From July 5: Connecting to Faith, Hope & Vulnerability

Dear People of Christ Church,

Happy-belated-fourth of July. This Saturday we'll observe the holiday somewhat in our service of 1792 Morning Prayer for Historic Waltham; we're doing the readings for July 4. Please come!

On this past Sunday we had our magnificent annual Church in the Garden service. One of the particular pleasures of it was the freedom in preaching a little differently; I'm usually not much of an experimenter with my sermons, but I invited the congregation to a special moment of reflection and prayer along with our Scripture. One of the great things about the Bible is that the stories aren't dead; they are in the past, yes, but they are still full of living and breathing insight. The Holy Spirit animates those people from far away just as we are made alive in our own faith. The Gospel was the story of the healing of Jairus' daughter and the healing of a woman who had had incurable hemorrhages for twelve years. Both stories of healing are hope-against-hope situations; Jesus is their last possibility.

All three of the main characters in the story-the woman, the girl, and Jairus himself-are people who are kind of coming apart. We don't have a lot of space in our culture for vulnerability like this. We want to be (or at least appear to be) perfect, organized, confident. Ideally, untouchable. But the situation is so dire for these folks that they've dispensed with all of that. They know the depth of their need, and they are determined to ask for help. So my invitation on Sunday was this-what would one of those three people pray for you? What word of encouragement would that girl give, what strength would her father offer, what love for Christ would you hear in that old woman?

For me, it was about the woman. I don't even know for sure if she was old-it just said she'd been dealing with the flow of blood for twelve years. For twelve years she would have been considered ritually impure; that's a lot time to be apart from your community, never mind how sick she must have felt. My sense of her was the way I imagine Mother Teresa-loving, but also kind of hard and commanding. Particularly earlier in the week when I was focused on work and getting everything done quickly, she followed behind me pointing out the good things I was missing. Health. Connections with others. Attentiveness. Really good leftovers for lunch. So often in getting bogged down by tiny, annoying details-children who track sand everywhere, the fan that doesn't cool you off enough, whatever-we miss the beauty that is all around us. It's like sitting on a train that travels through the countryside, but rather than look out the window your eyes are fixed firmly on the door to a dirty bathroom. So for several days now, the woman who had been sick for so long, who finally was healed, keeps coming up to me and turning my head to the side. Don't look there. Look there, she says.

Where do you need to look? What's happening?
Blessings,

Sara+