Faith as Desperation: Gospel for Pentecost 6B Mark 5:21-43
What is faith? What does it mean to have faith? Do I have faith? Do you have faith?
Teresa Morgan, an Oxford professor who is now a Yale Divinity School professor, and who was one of our fabulous guest scholars for Northern Illinois Online Bible Study (NIOBS) wrote a 626 page book to help answer the question. It’s called Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches. And she was so intrigued she went on to write several others to keep exploring.
Pistis, by the way is a transliteration of the Greek word, and Fides the Latin, for the biblical word that can be variously translated as faith, belief, trust, or fidelity.
Morgan concludes that the New Testament, most regularly means “trust” or a mutual faithfulness when it uses forms of this word. The word infrequently means belief that some proposition is true. But it much more often means I am willing to bet my life on a mutually trustworthy relationship with God or Christ.
But I think we must understand that biblical faith is never the product of disinterested deliberation.
In Mark 5:21-43 we have two miracles. Mark is frontloading his Gospel story of Jesus to make the point that Jesus has power to overthrow Satan and all the forces of sin and death—both the forces of nature (he stills a storm), and the very much connected supernatural forces (he casts out unclean spirits and demons). And in these stories of a 12 year old girl and a woman with a 12 year old, unstoppable hemorrhage, certainly demonstrate his power. Jesus is the One!
But now lets look at how faith shows itself in these episodes. Jesus tells the woman with the flow of blood, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” But what is this faith?
It is sheer desperation. In the case of the young girl, it is her father who shows the faith. He is a respected pillar of the community—a leader of the synagogue. But he makes a spectacle of himself by falling at the feet of Jesus, begging “repeatedly” for healing for his “little daughter who is at the precipice—is at the very point of death.” Is this not the picture of a desperate man? A man who has nowhere else to turn?
The woman with the flow of blood shows her desperation in two ways. We know she must see herself as an outcast. Leviticus 15 had said that bodily flows of semen, or puss, or blood rendered people unclean and unfit for participating in holy rituals or entering holy places. They had to wash. But people often take molehills out of the Bible and make mountains. They invent reasons to avoid and exclude. So an uncontrollable, 12 year flow of blood certainly made this woman feel unwelcome in polite society. She had tried doctors, but professional medicine often has a habit of exploiting the poor, and she only got worse. So for her, Jesus was the last hope, She sneaked up on him. She felt she didn’t deserve to see him face to face, or exchange words or a touch of his hands. But just the edge of his cloak!
The second sign of her desperation was when Jesus turned and asked, “Who touched my garment? Who drew power from me?” The woman, who felt that power enter her, “came in fear and trembling.” She, like the leader of the synagogue, threw herself at Jesus’ feet.
This outcast now was on the same level as Jairus, the pillar of the community.
This unblessed woman and this blessed man were one in faith—a faith that is sheer desperation.
Do I have faith? Do you have faith? Is faith compatible with unbelief, with doubt, with a pessimistic personality, with anxiety or depression, with being at the end of your rope? Yes, faith coexists with all of these things.
“I believe, help my unbelief,” says the man with the epileptic son on the slopes of the Mount of Transfiguration (Mark 9:24).
When most of his followers were turning away from him because his teachings were so challenging, Jesus turned to the disciples and asked if they too would turn and run. Peter answered desperately, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life (John 6:68).”
Thomas was doubting enough to demand to see the nail holes in the resurrected Christ, but he still had faith. Jesus didn’t mean, don’t have doubts, but believe. He meant, “Don’t be faithless but faithful,” or “don’t give in to distrust—but trust in spite of your doubts (John 20:27).”
Here is where those of heroic faith and those weak faith meet. Here is where blazing confidence and nagging doubt cross paths. Here is where lay and clergy, saint and sinner are on equal footing. When Jesus is their only hope—their last chance. This is the kind of faith that makes us one and makes us whole.