June 29, 2006
Arise
Pentecost 4/8B [Mk 5.22-24,35b-43]
“Do not fear, only believe.”
Jesus said this to Jairus, the synagogue leader, whose daughter lay dying. Interesting that Jairus was already doing both. His fear drove him to Jesus, and ironically, his belief drove him to Jesus. The crowd jeered. It is the way with crowds. But at Jesus’ touch and command, the child arose and walked, anyway. We need now to hear Jesus’s words. We need Jesus.
“Do not fear, only believe.”
We act, instead, as if our fear transcends our belief. For indeed, it does. Rather than turn to how belief can quench our fear, rather than turn to the faith and love and justice that our belief entails, we churchers turn again to the law, to our legislative bodies to pass resolutions, as if somehow, that will still our fear, when all it does is seem momentarily to protect us from our fear.
We remain afraid. It is the most pernicious kind of fear when we are afraid of what we do not know but think we know. We are afraid when authority goes into the hands of women or of gays and lesbians. We are afraid that it will turn into power and manipulation and patronizing as it always has in our hands. Our fear drives us to foolish statements, even childishly adolescent notions about how people should properly show their love. We are afraid that same gender parents will destroy the family. We are afraid to know that child abuse and domestic violence and divorce most often occurs in families with different gender parents.
We are not only afraid of what we do not know but of what we might learn if only we tried. We were and many still are afraid of new translations of the Bible and of our liturgies. We are afraid of illegal immigrants when we live in a land founded by illegal immigrants who rather than ask the native Americans for visas and green cards, stole their land from them, instead.
But enough of our fear. Enough of our preoccupations that turn us away from our true occupation to love, to heal the sick, to feed the poor, to bring justice and peace to all. And to embrace our belief that we take this Anglican Christian heritage and shape it — in the language of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, itself — “adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples of God into the unity of His Church.” Let all respect that fundamental affirmation as the several members of this Communion receive the same. Let Jesus take us by the hand and say, “I say to you, arise.” Then, let us joyfully go out together and, like Jairus’s daughter, get something to eat.