'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
One of my spiritual heroes is Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest, who was also a writer, professor, and social advocate. 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 for Disabled Adults in Toronto. As he put it in his book In the Name of Jesus, he moved from the best and brightest at Harvard, those who want to rule the world, to men and women who had few or no words and were considered, at best, marginal to the needs of society. In that book Fr. 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. It got really frustrating at times, but he came to see those interruptions as a gift. At one point he wrote, “I used to complain about all the interruptions to my work until I realized these interruptions were my work.”
Isn’t that interesting? How often are we in the middle what we believe to be our work, only to be interrupted? Maybe we don’t give an audible Charlie Brown “UGH!” but our nonverbals – a heavy sigh, slumped shoulders – communicate pretty clearly that we would rather be doing more important tasks. With such a mindset, interruptions seem at best rude and a waste of time, hardly at all the very work God calls us to be doing. But what if they were?
Our Gospel this morning has Jesus being interrupted, not once, but twice. We find Jesus coming off of a boat and entering a town, but immediately as he gets off that boat he is met by Jairus, a synagogue leader, who asks Jesus to come and heal his daughter. There’s interruption number one; but sure, Jesus is a healer, it’s his “job,” if you will, so he allows Jairus to interrupt whatever it was he had planned to do when he came ashore. Of course, then a large crowd gathers around Jesus, and a woman who’s been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years—which not only left her in physical agony but also made her perpetually unclean according to the Law—seeks out Jesus to be healed. Even Jesus’ interruption gets interrupted! No doubt those around thought Jesus should have just moved on, especially Jairus, but 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, and 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 complaining that she was already dead. Perhaps it is because Jesus does not treat time as a commodity, as something that can be controlled, like so many of us do; after all, we cannot “waste” our time, can we? We cannot devote time to something or someone that is unimportant, right? This is partially due to our uniquely American, Puritanical, and capitalistic 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, very carefully. Jesus does not do this. He does not choose which person is more important—the poor, unclean woman or the daughter of a big deal religious official —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. For Jesus, the interruption is the work.
There’s a really cool literary technique that the Gospel of Mark uses called A-B-A; which means that Mark will introduce a situation (A), move on to something that might not immediately seem like it’s connected (B), then come back to the original (A again). The example of that today is Jairus asking for help, the woman interrupting Jesus, and then Jesus going to the house to heal Jairus’ daughter. For writers of all sorts, A-B-A is a well-known technique that loops folks back in after an interruption in a text or story – comedians use it all the time, heck, I use it often in my sermons. When applied to our lives, it’s a holy gift, because it helps us remember that the B, the interruption, is every bit as important as what brackets it on either side.
I remember a time several years ago when I had an A-B-A moment. It was Vestry day – yay! – and I was doing everything from getting the agenda put together to setting up for the worship service we always did beforehand. That was A. Roughly an hour before the meeting, someone interrupted that work and showed up to the church needing food and gas. There’s B. “I don’t have time for this,” I thought. This man had interrupted what I considered very important work. As it turned out, I had recently read In the Name of Jesus, and I remembered what Fr. Nouwen had said. Perhaps, I thought, 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, this man standing in front of me, was my work. And, of course, I returned to A and did have that Vestry meeting that night as usual, but it was important that I understand that what I first thought was an interruption was the very holy work to which I was called.
As I told the congregation where I am currently serving as the Interim Rector, they had a pretty serious interruption around a year ago. The whole system seemed to be upended when a longtime, beloved Rector retired and took the organist with her (the organist was married to the priest). Many felt, as would be expected, that they didn’t have time for that! They had momentum and excitement for what God was doing, but then all of a sudden, a new concern arose. And how did these folks handle it? With grace and attention. They did the work that this interruption called them to do. They were at A, right now they're in B, and soon they'll be back to A. All of it is the work of the church.
Like Jesus, interruptions come for us, and they make no distinction between what or who is more or less important. The fact that Jesus treats the woman suffering with hemorrhages the same as he treats the daughter of a religious leader is significant. How we treat our interruptions matters. Because the truth is that when our work is the work of Jesus, the work of restoring all people and all creation to God, and by doing so through prayer and worship rooted in justice, peace and love, then there’s no such thing as interruptions because it’s all the work – the mission, if you will – of the church; and that’s not just me, that is straight from the Catechism on pg. 855 of the Book of Common Prayer. You can look it up.
What might our lives look like, if instead of sighing heavily and bemoaning interruptions, we saw them for what they are: blessed gifts, as Fr. Nouwen called them, and the holy work that God gives us every single day?
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