Pentecost 5

Pentecost 5 (Mark 5:21-43)  “Your faith has made you well.”

God does not want us to hold an unexamined belief. Faith is not a blind leap in the dark.

In Jesus God invites us to examine the facts of our lives based on observation and experience. People came to believe Jesus could heal because they witnessed him healing. People saw Jesus restore lepers to perfect health. They saw how the blind came to see, the paralyzed walked, and all manner of illness and injury healed. Their belief was grounded in observation and formed by their experience.

Faith is a different matter altogether. Faith is trust and commitment. Not all who witnessed the healing miracles and believed Jesus had the power to heal came to faith. Some people came to Jesus for the healing then walked away. Some stood to one side and claimed Jesus healed by the power of Satan. Others largely ignored Jesus through indifference.

Jesus recognized the difference between belief and faith. Belief is largely a matter of will. It is a will resistant to change, to growth, to transformation. More often than not religious belief selectively chooses bits and pieces of scripture and the words of Jesus while ignoring the person of Jesus. More often than not belief rejects fact and subverts faith.

Jesus used the occasion of the woman who sought his healing to teach about faith. In his humanity he did not know who had touched him. He only knew someone had indeed called forth the power of his divine nature. That power is the power of love. Jesus did not heal through the power of command and control. He healed by the real presence of infinite and eternal love. It is the love that creates the universe. It is the love that eternally manifests as one God in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The woman touched Jesus out of belief based in fact. The fact is grounded in her observation of how Jesus healed others. She was hesitant due to the nature of her affliction. Under the Law of Moses any discharge of blood rendered a person unclean. Had the woman approached Jesus publically she would be violating the law of isolation. By approaching Jesus she would be threatening to render him unclean. He would have had to withdraw from society and offered the appointed sacrifices in the Temple before he resumed his public ministry.

When Jesus asked who had touched him she probably feared that he would denounce her to the religious police and punish her. He didn’t. Jesus wanted to complete her healing. She had been cured but she needed more. She needed both wholeness and holiness restored to her. Wholeness meant the healing of every aspect of her being not just her ailment. She had endured much pain and economic distress over the years. Such distress and pain had taken its toll on her mind and heart and soul. She needed more than a cure. She needed wholeness.

Due to the nature of her ailment she also needed ritual holiness. She could not return to society unless she performed certain religious acts defined in the Law of Moses. Jesus understood this aspect of her disease. He publically declared she was fully healed. What God calls clean no one can call unclean.

Jesus does not want secret disciples. If you follow Jesus you need to follow from the place of informed belief and committed faith. There is no half way faith in Jesus. You are either loyal to him and growing in grace; or, you are standing on the fringes of faith lost in a twilight belief that lacks the power of salvation and sanctification.

The woman claimed the full healing when she came forward and admitted she had reached out to Jesus. This was not a blind leap of faith. This was a public acknowledgement of her trust in Jesus. It is as she steps forward in faith that Jesus says: your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Be healed.

Passive belief is not the same thing as active faith. The woman was hesitant. She had some fear. She wasn’t the classic model of a courageous saint. She didn’t need to be. All she needed was that mustard seed sized faith to come to Jesus. All she needed was the seed of faith to believe the truth, receive the truth and acknowledge the truth. She told him the full truth in the presence of his disciples and the crowds. She told him of her illness, her pain, her suffering and her fears.

Sadly, belief has a tendency to shroud itself in deceit. It is largely a self-deceit that defends its position from change. It is a defense of pride and self-will that will not and cannot admit where it is in distortion. It is much better at judging and condemning others for their sins than in acknowledging its own sin of pride.

The fullness of healing the woman received is the fullness of truth. In truth the woman experience the real presence of love in Jesus Christ. At that moment she was completely undefended and humble. At that moment Jesus not only completed her physical healing he gave her the spiritual healing of peace. It was a peace she had never experienced. It not only restored to her all that she had lost over the years but opened to her a new life and a new way of living.

The peace of God transforms. It transforms past suffering in the reality of present grace. It changes anxiety about the future by a present trust in the real presence of the eternal. Separation from God keeps us trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of judgment, conflict, fear and anxiety. It formulates systems of belief that keep our perception of God and God’s creation so narrow that we miss the blessing God has designed into the world and our own souls.

The first step to healing and wholeness is the first step of faith. That first step of faith means that we are willing to walk a new path of discovery. In that path we discover who God really is. He is Jesus. In that path we discover who we really are. We are each the forever friend of the co-eternal Son of God. In that path we discover the truth of humanity. We as a species are a collective whole designed to help each other and to complete each other. The Holy Spirit, the divine Helper, asks us to ask ourselves today. What is my next step forward in faith? How is Jesus inviting me to experience wholeness, holiness and peace?