What is it that you love most about worship? And what is it that you miss the most?
Les Kirby’s sister stopped by on Wednesday and was telling me about her church.
Like us haven’t met in person, but they have figured out that when they do, they won’t be able to sing, and they won’t be able to hug. She said, “so what’s the point, we can get the rest watching the service on the computer!”
I think that is a pretty understandable expression of what we want and need in our worship experiences, not just the transcendence of God with us, but the fellowship of us being together.
The faith community gathered has its own power for us! In being together we feel healed, redirected, encouraged to go back into the world and be like Christ.
So, while online worship is good and helpful especially when we just can’t safely gather, being together feels better. It is a visible expression of the body of Christ, and in the gathered crowd our faith grows.
Sheila Moore said the other day that she hurried back from shopping so she could be at home for the Friday Zoom Prayer meeting, because in that space the power flows and we all feel energized.
So, it’s not that God can’t move over the wires connecting us by Zoom or Facebook or Youtube, just like this morning. It’s just that we yearn for more!
And in these two stories from Luke’s gospel, we see the power of the gathered faith community for what it is in that context, then and now. In community, God does miracles!
Now you may be surprised by that idea, that this crowd on the shore of Lake Galilee is a faith community!
Sometimes I think we a bit arrogantly assume that the Jewish communities and even some of the Gentile communities Jesus encountered were without faith, but clearly that isn’t true.
Sometimes, like us, there was more faith or less faith, but often, Jesus saw faith and called on that faith to strengthen it and invite it to step up to a new level!
Unlike the story before it on the other shore of Galilee with the man possessed by a demon, and the pig farmers, this community is not only is excited to see Jesus, but they want to see God’s power at work through Jesus.
But as is often the case, they were not necessarily ready for how that power was going to play out, just as I suspect we aren’t ready for God’s power today.
We want God to come among us. We want God to touch our lives. But there is always some trepidation when God’s power is unleashed in that it will change things, and well, we don’t like change very much!
We’re nervous about what God will do and how God will change things and change us. And what God does may challenge us to live in bold ways like we never have before!
So, it’s into this faith community gathered on Galilee’s shores that the President of the Synagogue comes and kneels at Jesus’ feet.
It turns out that his only daughter, just 12, is gravely sick.
He comes full of faith and hope to ask Jesus to come to his house and heal the child. He hopes that Jesus will come quickly and that the healing process will come quickly as well.
This is a big moment for Jesus, because if the healing takes place, the Synagogue’s president is in a position to make Jesus even more famous and renown than he already is! And the crowd heads to the leader’s house!
But, we know a bit more about Jesus than perhaps the President of the Synagogue or the crowd did. Perhaps even more than the disciples, because we know that while meeting the President of the Synagogue may have been nice, Jesus had no interest in fame, or renown.
His interest was only in doing the work God had called him to, a gentle reminder that Jesus has little interest in many of the things we often worry about, focused instead on calling us to great faith, often the opposite of fame and power and money!
Our calling, like Jesus’, is to be focused on the kingdom, focused on God’s work in this world, and focused on growing disciples.
And then Jesus stops dead to ask who touched him!
If it wasn’t such an important moment one could almost see this as written for a Monty Python sketch, as the disciples look around hopelessly and in absolute disbelief that Jesus wants to know who of the hundreds of people around him touched him.
It could have been the synagogue guy. It could have been one of them. Everyone is in close, jostling for a place near the master and he wants to know who!
Because it matters! The who!
Because in the next moment he takes a lowly terrified woman, who by ritual standards because of her bleeding should never have been allowed anywhere near Jesus, in fact anywhere near the crowd, because she was unclean…
And Jesus, caring not a whit about her ritual uncleanness, restores her not only to health, but almost more importantly, to her community, so that no one can ever question if she belongs as part of them.
Though the scripture makes it sound as if she only touched the hem of his garment, Jesus makes clear she has touched him, that healing power has moved and has healed her, and that he now wants to meet the person of faith who simply believing, has been set free.
She bows at his feet in abject fear.
The penalty for her audacity could be permanent, painful and swift. Instead, Jesus raises her up publicly to full communion in the house of faith, as a person who is whole, holy, restored, and an example of what faith is all about!
“You are now well because of your faith. May God give you peace!”
The child of the man of renown waits while the outcast women is healed. In the kingdom of God, the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.
God does not care about fame or power or money. What God cares about is your faith.
And in a quiet room, with only a child, her faithful parents, and just three of the disciples, he raises the dead girl to life, telling the parents to say nothing.
Because faith brings no fame or power or money.
What it brings is restoration.
A woman to her community. A child to her parents. And you and I to God and each other.
And every person of faith, be they black or white, Canadian or Swede, gay or straight, young or old, handsome or rugged, working or unemployed, healthy or ill, restored to full communion in the Kingdom of God!
You and I have been restored!
And now we are invited to go and find others to invite back home! Amen
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