During worship on Sunday, we were delighted to welcome
wee Eve into God's family
through the sacrament of baptism.
Our gospel reading was potentially a tricky text, but in the end,
we discovered that each of us,
no matter how small -
and no matter how small
or invisible we may feel -
is known and named as God's own...
1st
READING: Ps 30
2nd
READING: Mark 5:21-43
SERMON ‘A new name: beloved of God’
Let’s pray:
May the words
of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts,
be acceptable in your
sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen...
Have you ever
found yourself singing along to a song -
perhaps a song you’ve known for years
and years and years -
and suddenly realised that what you’ve been singing has
been completely wrong?
Misheard and
mis-sung lyrics can be wonderful things.
Apparently,
waaay back in the day, the line in Jimi Hendrix’s song ‘Purple Haze’:
‘’scuse me, while I kiss the sky’
was so
regularly misheard and mis-sung
as ‘’scuse
me, while I kiss this guy’
that even Hendrix himself decided to perform it
that way.
For years,
along with many others, I was
convinced that the hymn
‘Gladly the cross I’d bear’ was less a song of service
and discipleship,
and more about a poor bear with the unusual name of ‘Gladly’;
and I often
felt a little twinge of sadness,
thinking
about poor Gladly being cross-eyed -
would it
impede his ability to climb trees
or forage for
food in the woods?
I sincerely
hoped not.
And then
there’s the classic misunderstanding
around God’s
name being ‘Harold’...
this from a
mishearing of the Lord’s Prayer:
‘Our Father, who art in heaven,...
Harold be thy name’
There’s a
special name for this kind of
mishearing
and mistaken utterance:
and it comes
from a 17th century Scottish ballad
‘The Bonnie
Earl o’ Moray’ - which goes like this:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o' Moray,
And laid him on the green
Except, that this was misheard by the writer
Sylvia Wright when a child, as "And Lady Mondegreen.”
Apparently
for years she wondered about poor Lady Mondegreen,
and her
tragic death - and yet was somehow strangely comforted
that the bonnie earl and
the lady could console each other as they lay dying.
As an adult,
trying to put a name to the phenomenon of
misheard lyrics and poems, Wright
remembered
poor, tragic Lady Mondegreen, and so, a new term
was coined: mondegreen.
So the next
time you mishear and misuse a lyric,
remember Lady
Mondegreen.
Names are
important.
And contrary
to the old schoolyard jingle:
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones
but
names will never hurt me.’
being called
names can be very hurtful indeed.
But what
happens when you’re not even given a
name...?
When you’re
seemingly so insignificant
in society
that you might as well be invisible...anonymous?
Our gospel
reading this morning is a tale of
two stories:
two stories, with
two women:
one, very
much at that culture’s ritual entry point for
womanhood - a 12 yr old;
the other, an
older woman - we don’t know
how old,
but someone who’s undergone much
suffering over 12 years.
One, seen
within her context of belonging: she is
‘Jairus’ daughter’...
the other,
seemingly completely disconnected: no one’s
daughter, mother, sister.
Both women
are unnamed;
and both are
women who, in different
ways,
are living in the borderlands,
living on the
edge,
on the
boundaries of society.
The younger
woman, quite physically:
as she wavers
between the boundaries of life and
death;
the older
woman, ritually: due to her
illness -
thought of as
impure, ‘unclean’, a social
outcast,
who would,
should she touch another in
her community,
cause them to
become ritually unclean -
cause them to
be cut off from society until certain
ceremonies could take place to
purify them
and bring
them back inside the circle.
In this tale
of two stories, of two women,
we see oddly
parallel lives, for all that
their lives are vastly different.
Let’s look at
the younger woman.
Presumably,
as the daughter of Jairus -
well-connected,
one of the leaders of
the synagogue,
she has had a
sheltered life,
a life of
privilege,
a life where
she’s lacked for nothing.
And yet,
without her father, she would be, virtually nothing.
And into her
seemingly comfortable life comes
illness.
She’s near
death.
And what of
the older woman?
There are no
discernible connections at all here -
she’s had a
life of suffering
a life of
pain
a life now
lived in poverty,
after years
of fruitless medical opinions have left her bankrupt.
She has
no-one to turn to.
And, given
her medical condition,
she doesn’t
even have the comfort of being able to go to the synagogue.
She is invisible.
She might as
well be dead.
And, at this
particular point in time,
the lives of
these two unnamed women intersect -
and
the common touching-point is Jesus.
Jesus has
been travelling around the area of
the Galilee.
He’s been in
and out of boatsas he’s
crossed over the sea,
and in our
text this morning,
he’s just
back from a trip to theregion of the
Gerasenes.
Immediately
upon getting out of the boat,
he’s swamped
by a large crowd,
all eager to
see this celebritypreacher and
teacher.
And into the
midst of the crowd comes Jairus -
a leader of
the local synagogue...
and what’s
interesting here is that,
the religious
leadership has already begun to distrust
Jesus,
to plot
against him, to call him
names -
to try to diminish
and undermine him.
And yet,
here’s Jairus.
Going against
the prevailing mood of his
colleagues,
out of love
for his daughter,
he’s prepared
not only to be seen in public
with Jesus,
but to fall
on his knees -
to humble
himself before Jesus and beg for
his help.
As Jesus and
Jairus move off to tend to the girl -
with the
crowd coming along to presumably see the
‘show’,
there’s an
interruption:
the older
woman, invisible, outcast,
has crept
into the midst of the crowd
and manages
to touch the hem of Jesus’
garment -
perhaps even
just that small act might make
her well...
and then, she
can melt back into the crowd,
unnoticed,
and invisible.
But that’s
not what happens.
Even with all
the throng of folk around him,
Jesus somehow
knows that something has
happened.
He turns
around ...
asks who
touched him...
waits until
someone confesses...
And she knows
that she’s not as invisible as she
thought she was.
The whole
crowd is watching,
suddenly
acutely aware of her existence.
Like Jairus
before her, she too, falls at Jesus’ feet.
And while she
may have been given many
other names
over the 12 long years of her suffering:
‘outcast’
‘unclean’
‘impure’
here, in the
midst of the crowd that she should not
be in,
here,
kneeling before Jesus, she’s given a
new name:
‘daughter’.
She has been
seen,
she is known,
and she is
named as God’s own -
brought into
the circle from the
borderlands of exclusion...
understands
for the first time in many years
the wideness
of God’s mercy.
She’s
restored,
she belongs,
and she’s
sent off with a blessing of peace.
And what of
the other daughter - the daughter
of Jairus?
Seemingly,
the delay has cost Jairus dearly -
messengers
come and say that all is now lost.
Or is it?
Jesus and
Jairus head to the house - but note:
the crowd are
told not to come -
only Jesus’
closest disciples are allowed to follow
and
see what happens next.
This is not a
circus, but a circle of sadness,
and the
family of Jairus need cared for, not gawped
at.
Moving up to
the room, Jesus takes
the girl by the hand,
calls to her
to get up...
and she does.
When others
in the house have given up on her,
Jesus hasn’t.
She, too, is
seen
is known,
is called and
named.
Not only is
she Jairus’ daughter,
she is God’s
own.
Two women,
two parallel
stories.
Women who are
initially not really seen as particularly important,
but who in
the upside-down kingdom of God,
are seen as
God’s own,
created in
God’s image,
known and
named -
and in that
naming,
raised into
God’s marvellous light,
claimed as
God’s beloved.
Names are
important -
names can
break people down or build
people up.
How do we see
one another?
How do we name those around us?
‘Scrounger’
‘Immigrant’
‘Abomination’
Do we use
names that body-shame
or names that
exclude on grounds of
race, or gender, or orientation, or intellectual ability,
or a myriad of other things...?
Do we seek to
see the person in front of us
as created in
God’s image?
As someone
known and named by God?
And how do we
see ourselves?
For perhaps
it’s only when we’re able to accept -
or begin to
accept -
that we are
God’s beloved,
that we can
move beyond naming others
in ways that
are destructive, or divisive?
Each one of
us is created in God’s image,
is known and
named ...
In Christ, we
are all given a new name.
Just as Eve,
through her baptism this morning
has been joined
into the community of the faithful,
and is known
and named by God as his
beloved daughter,
each one of
us is also known and named by God:
named as
beloved child
...daughter, son.
‘In Baptism we are named as children
of God
and promised that no matter what
happens,
no matter where we may go in life,
no matter what we may do or have done to us,
yet God always sees a unique and beloved individual
worthy of love, honor, and respect.’
[David Lose]
As God’s
beloved, then,
as those who
are known and named and loved,
let us go out
from here today,
and see our
friends, our families,
our
neighbours, our fellow human beings for who they
are:
people
created in God’s image,
people who
matter,
people who
are not invisible,
but who are
known and named and loved by God,
and in so
doing,
let us do the
work of building God’s kingdom,
where the
smallest and the least,
the
overlooked and the insignificant
are truly
precious,
are all God’s
children,
and are all
beloved.
And in his
name, may it be so.
Amen.
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