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There is much bleeding in the world at the moment. That is not news; we all know it. There is bleeding in those parts of the world where there is not enough to eat each day. There is bleeding in those parts of the world where diseases such as AIDS resist adequate treatment. There is bleeding, certainly, in Iraq and Afghanistan, bleeding that is one of the results of our response to the bleeding in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania five years ago. There is political and social bleeding here at home, with our nation split asunder into blue states and red states that cannot agree on what to do about the bleeding in Iraq, or on what to do about the bleeding in Mexico that leads Mexicans to risk more bleeding by crossing our border without documents. The Church is bleeding. Not only the Episcopal Church, but just about every church, as we struggle with agendas that tear us asunder. The Episcopal Church, in fact, seems on the verge of outright hemorrhage. Since our General Convention last month, with its failure to give more than reluctant and grudging lip service to The Windsor Report, along with the Diocese of Newark's failure last week to honor The Windsor Report's request for restraint, at least six entire dioceses have formally asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to provide them with Anglican episcopal leadership other than our Presiding Bishop-elect. These dioceses are distancing themselves from a church which is distancing itself from the Anglican Communion, and it seems certain that other dioceses and parishes will similarly bleed away in the months ahead. God's Church seems to bleed red and blue, the way our nation bleeds red and blue. About the only group during the past few weeks that offered a little relief to us Episcopalians was the Presbyterians. I heard of a cartoon that appeared recently about the Presbyterian convention, which was held about the same time as ours. It was a picture of two Presbyterian pastors sharing a moment at their convention. The two pastors were vested in preaching tabs and full Presbyterian regalia, and one turns to the other and says, "We're in big trouble. I hear that the Episcopalians are praying for us." This, of course, is not the first time God's Church has bled. God's Church bled way back in the Book of Acts. "Let's take these men who are preaching Jesus Christ, crucified and raised from the dead, and put them to death," screamed some in the Jewish Council. "They are not teaching the ways of God the way we've always been taught God's ways are." But a leader of the Jews, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, stood up in the Council and said, "Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do. Remember," Gamaliel said. "Remember that people have taught things before that were not of God, and what they taught fizzled out, because what they taught was not of God. There was Theudus a few years ago, you'll remember. And Judas the Galilean, who was killed, and whose followers then scattered. Therefore, in this present case, I advise you: Leave Peter and James and John alone! Let them go. For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail, just like those others. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop them, [and] you will only find yourselves fighting against God. I say that we here should focus on what is of God," said Gamaliel. And among those who preached Christ, among Peter and James and John and Paul and the other apostles, there was bleeding as well, bleeding that threatened to destroy the Church from within. "When Peter came to Antioch," writes Paul, "I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong." Paul writes this about Peter because he saw that Peter could not make up his mind about Christ, could not make up his mind about who Christ is and what Christ does. Does Christ save by grace, through faith in him, or not? Peter kept saying that if one was to be a follower of Christ, then he had to be circumcised and follow the Jewish law. "Make up your mind," Paul is telling Peter. "Is one saved by grace through faith - or by works, by keeping the law?" And the whole Church was split over this basic question, until they had a big meeting in Jerusalem to find common ground. And the common ground they found was the Cross, the chief cornerstone on which the Church of Christ was built. They found common ground because Paul remembered. Because Paul remembered that he himself was the worst of sinners, having himself persecuted the Church of God before the risen Christ reached down and turned him around. And because Peter remembered. Because Peter remembered that he himself had denied the very Son of God before men, but that the risen Christ had not denied him, but told Peter that he loved him and that he wanted Peter to go out and take that same love to the bleeding world. So Peter and Paul remembered. And because they remembered that without Christ they both had been lost and would still be lost, Peter and Paul, when they preached, were led always to "go by Calvary." Like the old slave preacher on the plantation two weeks ago, the preachers Peter and Paul asked themselves what was really basic. And after that, whenever they preached they never failed to "go by Calvary," and like the old preacher they too were always moved to shout, "But God raised him again. And he is seated at the right hand of God in heaven." And then, also like the old slave preacher, they would "lean over the pulpit, and look [the folks in Antioch and Jerusalem] straight in the eyes and say, in words undeniable, 'But slaves, you are not any man's property. You are children of God Almighty! Never forget it!'" And when Peter and Paul preached like that, the spine of the Church in their day would stiffen and, like Howard Thurman's grandmother, the apostolic Church was ready for a new day." Peter's and Paul's common commitment to Christ and to the proclamation of the Gospel proved stronger than their differences, and Peter and Paul together became the rock on which the Church of Christ rests. What Peter and Paul and the old plantation preacher are saying is that we always need to "fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who endured the cross, scorning its shame." They are saying that we should "consider him who endured opposition from sinful men, so that [we] will not grow weary and lose heart." Fix your eyes on Jesus. That's what the two people Mark tells us about today did. They fixed their eyes on Jesus. Each was a person in need. They came from opposite sides of the church, but both sought out Jesus. Jairus was a leader of the synagogue. He knew that to the leaders of orthodox religion Jesus was suspect, because Jesus healed in ways that were contrary to convention, and on the Sabbath to boot, teaching that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Because of this Jesus' own family thought he was out of his mind, and they tried to protect him from hostile church leaders who had come down from Jerusalem to confront Jesus, accusing him of sorcery. Jairus knew that by seeking out Jesus he risked his own reputation and his own authority in the synagogue, and in all of Galilee. But Jairus was desperate; his daughter was dying! And conventional means, both medical or religious, had not been able to help her. So when Jesus came back across the lake, Jairus fixed his eyes on Jesus. "And seeing Jesus, Jairus fell at Jesus' feet and pleaded earnestly. 'My little daughter is dying,' he said. 'Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.' So Jesus went with him." The other person was from the other side of the aisle. In fact, she was someone the leaders wouldn't even allow to enter the synagogue for prayers. She, too, risked much when she fixed her eyes on Jesus. She was an outcast, a social pariah. She had been bleeding for twelve years. Conventional medicine had only made her condition worse, and conventional religion shunned her. According to Jewish law, her continuous bleeding made her unfit for human society. The rules were clear: during the time of a woman's menstrual period, and for seven days afterward, she was ritually unclean. Anyone who touched her, or who touched anything she had sat on or lain upon, also became unclean, unfit for human relationships. For twelve long years she had not been able to share food or fellowship with another human being, not even the companionship of simply sharing a visit with someone on a plain wooden bench in the park. And if she presumed to approach Jesus, she could be chastised, and banished into deeper isolation. She, too, was desperate, so desperate that the gravity of her situation overcame her fear, because, like Jairus, she had heard that Jesus could heal. "If I only just touch his cloak," she thought to herself, "I will be healed." And coming up from behind him, she reached out and touched the hem of Jesus' garment. "And immediately her bleeding stopped," says Mark, "and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering." Imagine it! Imagine what life was like for this woman, and for Jairus. One is a nameless woman, a woman without identity in the text, and on the fringes of the community. The other is an important man, a man of prominence, a leader of the synagogue. "They are kindred spirits, however," says Bishop Hope Morgan Ward of the Methodist Church, kindred spirits "in their desperate need, and in their firm belief that Jesus can help them." Both were bleeding - the woman literally, on the outside; Jairus, on the inside, emotionally. And in these two desperate people, "faith approaches Jesus in hope and expectation." "Faith approaches Jesus in hope and expectation," says Bishop Ward. "Faith reaches out to touch Jesus, and implores Jesus to come and heal," because in Jesus "faith is confident of blessing." So where does all this leave us today? Where does all this leave us in Christ's one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church? Where does it leave us in the Anglican Communion, in the Episcopal Church, here in the Chapel of Our Saviour, Colorado Springs? It leaves us precisely where we've always been. It leave us as a bleeding people in need of healing. Like Peter and Paul, like Jairus and the unnamed woman, it leaves us with the need to consider the truth of our own condition. It leaves us with the need to remember that blue and red are both the color of blood. It leaves us with the need to remember that blue and red alike are those who have denied Christ or persecuted his Church, sinners standing in the need of prayer, and of healing. Like Peter and Paul, it leaves us with the need to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Like Jairus and the unnamed woman, it leaves us with the need to appeal to Jesus, who, for our sake, endured opposition from sinful men so that we will not grow weary and lose heart. It leaves us, as always, with the need to fix our eyes on Jesus, who, for our sake, endured the cross, scorning its shame. As Peter and Paul and the old slave preacher knew, there is one place, and one place only, where we will always be sure to find Jesus, and that is at Calvary, where Jesus bleeds for a bleeding world, and where he dies for the world that bleeds. Dies to everything that convention and orthodoxy would lay upon him for the sake of respectable order. Dies to everything that we would lay upon him. Dies to everything except the expectation to heal, the expectation to bring blessing and life and hope. Blessing and life and hope are what Peter and Paul found when, together, they approached Jesus at Calvary - and just so was the spine of the apostolic Church stiffened and made ready for a new day. A stiffened spine and the readiness to meet a new day is just the way Howard Thurman's grandmother experienced it as well when the old preacher took her by Calvary in the day of her captivity and distress. For at Calvary they all found their common ground; at Calvary they found the One who bled for them, that they might not bleed forever. Of course, if one does not see himself in need of the Cross, then he has no need for the Church of the Cross. If we do not see ourselves in the need of the Cross, the we can, each of us, devise for ourselves churches of our own, a host of babbling towers, all of them built after the patterns of our own blue and red images. But the faith of Christ's one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church is that Calvary, for certain, is of God - that Calvary is more certainly of God than all our human expectations and orthodoxies and fears, more certainly of God than all our human ideas and definitions and agendas. If, like Gamaliel, we wait upon what is of God, then we will not find ourselves struggling against God. If , like Peter and Paul, we wait upon what is certainly of God - if we wait, if we hope at Calvary, if we wait there, together, as Peter and Paul did - then in this messed up, bleeding world and Church we will not find ourselves arguing at Antioch, the blues against the reds. Because if we all draw near to the Cross, if we all draw near to the one place where Jesus is sure to be found, we most certainly will draw near to each other. If, like Peter and Paul, we seek Jesus where Jesus most certainly is, God will heal us. That is a faith that is holy, a faith that is catholic, a faith that is apostolic. It is old as Jairus and the unnamed woman, and as fresh as our own need and prayers this morning. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |