Proper 8
July 2, 2006

Faith Journey Interrupted
by Donald Hoffman


Mark 5:21-43



I suppose the greatest living preacher is Fred 
Craddock, a Disciples minister and a professor of 
preaching. I have admired him tremendously for 
decades. But even Fred Craddock had his moments 
when he doubted what he was there for.


One day, he says, a woman came to see him. She 
asked him to come out to the parking lot. He was 
a little nervous, but he followed her to the 
parking lot and to her car. She opened the back 
door, and slumped in the back seat was her 
brother. He had been a senior at the University 
of Oklahoma. He had been in a bad car wreck and 
in a coma eight months. She had quit her job as a 
schoolteacher to take care of him. All of their 
resources were gone. She opened the door and 
said, "I'd like for you to heal him."



Craddock said, "I can pray for him. And I can 
pray with you. But I do not have the gift of 
healing."



The woman got behind the wheel and said to him, 
"Then what in the world do you do?" And she drove off.



What Craddock says he did that afternoon was 
study, stare at his books, and try to forget what 
she had said. (from Craddock Stories, p. 21)



The first time I heard that story, it made me so 
uncomfortable. I wanted to jump to Fred 
Craddock's defense. The woman had unrealistic 
expectations, I said to myself. Her brother's 
been in a coma for eight months. Craddock's 
honest in saying what he can and can't do. God 
meant him to be a great preacher. He probably 
DIDN'T have the gift of healing. Hardly anyone 
has that kind of healing gift.



But I also notice that in the story Craddock 
doesn't try to defend himself. And it makes me 
think, maybe I'm so defensive because I doubt my 
own ability to heal, and I don't want it tested.



It's like the fellow who was asked if he could 
play the accordion. "I don't know," he said. 
"I've never tried." If you asked me do I have the 
gift of healing, I'd have to say, "I don't know. 
I've never tried."


Many years ago I was in a meeting with a bunch of 
ministers, and one fellow was talking about all 
the interruptions he'd had that week. He'd start 
on one job and the phone would ring. He'd hang up 
and just be mentally changing gears, getting back 
to his task, and someone would come by the office 
to chat. And he had a funeral that week, and 
there were some time-consuming things he had to 
do with the bereaved family. Every time he would 
start to do something he was interrupted. Then he 
said, "Finally I realized: Maybe my ministry is 
interruptions. Maybe where I'm called to serve 
God is in the interruptions."



Jesus is on his way to heal a little sick girl, 
when he's interrupted. (Well, actually people say 
she's dead, although Jesus says she's only 
asleep.) Really, it seems that he interrupts 
himself. If he'd kept on going and said nothing, 
who would have known? But he stops and says, "Who 
touched me?"



"What do you mean, 'who touched you'?" say the 
disciples. "You're surrounded by a crowd. People 
are pressing in from all sides. There must be a 
dozen hands on you. There must be another dozen 
people with their hands out, TRYING to touch you. 
What do you mean, 'who touched you'?"



Jesus doesn't even listen to them. He's looking 
around, looking around. "Who touched me?" A dozen 
hands on him, but one feels different to him.



It works the other way, too. A dozen people 
touched Jesus, and they feel nothing. But one 
person who touches him feels different inside 
herself. It's a touch that Jesus feels. It's a 
touch that the woman feels. She knows he's 
talking about her. She can't stay anonymous. She 
has to come forward, even if it's with fear and 
trembling, even if she has to fall down on the 
ground in front of him. She has to tell her story.



And Jesus has to listen. Something about his 
character makes him want to hear that story. When 
he's heard it he calls her, "daughter." I think 
that word means something. He's making her part 
of his family.



Now listen: I'm asking you to read between the 
lines of the very brief story we have in Mark. 
Listen to this woman's story, and try to 
understand her as a real person. It's going to be 
hard, because we don't know her name. Here's what 
we do know: She has been bleeding for twelve 
years. Obviously not a lot, and maybe not all the 
time, or she would have already died, or at least 
been too weak to get outdoors and fight her way 
through a crowd. Physically she may not be all 
that bad off. But socially, oh, socially she's 
really, really sick. You see, she's untouchable. 
What the people of that culture call "unclean."



Adult women of that culture spend some time every 
month being unclean in just the same way. Their 
clothes are unclean. The bed they lie on is 
unclean. Any place they sit is unclean. Any 
utensils they touch, any food they prepare is 
unclean. Any person they touch, or who touches 
them, is unclean. But for most women it only 
lasts a few days each month. For this woman it 
goes on and on and on! She can never, ever be a 
part of her own family. She can never, ever be a 
part of her own culture. She is permanently 
unclean. She's an outcast.


She's like Ryan White, the little Indiana boy of 
the 1980's who had AIDS. They wouldn't let him go 
to school. They wouldn't let him in public 
buildings. People ran away from him, and scrubbed 
and sterilized anything they thought he might 
have touched. He was unclean. He was untouchable. 
He was an outcast.



Now as we keep reading between the lines, we can 
guess that at one time this woman was fairly well 
off. She's gone to doctor after doctor. The story 
says she's suffered much from many doctors. Now 
all her money is gone. Everything she had is gone.



Think about the worst illness you've ever had. 
Think about doctors who stuck you with needles 
and poked and prodded and did unnecessary 
surgeries, and prescribed unnecessary drugs, and 
made you hurt worse, but didn't help you. Think 
about the insurance company refusing to pay for 
obvious treatments. Think about Medicare claiming 
that the forms had the wrong codes entered on 
them. Think about prescription drug benefits that 
only seem to benefit the drug companies.



Then multiply that by twelve years!



And yet something inside her says, "If I could 
just touch that healer, I know I'd get better." 
Twelve years of mistreatment, twelve years of 
pouring her money down a rat hole, twelve years 
of  nobody wanting to touch her who isn't going 
to get paid for it. Yet she's still trying. She's 
still trying.



Jesus calls that faith. In fact he refuses to 
take credit for her healing. He says her faith 
healed her. And that says something to me. Maybe 
I'm not called to be a healer. But I am called to 
let people touch me. I am called to touch the 
untouchables. I am called to touch people who are 
unclean, contaminated, outcast. I am called to 
listen to people's stories. I am called to get 
into their story with them. I am not called to 
heal, but to allow their faith to heal them.



I think it is interesting that the disciples who 
were with Jesus thought the woman told a great 
story, in fact they remembered the story well 
enough to pass it on to Mark, but they didn't 
check deeply enough to learn the woman's name. 
Yet Jesus called her daughter. He made her a part 
of his family. He took time to listen. He let the 
untouchable woman touch him. And when all that 
happened, her own faith healed her.


An on-line friend of mine, Pam Tinnin, was 
telling this week of working in a food pantry, 
helping out-of-luck people. A very young 
freckle-faced woman, a girl really, with a 
toddler and a baby, came and started pouring out 
her story. Pam was very busy and didn't really 
want to take the time to listen, but something 
made her stick with the girl. She got her name, 
Beth, and the kids' names, Cindy and David. They 
were really just passing through on their way to 
San Diego. Beth told a very sad story.



Then Beth said something that surprised Pam. "If 
you can't give us any food-because we're not from 
here and all-that's okay. I feel a lot betterŠI 
guess more than anything, I just needed someone 
to listen." Then Pam goes on to say:



"It's only human to try and put things in order; to make a schedule;
to control things. But life isn't like that; doing God's work isn't
like that. Sometimes we have to let the Spirit carry us where it will,
as scary as that sometimes seems. We've got to leave space in our
lives for those times when we will unexpectedly see Christ standing
right there in front of us. Who knows? We may even see him in the
eyes of a frightened, freckle-faced girl. And when we see Him, how
can we turn away? How can we turn away?"



One time I was really in a hurry. I was on my way 
to a church that really needed me. A church that 
was dying, or maybe even dead. But I got 
sidetracked.



I did get his name. His name was Val. He had a 
terrible stammer, one of the worst I've ever 
heard. I'd guess his stammer made him an outcast, 
an untouchable. How many people would want to 
take the time to hear his story, to really get to 
know him. I know that for a while I resented the 
time he was taking. I was in a hurry, after all. 
But I remembered my brother minister who said 
that he discovered that interruptions were his 
ministry. So I hung in with stammering Val, and 
listened. And he touched me. Well, he touched me 
for ten dollars worth of gas, and a meal in a 
nearby restaurant. And when I left him there in 
the restaurant, he was still stammering.



But how do I know he wasn't healed of some deeper 
illness, maybe even one that had plagued him for 
years? I'll never know for sure.



But this one thing I know. When I finally got to 
that church, the one that was dead or dying--I 
discovered that it wasn't dead after all, only 
sleeping.



The next time when you're really in a hurry, and 
someone interrupts you, remind yourself: Maybe 
interruptions are my ministry. The next time 
somebody tries to tell you the long and boring 
story of their life, go ahead, let them. Accept 
them as a member of your Christian family, a 
brother or sister or daughter.



The next time someone asks you for healing, go 
ahead. What have YOU got to lose? It'll be their 
faith that heals them, not you. Touch them. 
Listen to them. Maybe you'll see Jesus in them. 
Maybe your ministry is in your interruptions. 
Maybe Jesus is in your interruptions.

(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)
Creston Christian Church, Creston, Washington, USA