'When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.'
--Mark 5: 21-43
Not to be presumptuous, but I’m going to guess that hardly any of you enjoys being interrupted. Am I right? I know that I don't! Interruptions are especially frustrating when we’ve set ourselves up for a task that demands our best effort, such as: when we’re pouring over our job, have started an important project in our yard, or have finally settled down to read that book someone recommending. We start to get focused on the task at hand, and then suddenly along comes something or someone that throws a hitch into it. Once that happens we channel our inner Charlie Brown and then trudge off to begrudgingly attend to the interruption, even though we would very much rather attend to our much more important work.
We've all been there, Charlie Brown.
That relationship between work and interruptions is something that one of my spiritual heroes, Henri Nouwen addressed. Father Nouwen was a Dutch priest, philosopher, poet, professor, and social activist. After 20 years teaching at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, he devoted the remaining 10 years of his life to living and serving among the L’Arche Daybreak Community in Toronto, which was made up of adults with severe physical and emotional disabilities. As he put it in his book In the Name of Jesus, he moved from the best and brightest at Harvard, those who wanted to rule the world, to men and women who had few or no words and were considered, at best, on the margins of society. In that and several other works, Father Nouwen talks about the struggles of that move, how so often he just wanted to do the basic ministerial work of teaching and administering the sacraments, but so often he would be interrupted by the needs of someone in the community, such as a man with Tourette's Syndrome interrupting a mass. It got really frustrating at times, but over time Father Nouwen came to see those interruptions as a gift from God. At one point he wrote, “I used to complain about all the interruptions to my work until I realized these interruptions were my work.”
Father Henri Nouwen, who died in 1999.
Isn’t that interesting? Many of us, I suspect, become so focused on accomplishing a task, sometimes even a task to which we believe that God has called us, that we do not see God’s presence in the person or thing that interrupts us. The interruption could not possibly be a gift from God, could it? It took Father Nouwen years to learn that, but one person for which it did not take so long was Jesus.
This past week's Gospel text shows Jesus being interrupted not once, but twice! Jesus and his disciples land in a Galilean town and are immediately met by Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue, who asks Jesus to help his sick daughter. Whatever it was Jesus came to do in that town has gotten interrupted. Still, Jairus is an important person, so we can forgive this interruption, which somehow doesn't feel like a nuisance. Not so with interruption number two, which sees a woman stop Jesus in the crowd. See, even Jesus' interruptions get interrupted! This woman has been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years—which not only has left her in tremendous debt and physical agony but has also made her perpetually unclean according to the Law. No doubt those around are thinking that Jesus should just move on, especially; after all, this woman is of no social value, but Jairus is, and his daughter should obviously take priority. Jesus instead meets the woman and engages with her, and in doing so he not only restores her to physical health but also restores her to the community. This only happens because he allows himself to be interrupted.
Notice how Jesus does not treat the woman like an inconvenience, nor does he complain that he doesn’t have time to go and complete the task of healing Jairus’ daughter, even though many in the crowd were complain that she is already dead. Perhaps it is because Jesus does not treat time as a commodity, as something that can be controlled, like so many folks do; after all, we cannot “waste” our time, can we? We cannot devote time to something that is unimportant, right? This is partially due to our western, post-Enlightenment, Protestant work ethic that has formed us to think that there is actually such a thing as a task that is wasteful, and that we should treat our time like our money, carefully. Jesus, however, is neither western, nor post-Enlightenment, nor Protestant, and thus does not do this. He does not choose which person is more important—the woman or Jairus’ daughther— and he does not show frustration at either interruption, which pulled him away from the ever-important work of prayer. Instead he treats both interruptions as opportunities to show God’s love and mercy to not only these people but all those who witnessed the two moments of healing and all of us who have heard the story after it happened. For Jesus, the interruption was the work.
A catacomb's fresco depicting Jesus being interrupted by the woman with hemorrhages.
Last week I was faced with a situation in which I was interrupted in the midst of very important work by someone seeking help. It was Tuesday, and I was in the middle of preparing for our vestry meeting, getting my notes done and setting up for our pre-meeting worship, when a man came by the church needing food and gas. “I don’t have time for this,” I literally said to myself (and to God) as I walked down the hall to meet him. But I realized when talking to him that this interruption was the work that God was calling me to in this moment. So what if I ended up being late for vestry? So what if other tasks I had planned to complete that day were not finished? This interruption was my work.
What is the work of the church, brothers and sisters? According to our Book of Common Prayer, on page 855, which is part of the Catechism or Outline of the Faith, the mission of the Church, that is, the work to which every one of us is called, is "to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ", and it goes on to say that we do so "through prayer, worship, the proclamation of the Gospel, and the promotion of justice, peace, and love." When this is our work, and these are the ways in which we accomplish that work, there is no such thing as an interrption. What's more, there is no such thing as wasted time, meaningless tasks, or unimportant people. For this is our work, just as it was Jesus' work.
So the next time you are faced with some kind of interruption to an important task, I wonder what might happened if you saw that interruption as a gift from God? What if, instead of resisting the interruption out of frustration, you saw it as an opportunity to live into the very work that God has called you to as part of the Church, the Body of Christ? What would it look like if instead of having clenched teeth, you had open hands and received the interruption just as you receive Jesus each week at the Holy Eucharist? This is what we are called to, brothers and sisters. Because for us, like Jesus, the interruptions are the work.
