Third Week Retreat Homily: Jairus' Daughter and the Hemorrhaging Woman

          As we come to the end of a month where we've heard about David's successes and failures as a man and a king, I have to say I have come to admire him and hold a warm place in my heart for him. It touches me deeply that even though his son, Absalom, has risen against him in rebellion, he grieves uncontrollably at his unfortunate death by hanging in a tree. Death is final. As we stare into death's face, the brutality of it shakes us to our core.

          Death comes to us again in the Gospel. Jesus returns to Jewish lands after getting kicked out of the Decapolis where he met the once out of control demoniac. The crowd waits for him. Among those who wanted his attention was Jairus, a synagogue official, who believed Jesus was powerful enough to restore his ailing daughter to good health. She was only 12 years old. I'm sure to the disappointment of Jairus, Jesus gets sidetracked. His attention is pulled away from the concerns of Jairus because he felt power leave him because someone forgotten by society reached out to touch his hem.

          The woman with the 12-year hemorrhage is a lot like the Gerasene demoniac. She is shunned, neglected, pushed aside, largely ignored, and she has used up all her capital. She has now become a bother to her family, friends, and the religious society. She is a festering wound. While some may sympathize with her, many become frustrated because she never makes improvements. She becomes a bother to them because she remains just who she is. They tolerate her, sometimes treat her with kindness, but they have given up on her. She has lost hope and the society around her has lost hope that she will ever stop complaining about her condition.

          We may know someone like this whose pain is chronic. Perhaps, we identify with this nameless woman because we have something inside us that is so disordered we cannot change. All the drugs, therapy, retreats in the world cannot ever make us whole as we once were and desire to be again. We carry an internal system of dysfunction, disorder, and chaos that puts us on the outside of a society whose care we need. We may want to give up because this is our fate. We will never be right again. In our prayers, all we can do is reach invisibly, desperately to touch the cloak's hem of Jesus.

          We each carry our own crosses and one thing is clear: we have to gaze upon the cross to find meaning in it. It is not something we can escape or avoid. We will deal with it at some point in life. The question that arises is: What is our disposition and attitude by which we approach the cross?

          I am learning to be real in prayer. It is important for me to express my raw, unfiltered desires and feelings to God and to see that anger is good. Expressing it well is healthy and it is something that we learn to do through triumphs and failures. I have shouted at God with tremendous anger. I have been so angry with God I would not even talk to him for stretches of time and I derided God for his lack of power and his lack of concern. I have poured out my heart far from the kindest of ways because I wanted to let God know of my supreme frustration and my utter doubt in God's care of me and my loved ones. How could God treat me this way if God is all loving and all powerful and all just. When I let him have it good, I feel better.

          This passage reminds me of my oldest sister's life. I watched her die an excruciating death after years of pain and, like the woman in the Gospel, hemorrhages. She was born with mental retardation and had a difficult life. My family cared for her as best we knew how. Early in my life I got so angry with God for allowing this dreadful condition to inhabit a sweet little girl. As a young boy, I recall screaming at God for making her a person with retardation. At age six, I recall steaming in frustration that God chose this and allowed this to happen. I pleaded with God to give me her condition so my innocent sister can be set free. I wanted her to live well. Her illness was undeserved.

          I felt such tenderness for my parents. This was their firstborn child and they were struggling to start their new life together. I was frustrated because I wished my parents had more information so they could protest more directly to the doctors as my sister was still in the womb. I wished they spoke for their own needs and desires more vehemently. My hemorrhaging mother during her last month of pregnancy was told to go home because she was in false labor. My parents obediently followed the doctor's professional advice though they knew better. All the while, the umbilical cord wrapped around my sister's neck depriving her of needed oxygen. 
          At the end of her 43 years of life she stayed at home amidst seven long years of pain and suffering - the worst I've ever seen. I came close to cursing Jesus for he had only been on the cross for three hours; my sister's suffering was much more awful. Wheelchair bound and constricted in a physical prison, a tube inserted to feed her and a tube to catch her waste, she was stung with pain. We would hold her in our arms each day and look into her catatonic eyes wondering if she knew we were there. How we wished she could speak and tell us how she felt. She cried cry herself to sleep and immediately awoke from her chronic, ceaseless pain. Sleep could not soften her fatigue. Hospitals sent her back to us because her pain was unbearable for nurses and other patients to hear. It caused everyone discomfort. Even loving care-givers did not want to hear her moans.     We fear suffering. Fear and psychic pain arose and we tried to reach her to let her know we were there for her, though we were unable to help her. We were inexhaustibly powerless. We could provide no relief. We were stripped of any choice - utterly without any control or power.
          After further groaning and moaning to God while caressing my sister's tormented face, my gaze penetrated deeply into my sister's blank, catatonic eyes. She could not fully see me back but I had to continue to look. I wanted to find her, to have her recognize me, to stand by her, and I could not give up. I gazed into a dark infinity through her eyes. Exhausted, despairing, and hopeless, I was drawn in to see the sad, sorrowful eyes of Jesus looking back at me. He was there on the cross, weeping, weeping deeply for my sister. I finally came to a place of stillness and silence. I gazed upon him on the cross as he beheld my sister on hers. He was with her in her suffering and with me in mine. He writhed in anguish because we were in anguish as life slipped out of his body. He was so sad for us and he could not get off the cross because he needed to be there for us.

          My sister's pain continued a few more months before she died. I don't know how my mother made it through a single day, but she was lovingly faithful to her daughter. All we have is love and fidelity. I solidly knew that Jesus was with my sister and she seemed consoled by that. It was only by looking deeply into that dark pit of suffering that Jesus was able to gently reach me and show me his heart. He said, "I want to share my heart with you." At this gruesome place, the desires of my heart met his - and he was gracious.
          I encountered a gentle God - a God who cannot act violently. Jesus gives us the greatest gift he can - by being in vulnerable solidarity with his people as he hangs on the cross, with those who hang on the cross. Ironically, if we look deeply into our suffering, we will undoubtedly find the broken, disabled, disfigured Christ, imprisoned on his Cross, and he will gently be present to us. No greater gift exists. The world changes.
          At some point in our lives, we have to confront death. David did it with his beloved Absalom, Jairus with his daughter, the nameless woman of chronic hemorrhages looks at her own impending mortality, my mother with her firstborn. It is at our weakest - when we are with someone in his or her suffering - that we find intimacy with Jesus in our suffering. It is the point where he consoles me and tells me I am not alone. He does not want suffering. This is the reason he brings the daughter of Jairus back to life and turns to the poor woman to give her a name and a chance to live again. He wants to give you life as well. Christ took on powerlessness because of our powerlessness. He wants to die on the Cross for you - so you can have life with him.