Matthew 9:18-26
We are seeing a lot of remembrances right now from one year ago. As a nation, we are remembering together how this pandemic began a year ago. Remembering what we were doing last year at this time.
March 15 of last year was the last time we gathered in the sanctuary for worship. We knew then something big, something ominous was coming. Many of us had decided already to stay home. And for those of us who were here, we were introduced to new practices – social distancing. Hand sanitizing. No touching.
No touching. This felt very strange.
We knew something big was on the horizon, but we had no real understanding of what it would be. I listened to the news, I watched what was going on around me. And it seemed like every time I said to myself, “that can’t happen,” it did happen.
It just didn’t seem possible that we would shut down schools and expect families and teachers to deal with it. But we did.
It didn’t seem possible that hospitals and nursing homes would say no visitors allowed. But they did.
It didn’t seem possible to me that it could go on for so long. But it did.
I did not have the imaginative capacity to understand what was about to happen, but it happened anyway. We adjusted. We adapted. And we began waiting for the time when things could return to the way they were before.
Gradually it began to dawn on us, though, that things would not go back to what they were before. Not really.
It has been a year of letting go, and I mean really letting go. Sure, some things we just set down for a while, knowing that we would pick them back up later. But there are other things we have had to let go.
My daughter said to me last week, “Can we just talk about how truly disgusting it is to be bowling and eating at the same time? To pick up this bowling ball, stick your fingers in it, roll it down the floor, then go pick up a sandwich?” That kind of carelessness about where our hands have been? That’s gone. Although I won’t shed any tears about it.
Because there are much more serious things we have had to let go of. Our sense of invincibility – the thinking that we have dominance over anything and everything the world can throw at us. It turns out we don’t.
Or our sense of individualism, total self-reliance – this notion that I am free to do what I want and I am dependent on no one but myself. It turns out we are really much more interconnected than we might have thought.
And, of course, the loss of more than a million lives, and all that those lives might have been.
Through it all, our belief in the world as it is, without concern for what it might be – this also has been shattered.
But hope is a very human characteristic. And as people of faith, our hope finds focus in the gospel of Jesus Christ, which shows us that, through loss, we find our way to new life.
The passage today combines two stories of healing together. Jesus has been sitting at table with some Pharisees who were questioning him about his practices, when he is suddenly interrupted by an official – a leader of the synagogue. His need is urgent. His daughter is dead. He wants Jesus to revive her.
We should pause a minute and realize how extraordinary it is that he would see this as possible. Has he seen Jesus bring life from death? Matthew give us no reason to believe so. Yet, through Jesus, this man has the ability to see something entirely new. Jesus responds by rising from his seat and following.
While they are walking, a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years approaches him from behind. She kneels down to touch the hem of his cloak, believing this will heal her. Jesus turns and says, “Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you.” And upon his words, the bleeding stops.
Then we go back to the synagogue leader and his daughter at his house. The crowd gathered around the house laugh at Jesus because they cannot imagine anything other than death inside that house. But Jesus goes inside, touches the girl’s body, and she rises.
And in these short, sweet stories woven together the gospel reaffirms to us that Jesus brings new possibilities that shatter old assumptions about the world. The gospel shows us that Jesus touches us and, out of what was dead, gives new life.
We know this is true in a real, physical way. Every time we gather together for the funeral of someone who has died, we call it a witness to the resurrection. This is so central to our faith, that just as Jesus overcame death in his own body, he also does it for us. We believe that through him, we will rise to new life, eternal life.
But that’s not all.
It is also true in another way, here and now. We know from his words and healing actions that Jesus brings us new life even in the midst of this old life. We know that he has ushered in the realm of God and shows us a whole different way, here and now, of seeing and living.
If we can just do it … let Jesus be our vision and see something different.
Together, as we mark this one-year anniversary of our COVID-19 pandemic, we are finding our way toward something different; we are healing.
And as we journey through healing, let us each ask ourselves: in what way is Jesus calling us to new life? How is Jesus awakening us, awakening our spirts and calling us into the holy work of creativity? What are we letting go of, and what are we taking from the old life and shaping into something new?
What kinds of dreams is Jesus giving us?
We take our broken pieces and through Jesus imagine something new. We let go of old pictures of what the world is like, and together – through Jesus – we create some different pictures of the way the world can be.
