(Sourton), Bratton, Germansweek, Trinity 4, 1/7/2012
Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,
but only say the word, and I shall be healed.
The words of a response we use quite often as we prepare to take communion: they are based on the words of the Centurion in Matthew 8, a man who despite his status felt that he was not worthy to receive Jesus in his home. Pagans, secular men like him, were not acceptable hosts for a religious leader. If he had Jesus in his home others would say about him: "Who does he think he is? It's a disgrace. He should be ashamed of himself." So if Jesus came to his house then the Centurion would feel ashamed. But Jesus carried on to the Centurion's house, and healed the man.
There are other gospel stories where Jesus performed a healing miracle, or spoke some healing words, and each of them were beautiful gifts given to people who were shamed by others and ashamed of themselves. Key to their healing and wholeness, Jesus took their shame away.
Today's gospel reading carries the stories of two people:
- Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, who came to Jesus seeking healing for his daughter, who seemed dead but Jesus revived.
- And an unnamed woman, who, desperate to stop the bleeding she had suffered for twelve years, touched Jesus, and who Jesus healed.
The woman with the blood disorder was covered in shame. It was shameful enough just being a woman in that place and time: in a male-dominated society women were expected to stay at home in seclusion. The law held women to be inferior in all matters and expected them to be submissive. In a prayer which Jewish men prayed each day, they thanked God that they had not been born as a woman.
Women with bleeding were even further ostracised from society because in the law, menstruation meant ritual uncleanness. A woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years would have been regarded as ritually unclean - untouchable - for all that time. She couldn't sacrifice at the Temple because she'd contaminate it. She couldn't even touch anyone or be touched by anyone, because that would contaminate them.
But she dared - or was desperate enough - to touch Jesus. And this woman, invisible to society, Jesus turned and saw her. And this Son of God called her his 'daughter'; and this would-be king of the Jews blessed her for her great faith - "Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you." No more shame for her.
That woman's story reminds me of a friend I have who has M.E. It's a condition which she has had for almost twenty years now. It started with a nasty virus she had, and she has never recovered from it. Still she has very little energy to do anything, and she is very vulnerable to any sort of illness going around, so she has to just stay at home protected from it all most of the time. She manages to get up and do things for only about two hours a day.
Perhaps because no-one's yet worked out what causes M.E. and how to cure it, people misunderstand my friend. Her company very generously kept her on sick pay for many years - but you can imagine what some of her colleagues would have said about that: "While we're working our guts out she's just sitting around doing nothing - and she's still getting paid ; she should be ashamed of herself."
I confess I sometimes feel uncharitable towards her because her husband is one of my best friends, we used to do lots of things together, but now because he has to stay in and look after her he doesn't get out much at all. That can make friends resentful: "Isn't it a shame Derek can't come out with us?" Yes it is a shame. A shame.
Jesus said to the haemorrhaging woman, "Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you." I know my friend does take heart from her faith, even though healing, for her, is a long time coming. Her faith eclipses the shame which surrounds her unusual and awful condition.
Jairus was a leader of the synagogue. And a passage from the Jewish Talmud reveals the status of the head of a synagogue in Jewish society: a high status, above those in accountancy, above those in teaching, above those in medicine, way above 'the people of the land', the synagogue leader belonged inside polite society. Part of the elite, the favoured ones. Inside holiness.
So, in his Capernaum synagogue, Jairus's daily concerns would be the concerns of all synagogue leaders - to order the assembly of God's worshipping people, teaching the congregation, keeping them faithful to the Torah, the religious laws that ruled their ordered society.
But when his daughter died, things fell apart for Jairus. The synagogue failed him because it had no good answer to death. A good Jew - among the best of Jews - but now he was ashamed to go to the temple because the law regarded his dead daughter as unclean. Unclean by death - and so outside Judaism; unclean by death - and so outside holiness. Holding his dead daughter this holy man became contaminated; no longer welcome in the temple to make sacrifices. Shamed by his daughter's death. So he knelt at the feet of a greater holy man. And received Jesus' mercy.
Which holy man, or woman, in today’s church, is in a similar position to Jairus? Perhaps Jeffrey John, a man who has given his whole life to the service of the church, one of the Church of England's great scholars and teachers who was offered the post of a bishop, and was denied that post, because of his sexuality. All of a sudden this previously-respectable church leader was shamed by many because of his private life. In some people's eyes this holy man had become contaminated; no longer welcome in the temple to make sacrifices. Shamed by his sexuality.
Or perhaps other modern-day Jairuses within the church are those clergy and others who have recently made the journey outside the doors of their cathedrals to join in with the Occupy protesters camping outside, to engage with them and seriously debate the issues they raise. Shamed by many for mingling with these noisy, messy outsiders.
From the stories we have heard today I suggest we can learn two things: that we can either create shame or help take shame away; and that from those who are covered in shame, Jesus removes that burden.
When we're thinking about someone else, and we hear a voice inside ourselves saying, "They should be ashamed of themselves," we might remember the words of Jesus, "I demand mercy ... not sacrifice."
And when we hear ourselves or someone else saying, "I feel ashamed," we might remember the words of Jesus, "Follow me..." "take heart..." "be healed"...
Let us take to our hearts the words of the communion service, the words of the Centurion and all the shamed ones who seek Jesus:
Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,
but only say the word, and I shall be healed.
Notes
This is a revised version of a sermon preached in Liverpool on 5/6/2005: Shame - Mercy, not sacrifice. It also owes something to the book Shame: Theory, Therapy, Theology by Stephen Pattison, and the notes produced for a small group discussion on that topic by James Grenfell during his time with us in Kirkby.
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