St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday sermon – Fourth Sunday after Pentecost - June 28, ’09
“Take Heart! Do Not Fear, Only Believe!”
Text: Mark 5:35,36
I know some radio stations pick a day to play Christmas carols in the middle of July, but what about when your pastor picks a Sunday to sing nothing but Easter hymns at the end of June?
Aren’t all these Alleluias and Easter hymns a little out of season? And Joyce, our organist this morning, was good enough not to stand in the door-way of my office this past Friday and ask “Pastor, are you feeling alright? What’s with singing all these Easter hymns this last Sunday of June now that we’re one week into summer?
Well, I can assure you while it may look like the older I get the more the heat of summer is getting to me, I still know when Easter is Easter. I know Easter is over. I know the longest day of the year was last weekend and even though the days are starting to get just a little bit shorter, we still have a lot of long hot, summer days & nights to go before we turn our clocks back in the fall.
So why are we singing Easter hymns at the end of June a week before the 4th of July? Why the jubilant sound of “Alleluia, Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
When I looked at the appointed lessons for this 4th Sunday after Pentecost and I realized how quickly we’ve come to the end June, to the end of the first half of 2009, I thought it was a good time to remember whenever & wherever Christians are looking at sad or serious or sobering endings in life; whenever we’re at a crossroads, at the end of a career, at the end of a job, end of a friendship, end of a relationship, end of a marriage, end of living independently in one’s own home, end of a losing battle with cancer, or when we’re just plain tired of living at loose ends with stuff going on all around us -- none-the-less, summer, fall, winter, spring, the meaning of Easter, the message of Easter, the good news of Easter puts a welcome, larger-than-life, larger-than-the-end of things focus on hope, new life, new beginnings.
In the Gospel for this Sunday from Mark 5, Mark does something he is good at and that is he tells a story within in a story. In the two stories Mark tells in today’s Gospel we meet two desperate people at the end of their rope. Both their stories are miracle stories. Both are stories of great need; stories of desperation in the face of impending death. The way Mark tells these two stories, one in the middle of the other, the one story anticipates and intensifies the other.
First, the story within a story is the story of an unworthy woman desperate for healing, suffering from a 12 yr. long bleeding condition where doctors have been no help. She has no money, no insurance, and her condition is going from bad to worse. Miracle of miracles, she is completely healed, made whole again, having faith strong enough to reach out and touch just the hem of Jesus’ robe.
Second, the main story is the story of a well-to-do leader of a synagogue named Jairus who is desperate to save his 12 year old daughter whose medical condition is also going from bad to worse and who is near the point of dying from a serious illness.
Mark reports, no sooner does Jesus finish saying to a woman who has had this serious bleeding problem for 12 years: Daughter, your faith as made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease, then some heavy-hearted friends come from Jairus’ house to tell Jairus the sad news, Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further.
But overhearing what they say, Jesus says to Jairus, the grief-stricken father of the little girl, ‘Do not fear, only believe.” Do not fear, only believe!
What is there for us to take home from this amazing, incredible miracle when Jesus took the cold, lifeless hand of Jairus’ daughter who had completely stopped breathing and said to her, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the little girl got up and began walking.”
The thing to take home, to take to heart, to hang on to is Jesus’ reassuring word to Jairus, just to Jairus and none of the others: “Do not fear. Only believe. Don’t listen to the others who are mourning & crying! Trust me! Trust me!”
As we in the church need again & again to realize, truer words were never spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ. Easter is not a Sunday to celebrate the end of dying, but Easter is the beginning and the sureness of believing, believing that is trusting in God to be gracious and merciful in all things.
Need I say, probably every parent and grandparent of a seriously ill child or grandchild, can identify with Jairus.
I know I can! I have slipped a plastic security card into locked doors and I have walked the hallways & looked into the hospital rooms of seriously sick children in isolation, surrounded by their families hoping and praying for the best, for life, for health, for healing.
Not only that. I know no parent likes to see their child put through surgeries & treatments & medical procedures that would scare even adults. And none of this is easy to understand, nor is it easy to believe, and it is very easy to be frustrated and fearful of the worst that can happen.
As one commentary’s reflections on this text point out: Stories like Jairus & his 12 year old daughter brought back to life seem to promise too much. For every family whose child makes a complete recovery from major surgery or is surviving a life-threatening illness, there are other families whose children do not make it. What about faith and healing in those sad situations?
What did Jesus mean when He said to Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe?” I’m pretty sure what Jesus meant is that wherever there is death & dying in this wonderful life God gives us to live, wherever there is deadness of living, whenever and wherever things go from bad to worse or do not get better, still there is Jesus. Not just “what a friend we have in Jesus,” but what a Jesus who Himself faced death & dying, died to sin, died for every one of our sins but now is alive, risen from the dead. This Jesus is Jesus victorious over death.
Did you catch the Portals of Prayer devotion for this past Friday where a pastor Wilfred Karsten related the experience of fear and reverence, baptizing his youngest daughter in a hospital room not knowing for sure how his daughter’s critical condition would turn out.
On that day, in that moment, he writes, the promises of Baptism struck him in a very personal, emphatic way.
“Through Holy Baptism, we are united to Christ, now and forever. All the conditions and circumstances of our lives may be uncertain, but the forgiveness of sins & eternal salvation that God gives are not. Each day, we can make the sign of the cross and celebrate the ongoing significance of our Baptism in Christ Jesus.
Sometimes we sing a song at the end of our worship like we did last Sunday, when a service of celebration & thanksgiving for a long pastoral ministry and pastor & people communing at the Table of our Lord ended with singing, “Go, My Children, with My Blessing”.
As often as I’ve sung those words before, now it dawns on me in view of the two stories of healing & resurrection in Gospel for this Sunday, the third verse of that song has words that are true & trust-worthy words for facing surgery, for visiting patients young & old alike in Oncology Units, words even for preparing for the premature dying of a young adult or attending a sad funeral.
Go, My children, fed and nourished, Closer to me:
Grow in love and love by serving, Joyful and free.
Go, My children, fed and nourished, Joyful & free (LSB:922:3)
When Jairus hears his daughter is dead and he is deeply distressed, Jesus doesn’t say she’s OK, everything’s going to be all right. Jesus says, She’s only asleep. She’s only sleeping. “Do not fear, only believe.” Trust me on this. Trust me!
This is what we can take home with us this morning. Remembering, celebrating Easter at the end of June is to stay with confidence and conviction there are all kinds of new beginnings that come with believing, trust-ing in Jesus.
The power, the strength, the courage, the determination we need to stick with living, even in the midst of death and dying, sickness and crying, is not in the believing only, but in the Word we’re given to believe, to trust.
My friend, Dr. Richard Lischer who teaches preachers to preach, once ended a sermon to a graduating class of soon-to-be ordained & preachers admonishing by saying:
Dare to create a new world with Christ’s words.
Give the people who listen to Christ’s words new images of a new world full of new people, new life, new beginnings.
And be careful with the powerful Word you have been given.
Learn all you can about the Word you proclaim. Study it. Argue with it, fear it, love it, live it.
And as Dr. Lischer ended that sermon, so I end this sermon telling you, “Life is precious! Let love be genuine! Lift your hearts! Let go of your fears. Christ is risen, He is risen indeed! Peace be with you. Have no fear. Do not fear. Fear not!
And wouldn’t you know it when you and I can speak like that, trust like that, live like that . . . it’s Easter . . even at the end of June, even a week before the 4th of July. Amen
