I guess there are
many ways of talking about a church and maybe the poetry of John Bell from the
Iona community is as good as it gets – the church should be, can be, must be a
touching place where Christ shows his face and gives his embrace.
We give thanks for our churches, St John is celebrating its feast of Dedication this morning, which stands as a sign to those whose faith and love of God led
them to this place and here to create a touching place with God.
St John's and St Matthias are truly places where people come and touch:
Lovers old and
young told hands and make vows
Bishops have come
and with gentle hands baptized and confirmed, the faith of God’s children and the life Jesus calls us into and ordained those willing to
serve as priests.
Those who have shed
the shackles of this life have been brought into this church, often carried by
their loved ones at the end of their life’s journey
Here Heaven and earth touch and Gods life is released in to the world and
all of us can open
our hands and touch the living God in the sacrament of his body and blood.
Yes the Church is truly a
touching place
A place of memory
and love : a place for forgiveness and peace.
And how
appropriate to have for our thoughts and inspiration this morning a story of
touch and encounter in our gospel reading
In this story, two
people come to Jesus with their needs. They are very different
people. Jairus is an important man. Mark 5v22 says ‘a synagogue
ruler’. He’s a man, he’s a ruler, he has a family, he’s religious and
very respectable in the community.
The woman is not
even named. Jesus calls her ‘Daughter’ in v34, which is even
better than telling us her name. But as the story begins she is an
unnamed and unclean woman. She has an unstoppable flow of blood which
made her perpetually, ceremonially unclean, untouchable even in her home for 12
long years. This woman is unnamed, unclean, sick and now in despair.
So this
woman has had 12 years of great suffering.
She is very
different to Jairus. Jairus, we can imagine, has had 12 years of joy with
his 12 year old daughter. But now with his daughter on death’s door,
Jairus and the women are driven by the same need to touch God. They are
both needy beggars coming to Jesus. Both take a journey to reach out and touch
the only one who can give them their hearts desire.
In verse 22 this
respectable man falls at Jesus’ feet in a public place and pleads earnestly
with Him. This was very dangerous for Jairus to do. We know from
chapter 3 verse 6 that the religious authorities have been plotting to kill
Jesus. So for this synagogue ruler to fall at Jesus’ feet could well have
cost him his job and his reputation. But what’s that compared to your 12
year old girl?
So Jairus and the
woman are very different, both come to Jesus in their need.
And both of
them think they know how Jesus is going to help them. They both
have very particular expectations of Jesus – one's he will not meet but change!
Jairus thinks
Jesus ought to come and lay hands on his sick daughter, he practically tells
Jesus what to do and expects him to act immediately. He probably does this
because Jesus had performed other healings where that’s what He did – He laid
hands on people.
The woman also
thinks she knows how to get a healing. She thinks if she just touches
Jesus’ clothes she’ll be healed.
But for both of
them Jesus frustrates their plans and responds in ways that they were not
expecting.
For Jarius –It is
now too late, there was too much delay the girl is now dead. There is no point.
He has made the journey for nothing, he has risked everything only to fail – or
so it would seem when Jesus finally enters the house
For the nameless
woman she is not allowed to get away with the
anonymity she desires, touching
Jesus means that she is now in a very public place, a central place within the
crowd in which she hoped to remain hidden, a skill she had no doubt developed
over the last 12 years.
Jairus’s story is
our story.
The Nameless
womans experience is ours
Every one of us
either has had or will have moments like this in our Christian lives. We
have come to Jesus. We have real needs. We are sure we know the best
way He can help us. But Jesus doesn’t always do what we’d thought would happen or planed to
occur.
As we saw in the
calming of the storm last week – Jesus does not always act or react in a way
that we expect, or to a timetable we determine. We will go through storms and
Jesus won’t calm them right away. It will get to the point where we say
“I’m dying here and you don’t care do you?”. .
And as we see when
a women reaches out to touch Jesus and when He reaches out to touch a small
child something miraculous does occur – life is given, is strengthened, is
healed, is renewed.
And at the end of
the story Jesus has saved both daughters. Everyone thought the bleeding woman
could wait while Jesus healed the dying girl. But no – Jesus saved the woman with the flow of blood and
He’s saved the dying girl. He calls the one ‘daughter’, He calls the
other ‘Talitha’ – both terms of great affection. He does care, He is
powerful and He does know how to bring things to a happily ever after that far
outstrips anything we expected. 
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