July 2, 2000

Pastor David G. Mullen

Mark 5:21-43

Those two interwoven healing stories make it worth telling my favorite Carl Jung illustration again. But first, who was he? He was a famous and very wise psychotherapist. Once a disciple of Freud, he wearied of Freud’s narrow focus on dreams and psychological problems as largely repression, and instead began to study dreams and modern problems from the broader perspective of spiritual experience and the religious impulse in humanity. All over the world Jung saw the power of the deep things of what he called "the collective Unconscious".

Well, now to the illustration. If, one of his regular clients came bouncing in to his study, elated and because he just knew that his problems were over and everything was great, that (for example) his depression was gone, his anger cooled; and that he and his wife no longer had any relationship difficulties, that he’d just gotten a promotion, that his children were at the top of their classes, and that he’d just made a brilliant and lucrative investment in the stock market, Dr Jung would say, "Oh, that’s too bad. But don’t worry, if you just keep coming here and continue to work with your dreams (Carl believed that dreams were God’s way of showing what we needed to be doing in life), I think we may be able to get you through this dangerous time."

What do you think of that? But wait, we’re not through with this illustration. If, one of his regular clients came crawling in to his study, beaten down and depressed, whining about how terrible things were, how, for example, his neurosis was getting worse, and he and wife simply weren’t not getting along; and as a result of his problems, he’d lost his job, and his children were run amuck, and he’d lost his shirt in the stock market to boot, Dr. Jung would jump up and run over to the cabinet on the rear wall of his study, find a bottle of an expensive wine, get the corkscrew and two glasses, and say, "Wonderful! Wonderful! Let’s celebrate! Now God has a chance with you!"

And what do you think of that? Here’s what I think. I think that even devout, longtime Christians, caught up in a season of problems, will not see any blessing in their trouble. No, there will whining and protest and anger and even temptation to walk away from Christianity. For we never want to believe that when things go against our will, we are in a good, creative place. When life crushes our grandiose egos, fails to live up to our expectations, it is very hard for us to see that God may be getting us ready for something wonderful. No, we want life our way, on our terms, now and forever, amen.

Do you doubt this? Come, let’s be realistic here folks, and not live in some kind of pious bubble of religious hypocrisy. Ironically, Luther, the man who promoted faith in God more than anyone since St. Paul, sometimes suffered terrible periods of despair and melancholy. On one occasion he spent three days in a black depression over yet another thing that had gone wrong in the struggles of the Reformation. On the third day this misery his wife Katy came downstairs dressed in black mourning clothes. "Who's dead?" he asked her. "God," she replied. Luther rebuked her, saying, "What do you mean, God is dead? God cannot die." "Well," she replied, "the way you've been acting I was sure He had!"

And how have you been acting lately? And the crowds followed Jesus, hoping for a baptism of their sin, shall we say; hoping that God was going to do something to and for them so that they could keep their lives the way they were, only it would all work better, in their favor, instead of in favor of the rich and the powerful. (Do you know, by the way, that after a political revolution, it is usually the case that the former underdogs step right in and become just as bad, if not worse, than the former rulers? The game stays the same, the players just trade roles. Nothing changes.)

In the gospel story today, there is no miracle for the crowd. I hope you noticed that. The poor woman was healed and only she and Jesus knew it. And worse, as Jesus prepares to heal Jairus’ daughter, not only is the crowd not healed, he actually has to kick some of them out of the house, because they laughed at him when he reassured Jairus that his daughter was not dead, but only sleeping. See, in crowd think, everything always stays the same. True, there’s excitement from time to time, like Jesus and his magical powers and dramatic preaching, but really, nothing is ever different. "Everyone knows that." That’s crowd think: laugh at the promise of a radically new life. Or not even be aware that there is a promise of new life.

I wonder how many members of the crowd are sitting in front of me right now. Do you think that our religion primarily offers hope for various improvements of your current life instead of the offer of a totally new kind of life? Or that by coming to church you are somehow, in your sin doing something that will earn you brownie points with God, while not having to change anything? Well, welcome to the crowd. The crowd is always into traditional moralisms and self-help ideals. But it’s never the crowd that gets healed. It’s never the crowd that finds out what the power of God can really do. You got to step out of the crowd to find out about God.

For in the powerful gospel story we heard today, who gets the help? The ones who kneel in desperation at Jesus’ feet. The one’s who have come to the point where they see no one else to turn to. For both the president of the synagogue desperate for the healing of his daughter and for the outcast woman ruined because of her twelve year hemorrhage, Jesus is the last hope. They have exhausted every other option and both are in a place where social position matters nothing. They have hit bottom. They are ready for God, at long last.

You see, that what’s Dr Jung meant when he offered the celebration with the man who crawled into his office, defeated by life, or more exactly, by all his own efforts at improvement, or by his expectations and demands of life. Only when we hit a bottom in our lives are we ready for God, ready for the Lord and Savior to touch us and heal us. And that’s what Katy meant when she put on the mourning clothes in an effort to get her pillar-of-faith husband, Martin Luther, to actually believe in God again!

If life is now difficult for you, do this. Thank God for it, if you can. Or at least, quit whining. And quit trying make little adjustments to your life. The more we try to be in control and fix things ourselves (in a spiritual sense), the more our spirits hemorrhage, leaving us stressed and exhausted, or dead. The point is, we don’t have the answers–or the life! But God does!

Therefore, let today finally be a day for utter honesty–and relief. Today let us crawl out of our crowd-think misery and humbly throw ourselves at Jesus’ feet and beg for healing. Let our taking of Holy Communion be like a desperate reaching out to touch even just the hem of his robe. For you can believe that our Lord notices and acts when we trust God enough to quit worrying about saving face. With great compassion he gazes upon our broken and contrite souls, and says the blessed words, Daughter, your faith has made you well: Get up--and live! Amen.