Mark 5:21-43
“Transfer of Power”
June 27, 2021
There are a number of phrases for this phenomenon experienced this past pandemic year.
Some called it “skin hunger” while others referred to it as “affection deprivation.” One of the most common phrases was “touch starvation” and it was a fairly universal experience during our socially distanced, hand sanitizer reliant, repeatedly cleaned surface, handwashing while singing the ABC song year plus of COVID.
All of those isolating and necessary measures in our effort to control the spread of the virus meant that touch starvation or the longing for touch or physical contact from other living beings that takes place when a person experiences little or no physical contact for a prolonged amount of time affected many of us in such a way that there are still lingering effects.
A lot of us are attempting to make up for lost time with embraces and hugs that are deeply felt but there is definitely a bit of awkwardness and permission-seeking with a heightened respect before initiating or jumping in.
I was struck during my visit to the dentist this week, after many barriers to potential transmission continued to be in evidence, how the hygienist did a fine job scraping and picking and cleaning my teeth with her hands holding the tools of her trade inside my mouth for close to an hour without ever once touching any part of me except the surface of my teeth.
The lack of touch, especially in the hospital rooms of COVID patients has been heartbreaking.
One nurse from Des Moines recounted in April that while squeezing her patient’s hand on a video call with his next of kin, she relayed that she was offering the touch that his family couldn’t so that as he took his last labored breath, he could imagine her hand being theirs.
A few months ago in Brazil, nurses developed a way to simulate human touch by taking 2 disposable gloves, filling them with hot water and laying them on the hands of isolated COVID patients so they would, often in their less than clear-eyed state, have some sense of the feeling of desperately missed human touch.
While in many parts of our nation, COVID continues to ravage communities we also are moving into a new phase which rather than thinking of as a return to the “normal” that may not be possible, perhaps we could think of this time as a “national period of healing.” I say period or even era because there is no quick fix for us.
Every week during our time of sharing joys and concerns we lift up prayer requests for those who are ill or the loved ones of those who have died.
The illnesses are broad-ranging – from the physical to the emotional to those not always visible to the human eye.
Some are people we all know while others are loved ones of one of us who may live a distance away.
When we bring our prayers before God for someone who is ill, we all come with a hope of some kind of healing, but I have yet to be presented with anyone whose expectation has been for the kind of instantaneous healing that Jesus shares here in this story within a story.
These two, a 12-year-old girl and a woman who has suffered for 12 years, have their symptoms eliminated and although it would be amazing to witness that firsthand movement from sick to well, I think we all recognize that this is not the healing we will get.
One writer points out that we don’t really know if “Jesus cured anyone because curing is directed toward disease…But in the same terms, Jesus definitely healed all who wanted to be healed.”
This author, John Pilch, describes it this way, “Healing is the restoration of meaning to people’s lives no matter what their physical condition might be” (The Cultural World of Jesus, Sunday by Sunday, Cycle B, p. 104).
We often pray for God’s healing presence to be felt and known by our sick friend or dying loved one and maybe in our heart of hearts if we are totally honest,
we are hoping this will mean a miracle cure.
For most of us our faith in God exists because we recognize that God is bigger, more powerful, more creative than we can imagine and the one whose lead we follow.
Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that there is a reason we hear so many of these stories of God’s healing power through Jesus.
These stories are a way for us to figure out who Jesus is – to know him.
She says, “They are not stories about how to get God to do what we want, which is just another way of trying to stay in control. Instead, they are stories about who God is, and how God acts, and what God is like. Mark wrote them down for one reason and one reason alone: ‘This is no ordinary man,’ he tells us every way he knows how. ‘This man is the son of God. Believe it.”
Let’s think about the audacity of this woman who for more than a decade would be living the life of an outcast because of her bleeding.
It is entirely possible that she was a woman of wealth previously as she had consulted multiple doctors and then, like now, care from a physician came at a cost.
She is considered unclean and finally sees her chance.
I would invite you to read the 12th and 15th chapters of Leviticus as a lesson on how absolutely isolated she was because not only is she considered unclean but anything and anyone she touches would be thought unclean.
With boldness born of desperation and faith, she pushes herself through the crowd and touches Jesus without his permission.
“Who touched me?” Jesus stops in his track demanding to know.
But Jesus is not mad. There, with all of those people including Jairus who is desperate that Jesus bring his healing touch to his daughter, Jesus praises the woman and her faith which have made her well again.
Jesus shares the power.
It is a joint venture – his healing touch and her faith.
If healing is the restoration of meaning to people’s lives, no matter their physical condition, then I invite us to consider the ways we do that now and other ways we could going forward.
The Summer Lunch Program does that by feeding children, no questions asked.
The Menstrual Products for All program does that in an anonymously quiet way.
The Everyone Eats program spreads the restoration to those who produce, prepare, and consume the food offered.
What other ways might we be engaged in the healing and restoration of God’s people?
We each possess healing power.
There are times when that healing takes the form of sitting next to a bed or alone at home and sharing news and laughter with someone whose illness has cut them off from all that is familiar.
Healing can take the form of a phone call or a card to someone whose life has been disrupted or upended.
We can heal by following Jesus’ lead in restoring a person into the community by including them, not forgetting them, engaging them, especially after so much time apart.
These are our healing powers.
When we pray for God’s healing power to be upon the sick friend or family member, we are also praying for ourselves – that we remember and fully use the healing power with which we have been so richly blessed.
My prayer is that we be ever mindful of this great and glorious gift from God balanced gently with the many tasks that fill our days.
Let us be generous in sharing our healing touch, in the name of Jesus. Amen.