The Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe

June 27, 2021  •  The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Saint Paul’s Within the Walls, Rome

Text: Mark 5:36: “Do not fear, only believe.”

This morning the reading from Mark’s gospel is one of our all-time favorite stories about Jesus, not just a healing story but a healing story within a healing story, one tucked inside the other. We have all heard this dramatic story retold so many times that we know we never, ever only hear one story without the other. We are meant to understand that they are related, and that not just the stories but the relationship between them is meant to teach us something, not just about Jesus, but about faith—our faith, our work as disciples.

Probably you remember some of these connections from sermons you’ve heard before about these stories. They both concern women. But the women are different; one is a woman and the other is a young girl. 

The woman has been afflicted for twelve years by an illness that would absolutely have meant she was outcast from her own society, seen as something unclean and frankly disgusting. She is the lowest of the low, poor and marginalized.

The girl has been alive exactly as long—twelve years. But her father is a leader of the synagogue. In the world around Jesus, she is of the upper class, at least among the Jewish people; the woman is in a class of discarded people. 

In our own generation, as we have become more sensitive to questions of economic and social justice, preachers emphasize the order in which things happen in the story. Jesus learns about the rich girl first; he is never even introduced to the poor woman until after she has been healed. She is last in social importance, but first to be healed. 

In fact the subtext of the story suggests to us that the people in Jairus’s household think that the little girl has died because Jesus was delayed—or allowed himself to be delayed—by this outcast woman. That is never said outright in the story—but the reaction of those people is, maybe, a little sarcastic. “Why trouble him anymore?”

Well, we know all these things. But I wonder whether we might be missing something—if we might be a little misled by what seems to be obvious. We have always thought about these as healing stories. But what if that is really only an incidental part of what’s happening here? What if the real point of these stories is about something else?

I’ve just finished my first week in Rome, and in the past week I’ve met a great many people for the first time. But one of them was especially impressive. He is a neighbor of ours. And because of the chance I had of meeting him, I saw something new about the truth of these stories.

On Thursday of this past week, we were invited to an elegant luncheon given over at the Anglican Centre, where we met a great many of the people we are supposed to know, and because it was one of those lunches you really need to work off we decided to walk back to the church. As we approached the door, I could see a young man waiting there hoping to be let in; he explained that he was from the St. George’s British School, and was looking for someone from the JNRC. So, I got out my key to open the door to let him in.

At that very moment the door opened from the inside, and there was a man I didn’t recognize looking very distraught. And he looked at me and said, “There is a woman dying. Can you help her?”

I will confess to you that I was a little bit disoriented. I asked him— “Is she here?”

“No, no, she is in the street,” he said. “Can you help?”

All I could think of to say was, “I’ll try.”

He came out of the church and led the way in a hurry down the Via Napoli toward the Via del Viminale. And there, on the other side of the street, lying in the shade of a doorway almost to the corner, was an emaciated woman, barely conscious.

Near her head were an empty bottle of Coca-Cola and what appeared to be a bottle of beer. There was also a bottle of water; I later learned that my new friend had rushed to the Carrefour to buy it when he had come upon her. Her eyes were closed, her breathing was labored. She was dressed in rags. And her body was covered in sores.

“She says she doesn’t want the medico,” he told me.  But as he told me that, he looked at me with an expression that asked—“What should we do?”

You will already know that my Italian is very poor. My new friend’s English was good enough for us to work together, so I asked him whether he might ask the woman for her name.

“Her name is Sara,” he said to me. He had already asked.

“I think we really need to call the ambulanza,” I said. If I’d had the slightest idea how to do it, I would have done it myself; but he knew, and he pulled out his phone and called them.

As I listened to him, it became clear that he had called them once before to ask for advice. This time, he told them that we needed them. Could they please come? Could they please hurry?

He hung up. “They said four minutes,” he told me.

Sara didn’t move. If she had heard all that he had said, she wasn’t protesting. Now, remember, I hadn’t seen this fellow before, and so finally I had a moment to ask him— “Do you work at the church?”

“Oh, no, no,” he said. “I work at the opera.”

He had come from work to the grocery store on the corner for lunch, and that was how he had discovered Sara lying in her agony on the ground. He had checked on her, and bought her some water. He asked if he could call a doctor for her, and she had said no.

And so then what he do? He came to the first place he thought of that might be able to help. He came here—to our church.

The only help he got was me, and as it turned out I was not much help at all. All I really did was to encourage him to do what he wanted to do already—which was to call the ambulance for help. 

We talked for a while as we waited. He used to be a singer, but now he works in the offices at the opera. His name is Andrea. 

After ten minutes had passed, he pulled out his phone and called the ambulance again. They were lost. We could hear their siren around us, but they hadn’t found us. Just as he hung up, we saw them turn off the Via Nazionale. Andrea stepped out into the street and started waving madly at them.

Well, the end of the story is that Sara was cared for by medical technicians, and taken to a hospital. And I will just add the small fact that as they cared for her, another man in a car trying to get down the Via Napoli got out and yelled at the technicians for blocking his way—right as they were caring for her.

When it was all over, Andrea and I said goodbye to each other and went back to the rest of our days.

So now, why am I telling you this story?

Maybe the two stories we heard from Mark’s gospel this morning aren’t really about healing. Maybe the two people in the story who are most alike aren’t the woman with the hemorrhage and the girl with the illness. Maybe, just maybe, we’re meant to see something in common between the woman and Jesus.

Here’s what I mean. The woman in the story is sure of two things. She is sure that God loves her, even if society has told her she isn’t worthy. And she believes that she can act in such a way as to make God’s love real in her life, a love so powerful that it can heal her. 

That’s what she believes. And it turns out that this is exactly what we then learn Jesus believes. We know this because of what he tells that woman. He doesn’t want to find her in the crowd to punish her, or criticize her—the thing she is afraid will happen, because that’s how everyone else has treated her. He wants to find her because he knows instantly that this woman believes the same truth he believes—indeed, the truth that he is. Jesus and that woman see the world in the same way. They know that God is love, and they act on that faith.

Jairus, that girl’s father, wants to believe. But in the end, his faith is overwhelmed by his fear. He is still paralyzed by that question: What should we do? What can I do?

“Do not fear, only believe”—When Jesus says those words to him he is in fact describing to him exactly what that woman had just done. Her fear was overpowered by her faith. And she acted.

That is a story from a long time ago. My new friend Andrea made it real for me this past Thursday. All of us know what it is like to see the suffering of another human being, something that brings out in us feelings of fear, and repulsion, and maybe even disgust. And most of us get stopped right there, and are perfectly okay staying there.

But not our neighbor. Yes, he was hesitant. But his compassion overcame his fear. He tried to help immediately. When he got stuck, he came here looking for more help. And in the end, he acted because for reasons best known to him, he believed that lying in front of him was a fellow human being whom God loves, and that the love who is God would somehow act through him to help.

Out of all the people I met this week, our neighbor Andrea gave me the most powerful example of what it looks like to be a disciple in the world. 

I don’t know what he believes; I don’t know anything about him other than what I observed.

 But I know that Christ asks us not what we believe, but what we do for those whom God loves, just as God loves us.

I know that just like our neighbor, people come to us expecting that we will be a place of people who know how to act in love, even when we are afraid.

And I hope that whenever the choice faces any of us, we will remember that example, and reach out of our fear toward the love that we know has the power to heal, to change, and to save. Amen.