A Message from Pastor Kaji
Dear Church:
I’m thrilled about our upcoming Consecration Sunday, when we offer our blessing to the incredible people who have been appointed or elected to share their leadership gifts this year! All of the ministries have already had at least one meeting, and in each one, I have marveled at the constellation of talents people are ready to share. You all inspire me daily.
When preparing for this coming Sunday, the latest round of horrifying news in my head, I was inspired by a poem my dad sent us. My poet father sends us poetry many days. I don’t think he knows the phrase “content warning” because he didn’t give it. For you: I will. Warsan Shire’s “Home” is arresting in its crisp imagery, offering a perspective some of us know and some of us can only imagine. As I hear it, I think of my own ancestors and the conditions that led to the Great Migration, though that’s not Shire’s specific context.
Juxtaposed with our text from Matthew this Sunday, both offer a word: longing. For the home you cannot have, for the safety unavailable, the healing unreachable. Until Jesus shows up.
I encourage you to read the Shire’s poem, and then read the Gospel text from that perspective of longing. What do you notice? How does it resonate?
Please join me in prayer for our beloved Hillary Buckland, who travels with her family to Canada this week to have time with her sister, Olga Mae. Olga Mae is receiving life-sustaining treatment in hospital. We pray for traveling mercies and safe passage, entrusting their care – every bit of it – to God.
I’ll see you in church Sunday!
Pax Christi,
Pastor Kaji
VERY Bible Nerdy Study Guide for Sunday
Forgive me for the length here. There are just soooo many things happening in our incredibly layered text that I’m noticing but can’t take full time for in just one sermon. So bear with me. Ready?
Chapters 8 & 9 of Matthew’s Gospel stack healing stories, illustrating Jesus’ authority over some of life’s most troubling concerns. This passage sits right in the middle of this narrative arc. The leader’s daughter and the hemorrhaging woman are interwoven, inviting us to read them together.
Notice:
They’re both called “daughter,” linking them across age and status. The #12 quietly connects them symbolically with the woman’s 12 year illness. Also, the girl unnamed in Matthew is traditionally understood as 12 years old in the parallel accounts of Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5:21-43 and Luke 8:40–56.
A bleeding woman would have been deemed ritually impure under Levitical law, making her socially and religiously excluded. Still, Jesus responds.
The “fringe” of Jesus’ garment refers to the tassels or tzitzit commanded in Numbers 15:37–41. It’s worth quoting for you (from the NRSV):
Numbers 15:
37 The LORD said to Moses: 38 Speak to the Israelites, and tell them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a blue cord on the fringe at each corner. 39 You have the fringe so that, when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of the LORD and do them, and not follow the lust of your own heart and your own eyes. 40 So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and you shall be holy to your God. 41 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the LORD your God.
We see these tassels in various garments in Jewish tradition, even today. Jesus wore them, too! (When’s the last time you saw them in popular depictions of Jesus?) Tzitzit are meant to remind the wearer to keep the commandments. So think about what it means for her to touch that!
It’s no accident that the assignation “I am the LORD your God” shows up so many times. We first hear it as Decalogue’s (Ten Commandments) preamble: I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt. And it repeats about 50 times in the Torah. Why? Because keeping the commandments is how the people were meant to be in relationship with God. They’re relational pathways, if you will. With that in mind, come back to the Gospel. Just think about what it means for this ritually impure woman to touch whomst we know to be God. Did the woman, I wonder?
As for the flute players and the crowds, just know that they would’ve been the professional mourners required in 1st c. Jewish tradition. (Even the poorest households were expected to have at least one flute player and a compensated wailing woman.) Here, there’s a crowd of wailers and a band of flutists. It’s clear that Jesus thinks they’re in the wrong place.
When he gets to the girl, he takes her hand. Because she was dead, this, too, would be ritual defilement! Twice in one passage!
Matthew heightens Jesus’ authority by having the girl already dead when her father asks for Jesus’ intervention. This sharpens the idea that Jesus interrupts every boundary, even the firmest one: between death and life.
Questions to consider:
- What differences do you notice between how the leader comes to Jesus and how the woman comes to Jesus? What do those differences add to the story?
- Why do you think Matthew tells these two healing stories together instead of separately? What do they help us see about Jesus when read side by side?
- Where in this passage do you notice interruption or delay — and how do people respond to it?
SCRIPTURE
Matthew 9:18-26 (Year A, p. 124)
18 While Jesus was speaking, suddenly a leader [of the synagogue] came in and prostrated himself, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” 19 And Jesus got up and followed him, along with his disciples. 20 Then suddenly a woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe on his clothing, 21 for she said to herself, “If I could only touch his clothing, I will be healed.” 22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take courage, daughter, your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that hour. 23 Then Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a disturbance. 24 He said, “Leave, for the precious girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. 25 But when the crowd had been put out, he went in and took her by the hand, and the precious girl arose. 26 And the news of this spread throughout that district.