Mark 5:21-43
For the past ten days, as many of you know, I have been in my hometown of Louisville Kentucky for the 81st General Convention of the Episcopal Church. It was a marathon of worship, parliamentary procedure, networking, reconnecting with old friends and mentors, and learning. I look forward to talking with you more in the coming days about some of the important things that happened there, but I can share the news that we have a new Presiding Bishop-elect, the Very Reverend Sean Rowe. Bishop Rowe was the youngest bishop the Episcopal Church had ever had when he was elected at 32, and will be the youngest presiding bishop in centuries at 49 years old. He was elected by his fellow bishops by a wide margin on the first ballot, just like our outgoing presiding bishop Michael Curry was 9 years ago.
This was Presiding Bishop Curry’s last General Convention, and to mark the end of his term, the Episcopal Church hosted a revival in the YUM Center, a massive basketball stadium and concert venue in the middle of downtown Louisville. Having heard a lot about Bishop Curry’s revivals and wanting to hear him preach in person, I was looking forward to the Revival and registered as soon as I could. Then, two days before the revival, I was asked by our own Canon Mark Furlow if I would serve as stage manager for the event. Canon Furlow was the production manager, which made a lot of sense with his theater background and eye for detail. But I had little to no idea what I was doing, beyond what I know from middle and high school theater class. Thankfully, God equips the called and I did my part. The revival was the end of a packed 14 hour day of preparation for me and many others backstage and onstage, so when the worship began and I was no longer running around and responding to frantic voices in my headset, I got to sit back on a shipping crate and participate from backstage. The music was joyful, the bishop’s sermon was inspiring, and an amazing high schooler gave a testimony that brought me to tears. But the part that was most impactful, what I heard so many people talking about for days afterward, was the anointing.
As Episcopalians, our revivals don’t really include an altar call. Instead, thousands of people in the Kentucky YUM Center were invited to receive anointing and laying on of hands for healing, on our own behalf and on behalf of our troubled world. People formed lines that stretched all the way to the nosebleed seats while the worship leaders sang There is a Balm in Gilead. Dozens of priests, deacons, and laypeople made the sign of the cross on the foreheads of participants and prayed God’s healing love over them. The entire stadium smelled like the gentle fragrance of oil from Thistle Farms, a ministry begun by an Episcopal priest to serve women survivors of sexual abuse and trafficking by giving them stable housing and a supportive work environment while they heal. Their motto is “Love heals,” and that is exactly what happened for so many at last week’s revival.
The practice of anointing is a very old one, it predates Christianity and was apparently already a recognized practice by the time of the first kings of Israel. Anointing has been used to signify appointments to high office, the crowning of monarchs, for healing, and at the time of death. The oil is a tangible and often multisensory symbol of the change taking place, but the hands that apply it are just as important. Moses and Aaron anointed the ark of the covenant. The priest and prophet Samuel anointed the first kings of Israel, inaugurating an entirely new way of life for God’s chosen people. And Mary Magdalene anointed Jesus before he was crucified, and went to his tomb intending to anoint his body for burial. The oil on its own accomplishes nothing, it is just oil in a jar. It is the physical touch, the hands of a faithful person laid on another, the calling upon God together that creates a moment of change.
Jesus reached out and touched people, often people his neighbors didn’t think he should. There are only a few times in scripture where Jesus heals someone without touching them, otherwise he is constantly touching hands and heads and eyes and ears and feet. But in today’s passage, it is not Jesus who reaches out. The unnamed woman reaches out to touch Jesus in the midst of a crowd, just grazing the hem of his cloak. She has suffered for twelve years from a disability that while invisible to others is no less impactful on her life. She has seen doctors and healers, she’s tried every remedy and spent all her money on false hopes and empty promises. But when she reaches out in a final desperate plea for relief, an anointing takes place. Power goes forth from Jesus, unbidden by him, reaching back for the daughter who is already disappearing into the crowd. She is healed instantly, the pain and discomfort she has known for over a decade suddenly absent. They both realize in the same moment that a miracle has taken place. Rather than allow the moment to pass, to let the stranger remain anonymous and unseen, Jesus looks for her. He calls out to the newly healed, and when she presents herself he listens to her story, her whole truth. This is the second miracle, the healing that would not have happened if she had simply slipped away. She needed to be touched, to be relieved of her disease, but she also needed to be heard. And because Jesus is always reaching out, she was.
The tradition of anointing invites the person who comes forward to name what it is that needs healing before receiving the laying on of hands and prayer. This is not so that God knows which part of us hurts, as if the one who stitched us together does not already know what we need before we ask. It is not simply to inform the prayer of the person doing the anointing, like a magic spell that just needs the right words to be effective. The naming is part of the healing. Being heard by another person, being believed when we say we are in pain, is a necessary part of the healing process. It is our participation, our reaching out toward the healer who is always reaching out to us. It is how we continue in the tradition of the woman in the crowd who grasped at God when all else had failed her. When we move toward God in community, when we name what hurts us and ask God to make us whole, we may not always feel that instantaneous change in our bodies, but we will always receive the same response that Jesus gives the woman who touched him: My child, your faith makes you well; go in peace, and be healed.
Mother A Writes 