Address given at Templederry & St Mary's, Nenagh on Sunday 1st July 2012, the 4th after Trinity.
Have you heard this one? - Sermons are like biscuits – they need
shortening!
These words
jumped out of the page at me, as I was sitting idly in a waiting room the other
day, scanning the jokes page of an old copy of the Tipp Tattler. It seemed to
be meant just for me – a message from on high! I wish I could preach a sermon
like a wicked, buttery shortbread biscuit, but I fear it’s beyond my
capability.
Three things strike me particularly as I read
today’s NT reading (Mark 5:21-43).
First, notice how hectic Jesus’s healing
ministry is.
·
Jesus
has just returned from healing a mad-man on the other side of the lake, to find
a crowd clamouring to see him. Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, begs him to
come to heal his desperately ill daughter. Jesus immediately responds as he
always does to people in need. But on the way, pressing through the crowd, he
suddenly senses another person in need, a woman with a haemorrhage has touched
his cloak. He turns aside with healing words for her too. When he finally
reaches Jairus’s house, he heals the girl who everyone else believes is already
dead.
·
Jesus
is always on the go, he never stops. How tired he must be with all the crowds
and all their demands – but he keeps at it, because he knows it is God’s work
he is doing.
Second, notice how sensitive Jesus is to the
needs of all he meets.
- He recognises Jairus’s
agitation and goes with him straight away to see the girl – there are no
waiting lists for Jesus, unlike our own health service.
- Despite the crowd pressing
around him, Jesus senses the touch of the woman with a haemorrhage, and pauses
to talk to her directly.
- When people come to tell Jairus
his daughter is dead, Jesus reassures him. When he reaches the house,
after sending away those in hysterics, he lovingly takes the girls hand,
and gently says, ‘Little
girl, get up!’ And he even makes sure that she gets
something to eat when she comes to and can walk about.
Third, notice how important faith is to Jesus’s
healing.
- “Daughter, your
faith has made you well”, he says to the woman with a haemorrhage, “go
in peace, and be healed of your disease”.
- “Do not fear, only
believe”,
he says to Jairus.
- Wise doctors, I think, have
always appreciated that the faith and belief of patients in the treatment
they receive is important for recovery. A consultant proposed injections
of colloidal gold to treat my father’s rheumatoid arthritis. He replied,
‘I believe in gold injections about as much as I do in rhino horn’, and
sought a second opinion. The gold I am quite sure would have done him no
good, because he did not believe it would. But his faith in the second
consultant’s treatment gave him several more years of good health.
- Mark also tells us, in the very
next passage of his Gospel, that Jesus’s healing powers were almost completely
ineffective in Nazareth. People who knew his family, people he had
grown up with, just could not bring themselves to believe in his message
of good news.
Mark records these healing miracles to demonstrate
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
But for me
the real miracle is that Jesus continues his healing ministry even today, both
in us and through us.
There are
times when each and every one of us desperately needs healing. And Jesus, who
told his disciples ‘Remember, I am with you always’, offers us his healing
touch whenever we need it.
Jesus is never
too busy to respond to us. With his great sensitivity he understands our needs
beyond what we ask, and he will heal us in whatever way is best for us. If it
is physical healing we seek, we may not always receive it – healing miracles
are rare enough these days - but he will surely give us the spiritual healing
we really need.
The only
thing he needs from us is the faith and boldness to ask him in prayer.
But as well
as healing us, Jesus also heals through us. Jesus calls us as
Christians, corporate members of Christ’s body, his Church, to continue his ministry
in his name.
St Teresa
of Avila
Today’s
reading has something to teach us as we do our poor human best to live up to Jesus’s
call. First, we must expect our lives to be hectic – there is so much that
needs to be done. Second, in order to minister successfully to others we must
cultivate in ourselves a Christ-like sensitivity to their needs. And third, our
ministry will do little good unless we also foster faith in the good news Jesus
preached, not just in those we meet on the way, but in ourselves.
I shall
finish with St Ignatius Loyola’s beautiful prayer for Jesus to strengthen us in
his service:
Teach us, Good Lord,
to serve you as you
deserve:
to give, and not to
count the cost;
to fight, and not to
heed the wounds;
to toil and not to
seek for rest;
to labour and not to
ask for any reward,
save that of knowing
that we do your will;
through Jesus Christ
Our Lord. Amen
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