Text: Matthew 9:18-26
The Christian life is both one of assurance and repentance. Throughout the Scriptures and our liturgy, we are assured of God’s love and mercy towards us. In the Sacraments, we have “effective signs and seals” of God’s grace and promises towards us. But we are also always reminded that we have a duty to repent of our sins. We are constantly called to turn away from our corrupt affections and deeds, and to rather turn towards God. Indeed, both repentance and assurance are needed if we are going to grow in holiness and in love for the Lord. We need both assurance and repentance to get better.
As the main season of repentance, I’ve heard Lent referred to as an ancient and annual revival. But we do have other seasons for repentance in our Church Calendar. Advent is just a few weeks away and has sometimes been called a miniature Lent, especially in the early days. Traditionally, most every Friday has a penitential character, marked with fasting and praying the Litany. And then we have our four sets of Ember Days: the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at the change of each of the seasons. The Spring Ember Days fall after the 1st Sunday in Lent, the Summer Ember Days are the week after Pentecost, the Autumn Ember Days follow September 14 (traditionally known as Holy Cross Day), and the Winter Ember Days follow December 13 (traditionally, St. Lucy’s Day, always the third week of Advent). So, you can remember the Ember Days with the mnemonic “Lenty, Penty, Crucy, Lucy.” In addition to fasting and repentance, we would traditionally pray for ordinands and God’s blessings for the upcoming season during the Ember Days.
Today’s Collect was originally composed to be used on the Sunday prior to the Autumn Ember Days. This is why it has such a penitential character:
O Lord, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offences; that through thy bountiful goodness we may all be delivered from the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.
As we close out the liturgical year, it’s also appropriate to take stock of our lives and ask for forgiveness where necessary. We want to start our liturgical year with a clean slate before God. We do indeed want to be loosed from the sins that bind us and be free before the Lord.
Interestingly, though, neither our Epistle nor our Gospel readings have much to say about sin and repentance. Rather, our Epistle focuses on the assurance side of the coin as St. Paul prays for the church in Colossae. And our Gospel focuses on two miraculous healings. Yet in the Gospels there is always a tie between physical healing and spiritual healing. And whenever there is spiritual healing, we should think of being healed from our sins.
Fr. Steven Gauthier, in his class on the Person of Christ for St. Paul’s House of Formation, uses the analogy of sin being the disease, and sickness or death being the symptom. That is, while there is not necessarily a direct correlation between a particular sin and a particular sickness, the reason we have sickness and death in this world is because sin infected humanity.
The events of our Gospel passage are just two among many that are presented back-to-back in the immediate surrounding passages. In our chapter alone we have three other healings, the calling of Matthew from the tax collector’s booth, the parable about the plentiful harvest, and answering a question from the disciples of John the Baptist. The first of those healings (verses 1-8) is the healing of the paralytic (our Gospel lesson five weeks ago), where Jesus explicitly ties his authority to forgive sins to his power to heal disease. In the next passage, Matthew the Tax Collector repents of his dishonesty and greed as he follows Jesus. When challenged on his popularity with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus famously replies “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” Again, we see a connection being made between sin and sickness. Then, immediately before today’s Gospel, John’s disciples challenge Jesus on why his disciples are not fasting, contra the disciples of John the Baptist and the disciples of the Pharisees. Jesus answers that it is inappropriate for wedding guests to mourn while the bridegroom is with them, but there will come a time when it will be appropriate to fast. He then uses the example of new wine being put into new wineskins rather than bursting old wineskins to illustrate that the coming of the Messiah changes everything. The old way was passing away because the one it was heralding had come. Indeed, both the healings and absolutions we have seen in the chapter illustrate that change from old to new.
This then brings us to our Gospel passage. Matthew 9:18:
While Jesus spake these things unto John’s disciples, behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped him, saying. My daughter is even now dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live. And Jesus arose and followed him, and so did his disciples.
From the parallel gospels in Mark and Luke, we know that the name of the “certain ruler” was Jairus, that his daughter was twelve years old, and that he was the president of the local synagogue. That is, he was a very important person to the local community. Yet he comes to Jesus with an act of extreme humility, bowing down to him in obeisance. By what he says to Jesus, he demonstrates his trust, his faith, in our Lord. He trusts Jesus to have authority and power even over death. And our Lord responds positively to his faith by following him to his daughter.
But theologically we know that such faith didn’t arise in a vacuum. Indeed, based on the grammar of Ephesians 2:2, numerous Church Fathers including St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine all agree that faith is itself a gift from God. That is, Jairus could not trust Jesus without the Lord already working on his heart so that he could trust Jesus. The Lord had already begun to heal Jairus spiritually before Jairus came to ask physical healing for his daughter.
Verse 20:
And behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.
So, while Jesus and the disciples were following Jairus to raise his daughter, we have something of a detour miracle. Note that this woman had been hemorrhaging for twelve years, the very age of Jairus’ daughter. The woman would have been weak and anemic for the entire life of Jairus’ daughter. According to the parallel texts in Matthew and Luke, she’d spent all her money on doctors. Even in the ancient world medical bills could easily pile up.
Also, per the Law of Moses, her issue of blood would have made her ritually impure, ceremonially unclean. This meant that she could not go to the Temple, she could not worship with her people, and anyone she encountered would risk becoming ritually unclean also. While ritual impurity is not necessarily sinful, the clean/unclean distinction in the Ceremonial Law shines a spotlight on the effects of sin, as it largely has to do with blood and sickness, and other effects of the Fall. Again, this impurity would have been the woman’s state for the entire life of Jairus’ daughter.
Because of this state, the woman is seeking her healing in stealth. She wants to secretly touch the fringe of Jesus’ garment so that she would be healed. The hem or fringe is likely a reference to the tassels with a cord of blue that were commanded to be worn on the corners of the Israelites’ garments in Numbers and Deuteronomy. These were to be a reminder of God’s Law and the call to holiness. That is, they were constant reminders of need for repentance. To this day, devout Jewish men include these tassels on their prayer shawls and undershirts.
Jesus, of course, knows what the woman has done. The parallel texts say he observed “power” or “virtue” going out of him to heal her. And he brings her out into the open. He doesn’t let this miracle remain a secret. Chrysostom says that he does this so that the woman would no longer live and act in fear. Indeed, he commends her faith, her trust. Even though she was acting in secret, acting out of fear, she still demonstrated trust in the Lord. He both honored her for that faith, and set that faith up as an example for others.
Furthermore, rather than her ritual impurity transmitting uncleanness to Jesus, Jesus’ touch heals the source of her impurity. He makes her clean and whole. Late 19th century Archdeacon Melville Scott, in his commentary on this week’s propers, says that this miracle points to Jesus healing the disease of sin. Like a disease, sin is infectious and debilitating. Sin makes us less than we were meant to be. Indeed, it’s often shameful and makes us want to hide, like this woman. How many folks think that they need to fix their lives before they come to the Lord? How many folks are afraid to come to church because their life is a mess? How many folks think that the Lord will turn them away because they don’t have it together? But Jesus is the great physician. He is the great healer. When your sins have made you sick and tired and ashamed, come to him anyway so that he can heal you and lift up your head. “Come unto me all who travail and are heavy lands and I will refresh you.” “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.”
Now, in the oldest versions of the Lectionary, the Gospel lesson ends here. We don’t even get to the raising of Jairus’ daughter! In his commentary, Scott says that this was to highlight the spiritual healing illustrated by the woman’s physical healing. But I, for one, and glad later revisions finished the story. I’d hate to leave poor Jairus on a cliffhanger. Verse 23:
And when Jesus came into the ruler’s house, and saw the minstrels and the people making a noise, He said unto them, Give place: for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But when the people were put forth, he went in, and took her by the hand, and the maid arose. And the fame hereof went abroad unto all that land.
By the time Jesus gets to Jairus’ house, it is filled with the professional mourners. So, Jesus dismisses them saying that the girl is only sleeping. Though “sleep” is not an uncommon biblical euphemism for death, the crowd knows that Jesus isn’t speaking euphemistically. That’s why they make fun of him. Yet, even when used euphemistically, “sleeping” is a good way of describing those who die in the Lord. After all, they will rise again to a new life in a glorified body, just as Jesus did. Indeed, even the wicked will rise again, though they will rise for judgement rather than reward. But for the believer, for the Christian, death is just a nap because we have the promise of resurrection.
Yet even in the promise of resurrection, we have an implication that death is something that must be overcome. It is an intruder because it is the consequence of sin. It is something we must be saved from. And the dead cannot raise themselves. This is why the Bible says that we were dead in our sins. We can not get better on our own, any more than a dead man can suddenly get better.
Earlier I mentioned that faith itself is a gift from God, and thus when Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman come to Jesus in faith, God had already been working on them. But from a human perspective, we could certainly see them reaching out to Jesus; they seem to be the ones making first contact. Not so with Jairus’ daughter. She’s dead. She can’t do a thing. She can’t express faith, or show faith, or have faith in any way. She’s dead. But Jesus is greater than death. Jesus raises the dead. Indeed, Jairus’ daughter isn’t the only person in the gospels to be raised! A few months ago our Gospel was the raising of the widow’s son. And we all know the story of Lazarus’ raising!
When we are in our sins, we are like those dead folk who cannot do anything for themselves. We need Jesus to raise us from spiritual death, and we can’t do anything without him. This is why the symbolism of baptism is also to die to our sins so that we may raise to new life with Christ. At the beginning of Trinitytide this was the point our Epistle readings from Romans. The call to be a Christian is the call to come and die. But we die to self and sin so that we can rise again. And when we do, death has no more authority or dominion over us because Jesus has conquered death by his own death and resurrection. That is of course, the dramatic irony of Scripture. Just as the Israelites could only be healed from the plague of snakes by looking to the bronze serpent, the only way we could be healed from death is by the death of the Lord Jesus. The very disease becomes the means of healing.
In today’s propers we’ve had three metaphors for sin: the collect speaks of our sins as “bands,” as manacles or chains that bind us as prisoners. The Gospel speaks of sin as a disease and as death. And in all three we have the solution: when God forgives and absolves us of our sins, we are set free. When Jesus heals us of our sins, we are made whole. And when he raises us from the dead, we have new life in him. So what are the sins that keep ensnaring you, infecting you, or even killing you? Bring them before the Lord. Come to him in repentance. And then be assured that Jesus is our healer, our liberator, the resurrection, and the life, who delights in showing mercy to God’s children.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
