Wednesday 1 July 2015

Sermon, Sunday 28 June: 'A new name: beloved of God'

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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