I might characterize the Gospel lesson we just heard as a tale of two daughters. One of them the well-loved daughter of a Jewish leader, who was so committed to her wellbeing that he was willing to publicly humble himself before an itinerant healer of somewhat dubious credentials. The other un-named woman was an evident outcast. We have no idea whose daughter she was, although biologically she must have been someone’s.
But for all we know, her family had abandoned her. There were few conditions more shameful or isolating for a first-century Jewish woman than a persistent flow of blood, which would have rendered her ritually unclean; not just once a month, but all the time. We do know that the bleeding woman felt the need to approach Jesus in secret. We can only imagine how many times and of how many people she had asked for healing, and was shamed for even trying.
This story—featuring two woman, one younger and loved, and the other older and outcast—appears with slight variations in all three of the synoptic Gospels. Which tells us that there was something about it that was really important to the early church’s identity.
You may be familiar with the much more detailed version in Mark’s Gospel, in which Jesus is quoted in the Aramaic “talitha cum,” which means “little girl, get up”. This phrase still rings in my ears from a sermon I once heard preached by Katherine Jefferts Schori—our first female Presiding Bishop—who translated the phrase as “Get up girl, you’re not dead yet!” She used it interchangeably for both of the women in the story, and also as an exhortation to the Episcopal Church.
It’s reasonably apt exhortation for all, and likely for many of us in this room. Because at any given moment, there are plenty of reasons to presume we are as good as dead. Maybe we’re dead like the girl in the story because someone else—even someone who loved us very much—failed to see the life in us. Maybe we feel ashamed and isolated, which is a kind of death. Maybe we’ve been reading too many reports of our institutional or national or global demise, and concluded that if the scientists say we’re dying, then there’s no reason to live. I’ve jumped to this depressing conclusion myself, more times than I care to recall.
“Get up girl, you’re not dead yet!” Our resurrection faith is that life wins. Hear me: in God’s economy, life and love always win! Yes, we suffer loss and grieve, but we also proclaim with courage that God is in the business of transforming death and loss into life and newness. But sometimes what I do instead of celebrating new life is create a kind of scorecard to assess the likelihood of resuscitation. If only this and such happens—if somebody makes a big donation to Trinity, if a certain number of people come to church this Sunday, if I get my personal act together—then I will truly live. So instead of hearing Jesus say “get up girl, you’re not dead yet,” I am really listening to a persistent inner voice that tells me “get to work, be successful, and maybe you’ll be worthy of life.” Sound familiar?
This is something of a neoliberal American Gospel, but it’s not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Because nowhere in any of the three Gospel versions of this story is liveliness measured in terms of milestones or outcomes. Important though this story was in the life of the early church, its evident significance was not in what the women did with their new leases on life. About that, the text is utterly silent. All we know is that, for these two women, life began anew when someone—not necessarily even themselves—reached out to God with their deepest longing. And in reaching out to God—despite their fears, their doubts, their sense of worthiness or lack thereof—their faith mattered. You might even say that it was reckoned to them as righteousness.
Our second reading, in contrast to our Gospel, might be called a tale of two fathers. Who are actually one in the same person, but whose name changed from Abram—meaning exalted father—to Abraham, meaning father of a multitude. His encounter with God changed his identity from one whose worth was measured by his status, to one whose worth was measured by the multitude of lives he nurtured. I like to think of him as a direct ancestor to the leader of Synagogue who appealed to Jesus in our Gospel: both knew that the life of their children was worth more than all the respect accorded to their status in the community. Father’s Day is still a week away, but I’m already thinking with gratitude about all those men we know—so many of them in this congregation—who define themselves by their love and nurturing.
And it bears mentioning that Abram—whose great faith made him Abraham, and undergirded his universal fatherhood—lived more than 1000 years before Moses. The father whose first name was status and the father whose second name was defined by love of many, lived and died before the giving of the Mosaic Law. So whatever Abraham’s great worth was, it wasn’t dependent on getting his act together and following the rules any more than yours or mine is now. That’s what Paul wants to remind us of in his magisterial letter to the church in Rome.
The Apostle Paul, formerly the Pharisee Saul—another man whose name and identity were altered upon meeting God—found his freedom in Christ when he realized that God’s love did not need his compliance with Jewish identity practices. Which is not to say that the law was not good—it was in fact the gift of a loving God to help people live together well—but Paul’s worth was measured in faithfulness.
Whose faithfulness, and to what? There’s a segment of the American Church that might ask you to make a formulaic statement of faith in Jesus Christ. Who was raised from the dead for our justification, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans. And that’s not wrong, but it’s only half of the story. Because in our covenantal tradition, faithfulness is a two-way street. No matter what you believe about Jesus and Resurrection and justification, God still has faith in you. God has faith in those who are Jewish or Muslim or Sikh, faith in those who honor multiple traditions, and faith in those who have no faith at all.
Because faithfulness, in Paul’s understanding, was not just a human response to God. It is, and was, God’s gift to us: from before all time. God is and will be faithful to us, whether we are loved or lonely, dancing or dying, wandering or lost in wonder love and praise. The righteousness that comes through God’s abiding and persistent faith in us is there for us, just as surely as the fringe of Jesus’ cloak was there for the woman who trusted in its healing power.
Reach for it, friends. Reach for the love and healing and community that you really want. Learn our beautiful faith tradition and lean into it. Ask for the help that you need. And—in God’s good time—I assure you that your prayers will be answered, whether you think that you are worthy of them or not. “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings,” said the Psalmist, speaking for God. And Jesus, echoing the deep Jewish wisdom of the Psalms—as he so often did—said “I desire mercy, not sacrifice… Go,” he said to the Pharisees who were so quick to judge, “and learn what this means.” Go—fathers and sons and daughters here present—and do likewise.
