June 27, 2021
/The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Psalm 130; Mark 5:21-43
The Rev. Jeff Bohanski
Lord, open my mouth and my lips shall proclaim your praise. Amen
In the Gospel we heard this morning we heard what some scripture scholars call a Markan sandwich, a story within a story. Today’s passage takes place almost directly after the story we heard last week; the story of Jesus asleep in the boat, when he was woken-up and he calmed the storm. Our Lectionary, this morning, skipped over what Jesus had done next, healing the demoniac in the country of the Gerasenes.
This story takes place upon Jesus’ return from the other side of the sea. Jairus, one of the leaders of the synagogue busted through the crowd begging him to come to his house and lay hands on his very sick little girl, so that she may be made well. Of course, Jesus agreed to come. On the way to Jairus’ house a woman reached through the crowd, touched Jesus and she was healed by merely touching his garment. On meeting the woman, Jesus lovingly said to her “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.” As this was happening, people from Jairus’ house broke-up this moment to report the death of the little girl. Jesus, seeing the look on the grief-stricken father’s face tells him to have no fear but believe. Jesus immediately continued his journey to Jairus’ house. When they arrive, he entered the house with Jairus, the little girl’s mother, Peter, James, and John. Jesus took the little girl’s hand and told the little girl in Aramaic, “Talitha cum,” which means “little girl, get up!”
In my preparation for this sermon, I read a commentary by N.T. Wright who is a leading biblical scholar in England. In his commentary, Wright brings up an intriguing question. He asks, why would Mark, who is writing his gospel in Greek addressing a Greek speaking audience keep these Aramaic words of Jesus? – words that required translating. In other words, why not skip the Aramaic altogether.
N.T. Wright provides an answer to his question. He says, we will never know for sure, but perhaps these ordinary spoken words made such a deep impression on Peter and the rest of the apostles that when even they retold the story afterwards, they used these crucial words in Aramaic (words of the ordinary people). Wright suggests that by using these Aramaic words, Mark is demonstrating that the life-giving power of God is breaking into the world and working through the ordinary experiences of humanity.
It makes me wonder that perhaps these ordinary Aramaic words were left in by Mark because he wanted to show us, his readers, how God loves us. Mark wants to show that God has come into the world to love us on our ordinary human level.
Perhaps Mark is demonstrating that God’s love for us is like the love of an ordinary doting father for his little girl, who is the joy of his life, his little princess. Perhaps Mark has left in the ordinary Aramaic to demonstrate we are God’s little princesses, his joy, his special little child, the Apple of his eye. Perhaps Mark is telling his readers that God wants to have a loving, life-giving relationship with each of us like a doting father would have for his little girl. Like Jairus’ little girl who Jesus woke-up with all tenderness. “Little girl, get up!” A love with no questions asked. No questions about one’s ethnicity (we are one race – the human race), one’s gender, one’s sexual orientation nor one’s gender identity. Just the love of a Daddy.
Today, Across the Diocese of Texas we are celebrating the feast of Pauli Murry, the first African American woman ordained to priesthood in The Episcopal Church. According to a biography provided by the diocese:
• Anna Pauline Murray was baptized in 1911, a seventh-generation Episcopalian. She was orphaned at an early age when her father was beaten to death by a white man following the prior loss of her mother.
• Murray’s career was imbued with Christian principles, particularly a thirst for social justice. But it wasn’t an easy road. Prejudice dogged her for most her life. The University of North Carolina rejected her because of race. After graduating from Howard University, Harvard Law rejected her because of gender.
• This experience led her to recognize the connections between racism and sexism before many others did, a condition she called “Jane Crow.” She later became the first African American to earn a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School. As a lawyer, Murray argued for civil rights and women's rights.
• Thurgood Marshall called her 1950 book, States' Laws on Race and Color, the "bible" of the civil rights movement. It was the foundation of his arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. the Board of Education, which declared segregated schools unconstitutional.
• In 1971, Ruth Bader Ginsburg named Murray as a coauthor of a brief in Reed v. Reed, a groundbreaking case on gender discrimination.
• As an activist Pauli Murray attempted to desegregate buses and helped organize sit-ins a decade before the civil rights movement. She later served on President Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women. She co-founded the National Organization for Women in 1966.
• Even as she advocated for women, Murray struggled to understand her own sexual and gender identity, sometimes describing herself as having an "inverted sex instinct." She was briefly married to a man and had several deep relationships with women. In the 1950’s, she met Renee Barlow, who became her long-term partner. Although Murray publicly identified as female, she sometimes considered herself a male.
• Renee Barlow died in 1973, with Murray at her bedside, reading the 23rd Psalm. Murray planned the memorial service. The priest praised its beauty and asked her if she had ever thought about being ordained.
• Murray soon left academia and entered General Theological Seminary and earned a Master of Divinity. Again, it was not an easy path. The Episcopal Church did not yet ordain women; and she was not well received by many seminarians. Nevertheless, she persisted. On January 8, 1977, at age 65, Murray was ordained at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
• Cancer cut short her ministry of healing, and Pauli Murray died at home on July 1, 1985. The General Convention added her to the church’s calendar in 2012.
I believe a person like Pauli Murray could only draw her strength, her tenacity, her endurance, her courage, and her ministry of healing from her faith and her loving, life-giving relationship with God. I believe Pauli Murray is a great example of someone who like Jairus’s little girl, was at some point in her young life woken up by Jesus’ loving embrace and continued to draw on that special Daddy’s love her whole life. A love with no questions asked. No questions about one’s ethnicity one’s gender, one’s sexual orientation nor one’s gender identity. Just the love of a Daddy.
My prayer for us all this morning is that we all, (online and here in this church) like Jairus’ little girl, and like Pauli Murray take Jesus’ offer to wake-up in God’s daddy’s kind of complete and abiding love that God has for us all. Amen.