{"id":3169,"date":"2021-06-27T11:00:24","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T15:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3169"},"modified":"2021-07-01T11:01:26","modified_gmt":"2021-07-01T15:01:26","slug":"the-audacity-of-the-desperate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2021\/06\/27\/the-audacity-of-the-desperate\/","title":{"rendered":"The Audacity of the Desperate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Mark 5:21<\/span>\u2013<\/span>43<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear just the sermon<\/a><\/p>\n

Two women.\u00a0 One is a recognized adult, able to consult with professionals and spend money on herself.\u00a0 One, at the age of 12, is just entering adulthood. \u00a0As happens so often in the Bible, we do not know either of their names.\u00a0 One is defined by her illness \u2013 she is the woman with twelve years of hemorrhages.\u00a0 The other is defined by her relationship with her father \u2013 she is Jairus\u2019s daughter, child of one of the leaders of the synagogue.\u00a0 She is further defined by the description of \u201clittle daughter\u201d by her father and \u201clittle girl\u201d by Jesus, even though in her culture she is now considered old enough to be married.\u00a0 Finally, she is defined by the fact that she is dying from an unspecified condition; and indeed, she becomes further defined as \u201cdead\u201d during the space of this story.<\/p>\n

These definitions carry a lot of weight.\u00a0 Because she suffers from a flow of blood, aside from the debilitation, the challenges of blood flowing outside the body, and the increasing depletion of her resources and her hope, the older woman is ritually and thus socially unclean. And not just she herself is unclean, but anything she wears, anything or anyone she touches is made by her<\/em> to be unclean.\u00a0 This state of religious and social isolation has lasted for her for as long as the younger woman has been alive.\u00a0 As for the younger woman, we have no idea of who she herself is, or what causes her condition, or how long she has been dying.\u00a0 We only know that she is at the point of death, that her father and even Jesus do not see her as having moved beyond being \u201clittle\u201d, and that she really does die.<\/p>\n

Now this is a healing story, and both of these women are healed.\u00a0 Miraculously so.\u00a0 And, you may remember our explorations of other healing stories through the work of Sharon V. Betcher, theologian and disability activist.\u00a0 She notes that the point of the stories of Jesus\u2019 healing is not just the healings themselves.\u00a0 The point is even more so the point of Jesus\u2019 upending of the political and social realities of the time.\u00a0\u00a0 This upending comes in his preaching of the good news of the Kingdom of God having come near, and is revealed through Jesus\u2019 own ministry, teaching, life, death, and resurrection.\u00a0 Add to this that Mark is often referred to as the gospel of conflict.\u00a0 Jesus encounters conflict with his own family, his disciples, the religious authorities, and demons.\u00a0 Finally, there are themes particular to Mark that are very present in this story. \u00a0More than healing is going on here.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of this story, both these women are in desperate straits.\u00a0 The woman with the flow of blood is also bleeding money and is only getting worse on both counts.\u00a0 The younger woman is dying and then is dead.\u00a0 And this is where the audacity of the desperate comes into play.\u00a0 When there seems to be no hope, desperate people will go outside their circumstances, outside propriety, even outside themselves.\u00a0 They will go after what they recognize as new possibility and new life, they will go after what they really want. \u00a0The word \u201caudacity\u201d comes from the Latin word for \u201cbold\u201d.\u00a0 The dictionary definitions are many, and almost seem to take sides: \u201cIntrepid boldness\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cWillingness to take bold risks\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cDisregard for conventional thought, behavior or propriety\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cRude, disrespectful, impudent\u201d behavior.\u201d \u00a0It is not clear that the cultivation of audacity is a good thing. \u00a0But, when one is desperate, one may not care.<\/p>\n

Certainly the woman with the flow of blood does not.\u00a0 She, a woman, ritually and socially unclean, has heard of Jesus.\u00a0 On the basis of this hearsay she pushes through a large and pressing crowd to waylay him on his way to somewhere else. She sneaks up behind him, and even though it\u2019s only his cloak, she touches this man, a total stranger, just because.\u00a0 Even after all the experts had worked on her to no avail and she was only getting worse, she touches Jesus\u2019 cloak just because she <\/em>knows that this<\/em> will make her well.\u00a0 And instead of lightning bolts, or people pointing fingers and yelling \u201crude\u201d \u201cdisrespectful\u201d \u201cimpudent\u201d, instead of all this, immediately<\/em> the flow of blood stops, and she feels in her body that she is healed of her disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmediately\u201d is a big word in Mark.\u00a0 It does not just indicate that something occurs quickly.\u00a0 \u00a0Immediately <\/em>also marks a revelatory event that breaks into human experience with the new life of the Kingdom of God.\u00a0 So this story does not stop with the woman\u2019s healing.\u00a0 Instead, Jesus immediately<\/em> realizes that something revelatory has in fact happened.\u00a0 He is aware that power has gone from him to another, and he starts looking around for whom this person might be.\u00a0 Now the woman knows what has happened to her, knows that Jesus is looking for her.\u00a0 <\/em>So with honesty as well as fear and trembling, she confesses the truth of her audacity.\u00a0 And Jesus calls her \u201cDaughter\u201d \u2013 he reinstates and recognizes her within her faith and her community as a Daughter of Abraham.\u00a0 He commends her audacious faith, and blesses her with peace toward the enjoyment of her restored health.\u00a0 She goes on her way, whole again with life and hope.\u00a0 The odd thing is that the crowd, for all its pressing, does not seem to realize that anything has happened. And the disciples even question that anything has happened at all.<\/p>\n

This all occurs as an interruption, while Jesus is on his way to someone else.\u00a0 And even while he\u2019s speaking to the healed woman, people come from Jairus\u2019 house to tell Jairus that his daughter is dead, and that he, Jairus, should not bother \u201cthe teacher\u201d any longer.\u00a0 Jesus<\/em> tells Jairus to not be afraid, and goes to his house anyway.\u00a0 He dismisses everyone else except Peter, James, John, the child\u2019s mother, and Jairus, who is now named \u201cthe child\u2019s father\u201d instead of \u201cthe leader of the synagogue\u201d.\u00a0 Jesus goes into the young woman\u2019s room, takes her by the hand, and tells her, \u201cLittle girl, get up!\u201d\u00a0 And immediately <\/em>the young woman gets up, begins to walk about, and soon will be eating something, restored to her family and her health.<\/p>\n

Now we may wonder where the audacity is on the part of this young woman.\u00a0 We do not know anything about her, or about what her affliction is, before she gets up, and we know nothing of her after she gets up from death except that she can walk and soon will regain more strength and health as she nourishes herself.\u00a0 There is only one thing that she<\/em> actually does<\/em> in response to Jesus\u2019 call.\u00a0 Immediately<\/em>, she gets up.\u00a0 This is the revelatory event, that she gets up, that she answers Jesus\u2019 call and comes back from death to life.<\/p>\n

One of my mentors used to say that if the meaning of an event eludes us as a biblical event, we may understand it better if we relate it to events in our present day.\u00a0 Now to do this with this event brings up some realities that may be uncomfortable about some of the manifestations of suffering and desperation.\u00a0 So this is a trigger warning, so that if you want to you can walk around, get some water, or just skip this part.\u00a0 Because we will never know about Jairus\u2019 daughter, whether she died from a disease or an injury or what, and so it\u2019s useless to speculate.\u00a0 We will never know her reasons for getting up in response to Jesus\u2019 call to return to life.\u00a0 But Jesus says, for his own reasons that we also do not know, that she is asleep.\u00a0 And if we do look to young people of our time who are moving into adulthood through the lens of that metaphor of sleep, we know that increasing numbers of them are experiencing clinical levels of enervating depression and anxiety.\u00a0 There are real issues with alcoholism and other forms of numbing out as attempts to avoid dealing with the overwhelm of the world\u2019s challenges. \u00a0Perhaps most significant is that the choices of death over life for this age group are at an all-time high.\u00a0 The audacity of Jairus\u2019 daughter, who has died, is that she returns to life, she gets back up.\u00a0 And she gets back up in spite of the people who tell her father that she\u2019s dead and he shouldn\u2019t bother Jesus anymore, in spite of the people in her home who are not just grieving with her parents but are making a commotion of themselves, in spite of the people who laugh at Jesus as if he\u2019s only a teacher who has gotten his facts ridiculously wrong, in spite of the people who seem just fine with her being dead and almost seem to want her to stay that way, the way they tell Jairus not to bother Jesus anymore and the way they ridicule what Jesus tells them is going on. Instead, the young woman listens and responds to Jesus\u2019 invitation to come back to life.\u00a0 She comes back for her own reasons, not her parents\u2019 reasons, and not for the reasons of the people around her.\u00a0 For her own reasons, that we will never know, she immediately <\/em>gets up from death and walks around into new possibilities and new hope.<\/p>\n

Two women.\u00a0 Two revelatory events.\u00a0 But even before the events, the two women already know who Jesus is and what his work reveals.\u00a0 They respond to Jesus as even his disciples do not, as even the religious people around Jairus do not.\u00a0 They are bold, they take risks, because they recognize that Jesus himself is the Good News of the Kingdom of God and he is that for them.\u00a0 <\/em>The secret that Jesus insists on is already out of the bag, and increasingly so as Mark\u2019s gospel moves on.\u00a0 The stories of these two women are not just healing stories, they are resurrection stories. \u00a0They prefigure Jesus\u2019 own story, in which suffering serves as the catalyst for the audacity of the revelation of God\u2019s presence and power at work in the world toward resurrection and hope. The conflicts in Mark are because his family, his disciples, and the religious authorities do not recognize Jesus for who he is or understand his work for what it does.\u00a0 In Mark\u2019s gospel, only the demons and the desperate recognize Jesus for who he is and what his work reveals:\u00a0 the demons because they actively oppose his work and are terrified of what it will mean for them; the desperate because their suffering has become so great that it acts as a catalyst for \u00a0them to go outside of their circumstances, outside of propriety, even outside of themselves, a catalyst to take the intrepid, bold risk that what they recognize in Jesus is the way to a different circumstance of life and new possibilities.\u00a0 The stories of these two women invite us this morning to learn from our own suffering \u2013 and Jesus knows we have had enough of it over the last year.\u00a0 Because when we learn from our suffering and allow it to act as a catalyst for us to take intrepid, bold risks in faith, we can heal from our wounds and dis-eases, we can get up and meet our challenges, we can go for the life that we really want. \u00a0And we can receive God\u2019s acceptance of our desperation, and we can receive God\u2019s desire and power to help.<\/p>\n

Now, in addition to the two women, there is another person is these stories.\u00a0 This person is named \u2013 his name is Jairus.\u00a0 He is an important man in his community, a leader both religiously and socially.\u00a0 He is also a father, and it is in his love for his daughter that he discovers the audacity of the desperate.\u00a0 His daughter \u2013 his \u201clittle daughter\u201d, even though she is moving into adulthood \u2013 she is dying.\u00a0 As far as we know, Jairus himself is healthy and content with his life for the most part.\u00a0 Here his suffering lies in the fact that with all his importance, with all his leadership, he cannot stop his daughter\u2019s death.\u00a0 So for his daughter\u2019s sake, he goes outside of his circumstances, outside of propriety, outside of himself.\u00a0 He \u00a0takes the audacious, utterly improper risk for a man in his position.\u00a0 \u00a0He begs in public for his daughter\u2019s life at the feet of an itinerant preacher who is already in trouble with the religious authorities.\u00a0 His daughter is unable to come to Jesus herself, well, he will bring Jesus to her.\u00a0 Because Jairus also recognizes Jesus for who he is and understands his work for what it does as the revelation of the power of God at work in the world toward the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n

And in Mark\u2019s gospel, Jairus is not alone in his audacity of the desperate on behalf of someone else.\u00a0 The others are part of the crowds who bring their sick and their children, and those possessed by demons both real and metaphorical, and a deaf person and a blind person, they bring them out to Jesus, from their homes and cities. \u00a0They chop a hole in someone\u2019s roof to let their paralyzed friend down to Jesus inside when the crowd at the door would not let them through.\u00a0 As a woman of another faith and nationality they argue with Jesus when he refuses to heal their daughter, and help him to change his mind and heal her anyway.\u00a0 They love another person enough, are desperate about another person enough, that they will take the audacious risks to use their resources on behalf of these for whom they are desperate, to bring them to Jesus, and to ask, even to beg, for Jesus\u2019 help on their behalf.\u00a0 They too recognize Jesus for who he is and what his work does, and they help their loved ones to make their own decisions and take their own audacious risks at Jesus\u2019 invitation.\u00a0 In love and faith they find the audacity of the desperate to become allies, points of connection, and resources for those who at the moment<\/em> do not have them or do not have enough of them.\u00a0 Jairus\u2019 story and the stories of these others invite us to consider:\u00a0 what or who suffers enough, what or who we might love enough or come to learn to love enough, what or who for the sake of justice we might will ourselves to love enough in their suffering, that we might find the audacity of the desperate on their behalf.\u00a0 \u00a0That we might take the risks of becoming allies, points of connection, and resources for those who at the moment <\/em>do not have them or enough of them, so that the power of God at work in the world for them<\/em> might further be revealed, and they might expand their own decisions and their own audacious risk-taking at Jesus\u2019 invitation.<\/p>\n

It is perhaps no coincidence that this scripture comes to us in June.\u00a0 June is a very full month.\u00a0 It is Pride month for LGBTQIA+ folks.\u00a0 Juneteenth is this year a national holiday.\u00a0 And June contains Father\u2019s Day, a complex commemoration of a complex and still-evolving identity.\u00a0 But before the Month and the Holiday and the Commemoration, there were people, many of whom were people of faith, who found the audacity of the desperate.\u00a0 They learned from their suffering, so that it became a catalyst for them to go outside their circumstances to take risks with intrepid boldness toward a new way of life in wholeness and freedom.\u00a0 Those who saw their suffering, and became desperate on their behalf in love and justice, became allies, points of connections, and resources to support them and help expand the possibilities in their risk-taking and decision-making.\u00a0 While there is still a long way to go, many people, like the two women in their time, have been healed into new life and hope through these movements toward wholeness and freedom, and their stories continue to this day to inspire audacious risks and to support hope that change is possible.<\/p>\n

The audacity of the desperate is both a challenge and a gift.\u00a0 A challenge, because we have to be desperate to find it, and then be desperate enough to allow our suffering to work as a catalyst for us to take audacious, risky action toward changing our situation with God\u2019s help.\u00a0 And the audacity of the desperate is a gift, because when we find it, for ourselves or on behalf of others, the audacious risks we take in faith will reveal God\u2019s power at work in the world for us and for all those we love, toward our healing and the new life of possibility and connection that we most desire.\u00a0 Thanks be to God for the audacity of the desperate.<\/p>\n

-The Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell, Minister for Visitation<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Mark 5:21\u201343 Click here to hear just the sermon Two women.\u00a0 One is a recognized adult, able to consult with professionals and spend money on herself.\u00a0 One, at the age of 12, is just entering adulthood. \u00a0As happens so often in the Bible, we do not know either […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3169"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3176,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3169\/revisions\/3176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}