdala's lower chapel in the Holy Land illustrates this tender moment. Picture many large male feet in sandals, crowded close together with one woman’s shaky finger making its way toward the hem of Jesus’ robe. One feeble finger, so close to the ground she must be crawling. Jesus tells her to get up, which gives her respect and shows he cares for her experience; we discover her story of what this unidentified woman has had to do to survive. Mark Vitalis Hoffman tells us, “In a more literal rendering, you should hear the string of participles that build up, finally culminating in the woman’s action: “And a woman–having been bleeding for twelve years, and having suffered greatly from many physicians, and having spent all she had, and having benefited not one bit but rather having gone from bad to worse, having heard about Jesus, having come in the crowd from behind–touched his cloak.” This woman is at the end of her rope. She’s desperate.
We watch shows, read books, and listen to podcasts of desperate people in desperate situations because, deep inside, we can relate. Think of shows like Breaking Bad, where Walter White’s cancer diagnosis leads to a desperate attempt to make money for his family by setting up a meth lab in an RV with one of his high school students. This is still the most-watched show in the history of television. Or John Q, when Denzel Washington’s character takes an Emergency Room hostage until the insurance company pays for his son’s heart surgery. Or even Ted Lasso, who goes to the UK to coach soccer in a desperate attempt to save his marriage. We feel desperate when we have tried everything humanly possible and have failed. We relate to these characters because we feel desperately lonely in our souls.
Catherynne Valente wrote, “At the bottom of philosophy something very true and very desperate whispers: Everyone is hungry all the time. Everyone is starving. Everyone wants so much, much more than they can stomach, but the appetite doesn't converse much with the stomach. Everyone is hungry and not only for food - for comfort and love and excitement and the opposite of being alone. Almost everything awful anyone does is to get those things and keep them.”
Can you relate? Can you think of a situation that makes you feel desperate? Does that desperation make you feel alone, unable to admit where your thoughts are taking you? Rationalization can also be a form of desperation. Anne Lamott speaks into this conundrum, "The reason ‘help’ is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you’re in despair, you’re teachable.” Desperation is an admission that we don’t know everything and, therefore, expresses faith in something bigger than ourselves.
This past week, I have had quite a few people ask me what faith is, and I consider that a nudge from God. Jesus lovingly calls the sick woman ‘Daughter’ and tells her, “Your faith has made you well.” When Jairus’s friends tell him his daughter has died, they say, “Don’t bother the Rabbi. There is nothing he can do.” Jesus’s reply is usually translated as” Do not fear, only believe,” which is easier said than done! We know Jairus is afraid! In Greek, however, it reads, “Don’t listen to them. Keep trusting.” Jesus is confident of a future that no one else sees. His faith transforms our fear. When you feel afraid or anxious, trust Jesus’s faith in your future.
You may have noticed that Christ is less interested in preventing suffering than healing it. Jesus did not prevent the woman from years of suffering or prevent the young girl’s sickness. I have no answer to why that is, except that we all suffer. I am also aware that not all of us are healed on this side of heaven. Like any good parent, God does not punish us with illness, and Jesus does not require anything from these people who come to him for help. We do not know about the woman’s prayer life or Jairus’ beliefs; we know they are both desperate and come to the only one who heals. They are both beggars, believing they are out of options, with nothing left to give.
What does this mean for you? If you are out of good ideas for how to fix yourself or other people, or if you are obsessively looking for a way to understand how you got into a mess or how to get out, or are wondering what words will make that person hear you and change, or if you are just tired of trying to figure it all out, you have come to the right place.
My understanding of faith is that it is not even ours. We don’t make, keep, or build our faith. Faith is a gift freely given. Jesus shares his faith as a gift to us in our desperation. Christ is faith itself; God come to us in human form.
Consider this as a metaphor. The sea, like life, can be a day at the beach, but it is also dangerous and takes a lot of energy to stay afloat. Using your strength, you are soon drowning at sea and cannot save yourself on your own power. You see a life vest floating near you and put it around your neck, and you are saved. Did you save yourself? A life jacket is a form of trust in something outside of yourself. You put your faith in the life jacket as a tangible form of relieving your desperate drowning situation. The sea has not changed at all, but your situation in the sea has changed.
You are floating in the sea of desperation known as the human condition. The guilt you are feeling right now will not take you under because it is forgiven, having been called into this sanctuary to hear about how you have been saved at sea. The mystery of grace is the mystery of faith. It is all gift. It is all grace. On the Cross, God fashioned himself into a life jacket to free you from guilt and desperation that are drowning you. Welcome- we are all beggars here at the foot of the Cross, trusting in the One who saves.
Amen.
