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 publically 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 even for that presumption.
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 Markan version, in which Jesus is quoted in the Aramaic “talitha cum.” This phrase is ringing in my ears from the sermon preached last week by our Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, 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 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 done it myself, more times than I care to recall.
“Get up girl, you’re not dead yet!” Our resurrection hope is that life wins. 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 important notices me, if I get my act together, if a certain number of people come to church this Sunday—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, and maybe you’ll be worthy of life.” Sound familiar?
This is something of an American Gospel, but its 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.
Which may sound like “come lay your hand on the one I love,” or “let me touch your garment,” or even “may they be for your people the body and blood of your son.” I don’t know what longing for life brings you here today, but I am confident that God longs to hear about it. So let us join our voices in prayer, and reach out our hands to the God who longs to touch us, to be touched, and to bring us into fullness of life.
