Happy Pride!
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, June 27, 2021
Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15; 2:23-24 • 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 • Mark 5:21-43
Happy Pride! To the fellow members of our familiar alphabet soup of the LGBTQ+ community, I greet you and wish you love and courage and pride! To our allies, families, friends, advocates, supporters, I say thank you, you are welcome members of our chosen families, we’ve got your back like you’ve got ours. Thank you.
It was the early and mid-80s when I was beginning to understand that I was not like most of the other boys I knew. I’d grown up with permissive parents, who encouraged my creative and talented side, but it was clear the day my mother took away my Betty Crocker Easy-Bake Oven, that it was time for me to explore other, more traditional hobbies for a boy. I did not have language to describe what I felt, but I knew I could not talk about it to anyone. It was – it needed to be – a secret. “I think I might be slightly homosexual” I wrote in my diary on the first day of seventh grade, my first time being around so many older boys as I switched from my elementary school to my junior high school. I was paying attention. I ripped the page out of my book as soon as I’d written it, knowing it could never be seen, and flushed it down the toilet.
The internet had not been invented yet, and the self-help section of the local bookstore wasn’t much help. The library in my conservative town had books on the subject of sexuality, but the card in the catalog read “See front desk to check out,” and that wasn’t going to happen. Overheard pieces of family conversation on the issue of homosexuality and snippets of segments on Phil Donohue and the early days of Oprah, all lead to a similar place – being gay or having a gay son brought shame to the individual and the family, and if it was discovered there were few chances to fix it with early intervention before the desire took hold. And our conservative preacher had a lot to say about it, and none of it ended well. There wasn’t a lot of information to help me describe what was going on, and no one I could trust with my secret.
So I prayed. I was not certain that I needed to change, to be fixed, but I was certain that I needed help negotiating things. I wanted to feel the Grace of healing, however God might give it.
I love the Gospel today for many reasons. One of them is because of its disrupted narrative. It’s really the story of Jairus and his sick daughter, but then in the middle there is a whole separate story. Why is this? It isn’t just the compiler of this particular Gospel who structures the story in this way. Rather, it appears in all three of the so-called Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke as a healing narrative interrupted by a second healing story. What’s even more interesting is that Mark, whose account we heard today, is the longest version. This is rare, because usually Mark is to the point.
The Markan writer sets up an interesting social dilemma here, made clear when we examine the subjects of the stories. Aside from Jesus and the disciples, the recurring characters, if you will, we have three part-actors who come in for their roles: Jairus, an adult woman with hemorrhages, and a sick girl.
Jairus, a First Century audience would be quick to point out, was a man, and a leader of the synagogue. In First Century Palestine this put him higher in social position than the other characters, indeed, as a synagogue leader, he was very important. His daughter was important because of her relation to her father, but, as a young girl, was significantly down the social ladder. And then we have the woman with the flow of blood. She was unclean by all standards of society, and was not expected even to leave her home in her condition. Her appearance on the scene, especially within the narrative of someone righteous like the synagogue leader, indicated the possibility of scandal. To the listener, we should pay close attention – the prophet was making a point.
Jairus’ Daughter and the Woman with the flow of blood share a few points in this parable: they advocate for healing by the Savior; they push past obvious obstacles, driven by faith, to get the attention they deserve; and their faith is what ultimately heals them. ... Or is it?
I have never been comfortable with healing parables. Even when I was a member of the science-denying denomination of my youth, something did not sit right with me. It’s this simple problem: if God can make people well by their Faith, or by applying mud on their eyes, or by dipping seven times in a particular river, can’t God also make people well just because they should be made better?
And what about Grace? Our faith -- our teaching -- tells us Grace is given freely, in an unending stream, whether deserved or not, whether bidden or not. Are we not healed by Grace, or does healing come just by Faith? And what does it take to get Jesus’ attention? How do we, who certainly cannot rush out into the village and grab at his garment, or send our relatives to bring him to our sickbeds, receive such miraculous healing?
And what is healing? What is the role of prayer in healing? I think it is a slippery slope to imagine that God would answer some prayers of healing and not others. It puts an unseemly responsibility on us to then determine who is in and who is out of the reach of Jesus.
Earlier, when I suggested that the shock and scandal of a synagogue leader and an unclean woman appearing together was a sign for us to listen up and pay attention, it is because I think that Jesus’ message, as I understand it, comes through despite the Gospel writers’ narrative constructs. What do I mean by this?
I have a theory. I think the answer is that both Faith and Grace are instruments of God’s miraculous healing. For the writers of the Gospels, the emphasis on faith as the method through which healing is delivered, is predictable. They are Evangelists, they are sharing the Good News, to put it clearly, they have an agenda. It is important for them to communicate to their listener that the way to access God is through Jesus. St. Mark will spend some time on this, St. John will spend much longer on the issue – the way to salvation is through Jesus. In a few weeks we’re going to switch from Mark to John in our summer Gospels, and you’re going to hear a lot about bread, and how bread is the way to access Grace. Listen with a close ear, this is
First Century marketing, and insists on a highly selective Jesus who rewards the faithful for their faith. I reject this.
Grace is, as is its nature, uncontainable by either Evangelist or Doctrine. It’s free. It’s abundant. It comes without need for its asking. It just is. It is the other method through which we are healed, and, in the opinion of this preacher, the only one. I think this is the point that Jesus would have made were we able to hear his thoughts on the matter, free from the filter of the redactors and writers of the record of his ministry. If only the faithful were healed, well, then, we’d be over in the Christian Scientist church today. And certainly, we can name times when the unfaithful, the unworthy, even our own selves, were healed and restored.
And I have a theory about what we mean to do when we pray for healing: I think we are praying for restoration, acceptance, the wisdom to understand the meaning of what is happening to us. We pray for a right outcome – that may or may not result in physical healing, but might result in psychic healing, emotional preparedness, mended relationships.
As I moved through my teen-age years, I continued to pray for understanding. I hoped to happen upon a miraculous solution that would allow me to love who I wanted to love while not upsetting my family. In the 80s the dire consequences of coming out also predicted possible discrimination in jobs, housing, to be a social outcast, to be forced to move to some place like San Francisco to find others like me and to be accepted. It was terrifying.
It was not until I was twenty, and living in Madrid, thousands of miles away from my home, that my prayers finally received an answer. I met my first boyfriend, and while our relationship was short-lived, I knew there was no going back. No going back to hiding, to denying, to pretending, to wishing for something different. The answer to my prayer? I hadn’t ever needed healing in the first place. There was never anything wrong. In fact, this had already been given to me, I just hadn’t had the opportunity, the Grace to recognize it. I had been praying all along for a right outcome, but I was always gay, had been created intentionally so, and was always going to be gay. The rest would fall into place. I knew it in my head, I believed it in my heart, I put it into action. In that moment, I chose to live free, to wake up.
It’s the words of Jesus to Jairus’ sick daughter, that reached me then and still motivate me today: “Get up, Girl.”
Happy Pride!
Amen.