Fifteen minutes! You’ll be happy to know that that is not the length of my sermon! That’s my rough estimate of the time it took for the life of a desperately ill woman to be totally changed through her contact with Jesus. It wasn’t long, as Jesus was being pressed by an important man to come home quickly with him. But fifteen minutes changed forever the life of an insignificant, ordinary woman, whose name we don’t even know.

Let’s try and imagine the scene. Jesus has just returned from the far side of the Sea of Galilee. His reputation as a teacher and healer has become known, so a large and excited crowd is there to greet him. Suddenly the crowd parts to let through Jairus, an important man in the community, a leader of the synagogue. Jairus begs Jesus to come and save his dying daughter. So Jesus sets off, with the crowd still pressing around him.

Then there is an interruption. Jesus stops, turns around and asks “Who touched my clothes?” Understandably, with a crowd pressing around, the disciples are sceptical; how can Jesus have felt someone just touching his clothes? 

But a poor and desperate woman has done just that. For twelve years, she has been bleeding incessantly. She has seen many doctors. Some have poked and prodded. Some have prescribed remedies of various sorts. But nothing has done any good, in fact often matters have been made worse. So for twelve long years she has been unclean according to Jewish law.

It is hard for us to realise what a hard and lonely life she has led for those twelve years. The Jewish law which applied in those days as set out in the Book of Leviticus, was strict. Anyone with any form of discharge was ritually unclean. This applied not only to women but to everyone. For instance, a soldier or huntsman whose wounds wouldn’t heal was also ritually unclean.

That uncleanness affected the whole life of the sufferer. Anyone who touched a pot or dish which he or she had used became unclean. The pot or dish had to be broken up and thrown away. If the sufferer sat on a chair, anyone who then sat on it became unclean. Anyone who touched the body of a sufferer became unclean and had to bathe and wash their clothes and remain unclean for the rest of the day. 

Hardest of all, no unclean person was allowed to go to the synagogue. The whole object of the laws about ritual cleanliness was to keep the clean people of Israel separate from anyone who might defile them. So one way and another sufferers were mostly cut off from their Jewish family and friends. They had to live alone to avoid the risk of making the people whom they most loved unclean. Unclean family members and friends would also be cut off from the synagogue until they had gone through the necessary purification procedures specified in the Law, which not all of them could afford.

Recently we, because of the coronavirus, have had to experience something of what that woman went through. We may have had to self-isolate and to take precautionary measures such as frequent hand washing and social distancing to avoid infecting family members and friends. I know that this has been desperately hard and difficult for some people. But we only had months of it. This poor woman had twelve years of it. Imagine! She couldn’t touch Jesus, nor even ask him to touch her, as he would then become unclean. She hoped and believed that just touching his cloak would be enough to stop the bleeding. So she pushed through the crowd and touched his cloak. Immediately she was healed. And she knew it.

And Jesus knew that something important had happened.  So he stopped,  and asked “Who touched my clothes ?” By then the woman had shrunk back into the crowd.  But Jesus knew, and the woman knew, that Jesus had even unwittingly been a channel of God’s grace and power. Even though she was embarrassed and afraid, she had to come forward and confess the truth. Jesus sent her away with the lovely words “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

Fifteen minutes, hope and faith, and everything in that woman’s life changed. When we are going through a really dark time in our lives, let us remember how that woman of Galilee was healed. How Jesus changed her whole life. Let us also hope and believe in his power, in the mercy and grace of God in the face of all human suffering. Amen.  

 Job 38:1-11  Mark 4:35-41

Today’s reading from Job and today’s Gospel have a common theme, and that theme is questioning – humans questioning God and God questioning humans. 

In our Old Testament reading God asks Job:

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”

In the Gospel, we have a series of questions. During the storm the frightened disciples wake Jesus up and ask him:

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

Jesus stills the storm and then asks them:

“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

And the passage ends with a further question from the disciples:

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Let’s take God’s questions to Job first. 

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

For many years I misread this passage. Job has been questioning God about an issue that concerns and puzzles us all – why do bad things happen to innocent people. God’s questions to Job sounded to me as though God was pulling rank on Job.

I have come to realize that God isn’t pulling rank, but rather offering Job something that Job badly needs – a sense of perspective. When we experience distressing events, hopes disappointed, serious illness or bereavement, we feel that our confidence has been challenged, perhaps even broken. And if we, like Job, are religious believers it is our trust in God that is called into question. 

What Job needs, as Carol Newsom writes in her commentary, is

“…recovery of trust in the fundamental structures of existence”

God’s answer to Job, which extends over several chapters, is all about the glory, goodness and grandeur of creation, but also about the element of the uncertain and the chaotic in creation. The challenge to Job and to us is to hold in a trusting tension the belief that creation is good and our experience that creation is precarious, even dangerous. 

That precariousness, that danger are exactly what the disciples are experiencing in today’s Gospel. They are terrified by the storm which threatens to sink their boat. In their fright, their trust in Jesus is weakened. There’s a very telling detail in the Gospel passage. We read that Jesus was 

“in the stern, asleep on the cushion...”

In those days that was the place in the boat usually occupied by whoever was steering. Some commentators have suggested that Jesus had been given the job of steering and, perfectly trusting in God, had fallen asleep. If that’s the case, the disciples’ question: 

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 

has a deeper significance, for it is a question that Job and many of us have asked in times of trouble and despair:

“Is God asleep on the job?”

Faith would be much easier and simpler if God always responded to our prayers in the way that we wished. For many people, especially for young people, unanswered prayers are the reason why they give up on the idea of God. When someone close to them dies and their prayers for healing have gone unanswered, they conclude either that God is asleep on the job, or that God doesn’t exist at all. 

Job needed to learn that the goodness and the precariousness of creation are not contradictory. Another way of putting that is that he and all of us need to learn that we are unreservedly and fully loved by God but that doesn’t mean that the universe will be run for our comfort and convenience. 

Job acknowledges the narrowness of his own faith when, in chapter 42, he responds to God by saying: 

“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees you” 

The puzzled disciples, though they have been saved from shipwreck don’t yet fully understand who they are seeing when they look at Jesus. Hence their question:

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

The understanding of who Jesus is will only come to them at Easter. Before it comes they will see their teacher submitting to the evil powers who inflict suffering and death on the innocent. Their response to the Passion must have been an anguished questioning as to where God was when those terrible events took place. At Easter they learned to see, to see that God was right at the centre of that suffering, that moral and natural evil do not have the last word. Only then were they able to echo Job’s words:

“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees you” 

That understanding did not free them what the Prayer Book calls “the changes and chances of this fleeting world” and for many of them their sharing of the Gospel led to persecution and martyrdom. We too experience those changes and chances, sustained I hope by the belief that God can bring the whole of creation, including us, to perfection.

When I was teaching three decades ago we always began the new school year by planting spring bulbs; that we would hope would grow in secret over the coming months and bring us great joy in the dark months of the new year. The bulbs of daffodils and hyacinths never failed to delight the children or the staff and they came to represent more than just pretty flowers blooming in the Winter.

For me they became a symbol for the ‘secret growth’ my young changes were undertaking during the academic year. As the bulbs came to maturity so too were my class maturing and coming to flower - by showing the new skills and abilities they had learned and developed. For many this might have been becoming fluent readers, or more self-confident in their skills in PE or Maths or whatever. Their growth was almost unnoticeable until you stopped to look for it and to think back to what the children were like at the beginning of the Autumn term.

Today’s first and third readings have much to say about secret growth as does the second but in a more human way than the botanical analogies used in the other readings. In the botanical analogies growth comes from seeds and cuttings, pruning and tending the soil. In the second reading growth is explained by the ways in which our faith can grow as our life experiences develop and our self-confidence blossoms. In all the readings the hope is expressed that we will all see new growth in ourselves and each other in ways that will deepen our faith and lead us to know God more fully.

Most of us, no doubt, will at sometime rejoiced in the growth seen in loved ones, pupils, friends and ourselves. That sort of growth is always worth celebrating. Our parents, probably rejoiced in us as we passed certain milestones or achieved various things, or explored new vistas. I think today’s readings fit with the secular theme of today - Father’s Day,

as many fathers are good at praising their offspring and celebrating the new growth they see. Growth that has been going on in secret until its bursts forth as new skills. Not all fathers, however, or all mothers are good at noticing new growth and celebrating it in their children. This is sad, for both parent and child lose out on something that could be life- affirming.

Earthly fathers do not always get it right but we can be assured that our heavenly Father does get it right with us because as St.Paul writes: “...we ourselves are well known to God ...”  2Corinthians 5:11b

God rejoices in every bit of our secret growth, development and acquisition of skills. He rejoices in the things we get and do right and despairs when we get things wrong - but hoping that we will get them right in the future.

Our heavenly Father is always loving, attentive and forgiving beyond measure but he is also a parent who gives us the space to grow and learn new things each day. He gently guides us

and never fails to support us, even when we are unaware of it and that’s something we should give thanks for.

“... the Lord, he gave them the Garden of Eden, and everything that was needed to feed on, except for the tree of the knowledge of life, but he hadn’t reckoned on Adam’s wife!”

Those are words from a song I sang in primary School about 50 years ago! It goes on the tell the story of Adam and Eve’s temptation and the gaining of knowledge they didn’t need to have which led to God’s displeasure and despair of his human creation.

Adam and Eve were very content in the Garden of Eden, until they ate of the tree of the knowledge of life. God had warned them not to do so because he knew that thy would not be able to cope with knowing how the universe functions and how creation happens. The created can never fully know all that the Creator knows as it would be mind blowing and more importantly it would put the creation on a par with the Creator. Although we are made in God’s image, in the image of our Creator it does not mean that we are the Creator or that we are divine.

Once Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree they became plagued by a knowledge of good and evil, guilt and shame and obvious self-loathing, all of which God had sought to protect them from. This knowledge is now part of our human condition. We know both good and bad, joy and pain, beauty and ugliness and we don’t always cope very well with that knowledge as we live our lives.

This morning’s piece from the Book of Genesis implies that we could have lived our lives blissfully unaware of anything nasty or unpleasant, difficult or evil but that the first humans, chose through temptation, to eat the fruit we were not supposed to eat. Adam and Eve freely chose to eat that fruit, even if they were tempted.

We the descendants of Adam and Eve now have to live with the consequences of their free will actions. That is the price of us humans having free will.

Whether or not Adam and Eve actually existed is down to how you choose to interpret Scripture. I see the Creation stories or myths as wonderful allegories that seek to explain how we have come to be as we are, in ways that our brains can comprehend.

I also puzzle and ponder over whether or not I am grateful that Adam and Eve ate that fruit. Would I choose to live a life free from the knowledge of bad things? It is a tempting proposition but actually, I think, I prefer to know the difference between good and evil and to have the free will to choose between the two, rather than to live some sort of hermetically sealed ‘safe’ existence. Even if having that free will means that bad things as well as good things will not pass me by.

What about you?
What would you prefer?

The life we have and the life we live is far from perfect but what we can and do learn from each other join both the good and bad times is, I think, invaluable. In valuable as all knowledge increases our capacity to learn and understand and therefore, ironically, to enable us to cope better with the knowledge gained from the ‘Tree of Life’.

The human capacity for knowledges increases day by day and in person upon person. I wonder what Sir Issac Newton the 18th century physicist would make of the late Professor Peter Higgs or Professor Brian Cox and their phenomenal brains? Much of what they have discovered is built upon Newton’s theories though. Knowledge leads us to knowledge and what each of us discovers over our life times is actually quite phenomenal.

There is, however, a responsibility that goes with this knowledge, a responsibility that Adam and Eve discovered as well. If you have knowledge you have to learn how to use it properly and responsibly. You have to be mature enough to know what the right thing is

to do with your knowledge. For example in the mid-twentieth century we discovered how to split the atom, rather than using that knowledge to good ends alone, our human immaturity led us to create the atom-bomb.

We humans have the opportunity to understand the wisdom of the universe, but unlike the Divine Creator, we can never fully comprehend that wisdom or our human brains could not cope with it all. We can never be the Creator. This is, I think, a good thing for just like Adam and Eve, too much knowledge too soon is painful and can lead us to do things we would be better off not doing.

As human beings we need to remember that there is always going to be a consequence for every gain in knowledge we make and like Adam and Eve, sometimes those consequences might be more that we are actually willing to pay!

“Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. For six days you shall labour and do all your work.” Deuteronomy 5:12-13

Although keeping the Sabbath is not in the top three commandments, it is closer to the number one spot that say number 10. So, like all the commandments in their due it is important in our faith and religious practice. Why though, is it one of the Ten Commandments and does it have much relevance to life today?

Personally, I believe that we should pay great attention to this commandment (and all the commandments in fact) if for no other reason for our own individual health and well-being and for the good of our community and society as well. All of us need at least a day ‘off’ each week, even if we are supposedly retired, for all of us tend to live busy lives and a day doing

something different is important, as it enables us to re-charge our batteries and gain new energy to give to the things we do on other days. Even God had a day off:

“Thus the heavens and the Earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day god finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work he had done in Creation.” Genesis 2:1-3

The opening chapters of our Scriptures tell us that God worked on Creation for six days and then rested on the seventh. No matter how you interpret these chapters, they tell us that after a period of intense activity God rested. God has set US a template by which to live our lives. We are to work, to be creative and active but we are also to rest. Taking a rest, however, is something many in the 21st century need to be reminded of and that many employers need to be instructed to ensure.

None of us can work seven days a week, week in and week out without damaging our health, well-being, bodies, mind and souls. If you work all the time or are forced to work all the time, then you have no time to spare for yourself, let alone God or anyone else. So if God rested on the seventh day, then so should we. If we fail to get everything done, then we need to examine our own time management or our employers need to be brought up sharp regarding their exceptions and working practices. this is not to encourage underperformance but to ensure that we give of our best without destroying ourselves. Everyone needs time off to ‘just be’ to recharge, in order to be productive and creative in the longer term.

I know what I am like. I tend to drive myself to get ‘everything done NOW’! When sometimes I do not need to do so and actually if I can step away for a time, I can usually get things done in half the time once I am refreshed. I also know that I am quick to ensure others take time off or are encouraged to do so but slow to do the same myself! I have to constantly remind myself that taking a rest does not mean that I am giving up, far from it.

When God rested he was not absent from the Creation he was just sitting back and watching it happen. He was not removed from it in doing just that he was in fact allowing it to develop in its own way without his contain tinkering with it. God is not removed or absent from Creation today, he is still intiamertky involved with it as we are, co-creating creation day after day after day.

Creation as we perceive it is not an act set in stone but an ever evolving process, in which God is involved intimately with and at the same time distant from it observing its development. God is both immanent and transcendent. In our lives we need to try and take a leaf out of God’s book, to ape God’s way of working; to be able to be involved and observing at different times. We need to be able to stand back and watch as well as being up to our elbows in everything. In that way we can make change and difference more easily.

God models for us a way of working that we need to copy. Like God we need a regular break from our work or routine life. we need to take time off and to enjoy it. To do something different and to appreciate the difference it can make in our lives. at least one of the days each week needs to be a ‘day off’. I know how grumpy and tired and narrow visioned I can become when I don’t get time off in a week. And, don’t think because you may be retired that you don’t need a day off each week either. For retirement can be just as busy as a working week, except you don’t get paid for it!

On of the important things about keeping the Sabbath is that it can offer us opportunities to spend quality time with God. I don’t necessarily think that a Sabbath rest has to be on a Sunday, it isn’t for me; but as the German Theologian Jürgen Moltmann suggested it needs to be a 24 hour period in the week. A full day off in which to relax and do something different or not much at all. As people of faith if we take a sabbath for no other reason we shoal take it to give quality time to God.

Modern life, despite all its gadgets and labour saving devices is busy and fast and all too often 24/7! Emails, texts, social media notifications, calls and meetings all demand our instant attention and response and after a wheel we can easily be left drained, with nothing left to give to anyone. We clergy are just s bad as everyone else at taking time off and we need to change our ways and to lead by example - and I’m talking to myself here as well.

Make one day a week your Sabbath. Try and do something different and learn from God who all those aeons ago set us a template to follow. Never feel guilty about taking time off either, for if it was good enough for God then it is certainly more than good for us!