It's All in the Timing (Part one)

(Today's sermon at St. Paul's Lutheran Church)

The young woman was stricken, seemingly from nowhere, with a blood clot in her brain.  In a matter of seconds she went from an active and vibrant wife, mother, employee, friend and parishioner to a still figure on a respirator in the ICU.

Physicians and nurses scurried in and out.  The doctors poked and prodded, peered and pondered, whispered orders and walked away.  The therapists gave breathing treatments, moved her lifeless limbs, and cleared out her tubes.  The nurses changed bedding, rolled her from side to side, and hung new IV bags.

The family asked all the professionals the same question.  When will we know something for sure?  The answer—after all the technical and clinical calm—the answer was always the same.  We don’t know yet.  We’ll have to wait and see.

One morning a nurse came in and tried to lift the mood.  “How is everyone today?” she chanted cheerfully.

The oldest son smiled softly in answer.  “We’re waiting as fast as we can,” was his reply.

We’re waiting as fast as we can.

That’s our story so often in times of stress and struggle.  We’re waiting as fast as we can.  Such waiting can try our trust in God.  Sometimes that trust is tried to the breaking point and beyond.  With that in mind, here is the thought I want to send with you today.

Trusting God means trusting God’s timing.

It’s a paraphrase of a plaque that hangs on our living room wall.  Trusting in God means trusting God’s timing.

Today’s Gospel text is a desperation sandwich served with a side of panic.  Jesus is back on the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee.  He steps on to the shore.  Immediately the begging begins.  “My little girl is at death’s door,” Jairus pleads.  “Please, please, please, come and do something!”  Who knows how long Jairus had scanned the horizon waiting for the Jesus boat to come back to shore—days, perhaps.  Every parent can feel the pulse of panic in his pleading.

Jesus goes with him at once.

In the crowd walks a solitary and silent sufferer.  For twelve years she has bled from her private places.  Well-meaning doctors did their best without success.  Quacks and frauds lifted her hopes while they lifted her wallet.  Now she is flat broke.  She is tired and pale.  Her bleeding creates a boundary that bars her from the temple with its worship and prayer and sacrifice.  The woman is isolated, alienated, irritated and down to her last try.

She knows she has no right to ask Jesus for anything.  She is entitled—as far as the world is concerned—entitled to precisely nothing.  Maybe, she thinks, just maybe a hit and run healing will work.  “If I could just touch the hem of his cloak,” she says to herself, “then just maybe I could be saved.”

For twelve years she’s been waiting as fast as she can.  In a moment of desperation and hope, she reaches out.  The bleeding stops!  She turns triumphant to sneak back home before anyone notices.  As she takes a step, however, she hears a voice.  She freezes, knowing she’s been caught in the act.

“Who touched my clothes?” Jesus demands.  His disciples are dumbfounded to the point of disgust.  “You’re kidding, right?”  They point to the crowd.  “You’re swimming in this sea of sinners, sight-seers, and simpletons.  And you want to know who touched your clothes?  Who didn’t touch your clothes?  That would be a much easier question!”

Through the milling mob comes the woman—the color returning to her cheeks for the first time in a decade and then draining out again in terror.  “It was me,” she says with her face planted in the dust.  Jesus stops and listens to her story.  Then he pulls her to her feet and blesses her.  “Go in peace,” he murmurs, “and be healed of your disease.”

The word Jesus uses for “disease” here is the word for a whip.  Her twelve-year-long beating is over.  She has waited as fast as she can.  Now the wait is over.

Trusting God means trusting God’s timing.