Finding God in the Margins

The Rev. Robert P. Travis

Pentecost 5th Sunday Sermon – 8am and 10:30am Church of the Ascension, Knoxville TN

RCL Proper 8 Year B 7/1/2012

Scripture Text: 2 Samuel 1:1,17-24, Psalm 130, 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, Mark 5:21-43

Sermon Text:

Do you know why books and other printed materials

have margins?

I had never really thought about it

before I went to the Credo conference this spring,

and a presenter talked about it.

Maybe you thought like I did, that it just was so that you

could have a place to write notes.

But it has more to do with how our eyes need margins,

to make sense of what is on the page.

It gives a sense of peace when the margins are clear,

that allows us to process what we see,

and even to enjoy it.

If you've ever tried to read a document with no margins,

you know how confusing and frustrating it can be.

Our lives are like that as well,

we need margins in our lives in order to make sense of

the activities, in order to process what has happened,

and to enjoy the present moment.

In an earlier sermon I talked about living

in the in-between times,

since those take up most of the time of our lives,

The margins are where we gain the spiritual energy,

and strength to enjoy the ups and downs of all the activity, where we gain the perspective to see what is happening,

and to understand our place in it.

I'm not good at making and protecting good margins

in my life.

When I started high school I was so excited about

all the different clubs they offered,

that I signed up for 9 of them on the club fair day.

When I was in college I struggled to put all of my interests

into my daily schedule.

I figured out a way to do it,

and got kind of burned out.

I figured out how much time it took me to get to each class,

and between all of my other activities, and to eat,

and decided I could fit everything in if I

scheduled every fifteen minute period of my waking day.

I remember calling my parents towards the end of the first semester, in tears, because I couldn't manage it all.

They wisely instructed me that it was a better plan,

to just schedule the hours,

and let the minutes fill themselves in.

That way I would have time in case I had a friend who wanted to talk, or something came up,

or some aspect of my day did not fit into the plan.

I learned from them, but I still struggle to fit

all the important things in life in,

I am tempted to try to make productive use,

of the precious time.

But when I do that something important is missing.

As good as planning is,

when we don't put margins into the plan, I'm learning,

we miss out on some very important parts of life.

Maybe some of you learned that lesson long ago,

and maybe some of you are still learning it as I am.

But you're probably wondering,

What do margins have to do with the scriptures for today?

While our attention is immediately drawn to the powerful

acts of healing that Jesus performed in the gospel,

and certainly those are worthy of consideration,

more striking to me,

was what happens in the margins,

in the situation where Jesus found himself,

and the contrast between Jesus and the others around him.

I know if I had been in Jesus' situation,

and a leader of the church had come to me,

and asked me to come to pray for healing for his daughter,

I would have headed in that direction,

without much concern for what is going on around me.

To make matters worse,

Jesus has a big crowd gathered around him.

If you know anything about how to get through a crowd,

like trying to walk in a big city during rush hour,

you know it requires a great deal of focus,

to find the way through all the people.

There's lots of jostling,

and it can be easy to start to see the people around you

as obstacles rather than as people.

But Jesus doesn't do that,

a woman touches his cloak,

and he has the presence of self,

to notice that something has happened,

that power has gone out from him.

He asks his disciples who touched him,

and they seem incredulous,

“how can you say who touched me,

don't you see all these people bumping into you?”

But Jesus doesn't let their ridicule

take him out of the margin he has created.

He finds the woman,

and takes the time to connect with her

over what just happened,

recognizing that it was very significant for her.

While he is still in that margin,

the people come from the original goal,

from the leader's house,

to give the disappointing news that the girl

is already dead,

they add, “So why bother the teacher any more.”

Jesus takes time to reassure Jairus, her father,

and then he goes from the crowd where he was,

to another crowd, gathered in mourning at Jairus' house.

Notice all the crowds in these two scenes,

and the way there is no space to do his work.

But Jesus makes the space he needs,

in order to attend to the needs of those who really need him.

He sends the mourners outside,

not even bothering to comment on their ridicule,

when they laugh at him.

Then he goes to the girl, with her parents,

and his few disciples, and to their amazement,

tells her to get up, which she does.

Now, if I had been in the parents' position,

I would have been tempted to run out of there

telling everyone what just happened.

But Jesus remains in the margin,

where the girl is,

and tells them not to tell anyone,

but to give the girl something to eat.

Do you see how Jesus works with the margins,

even when there are many forces crowding him out?

There are two aspects of the margins

that I see as really significant.

The first is who does Jesus meet in the margins?

And what does God through circumstance

do with the margins that Jesus creates?

The people healed in these stories are both women.

Well, one is a woman, and one is a girl.
I can well imagine that if someone in Jesus' time

were sharing this story,

it might sound a bit like a stand up comedian.

So Jesus is going through this crowd,

and this woman comes up to him,

can you believe it, a woman comes up and touches him?

And not just that, she was unclean!

That woman had a hemorrage for 12 years!

She had been unclean for 12 years,

and she went up and touched him, a teacher!

She must have been terrified!

Any other teacher would have punished her,

for making him unclean.

But Jesus didn't, he was actually kind to her.

Then he went to this girl,

He took time out of his busy schedule,

to heal a girl who was only 12 years old!

She wasn't even a woman yet!

And worse yet, she was already dead!

(well that's what the people with her said)

But he took time out anyway to go and touch her,

and heal her! Amazing!

The reason a person would talk like this about

these people, is because they were marginalized.

A woman who was unclean,

and a young girl, with even less status than a woman.

But Jesus made space for them, made margins

in his ministry to reach out to them.

Jesus meets the marginalized in the margins of his ministry.

We can meet the marginalized here at Ascension as well,

and we often do.

During the summers we have taken to raising support,

for those marginalized in our world.

This July we are finding time, within a month that is often

marginal in terms of our church activities,

to help rebuild the cathedral

for our brothers and sisters in Haiti,

that was destroyed in the horrible earthquake

a couple of years ago.

We are making space in the life of our church,

to touch people's lives who are otherwise not

in the center of our plans,

but who are our brothers and sisters in Christ,

and important in God's plan.

You will hear about more activities in coming weeks.

On a more individual level

Jesus is guided by the movement of God within him,

to be aware of the needs of both woman and girl,

because of the margin he has in his life,

in his self, which allows him to see what God

is directing.

That margin allows him to experience the healing

of the woman with the hemorrage,

and to witness to the fact that the girl is not dead,

but sleeping.

The margins Jesus creates allow him to pay attention to the people who need his attention,

and to not worry about those who don't.

Paying attention is in itself an act of love.

Jesus is teaching us something here by his actions,

that is more powerful than words could convey.

Our society is terrible these days

about crowding out the margins.

The demands of life these days are simply great,

and the more time-saving devices that are invented,

don't seem to really help us find the space and peace

we all desire.

There are pressures all around us,

like the crowd that pressed around Jesus,

for so much of his ministry.

And he shows us, that we need to make our own space,

make our own margins in the midst of the

hectic pace of life.

When we do that, we become more aware of the action

of God, through the Holy Spirit

dwelling within us,

and we can both find that peace of God,

which passes all understanding,

as well as see opportunities to participate

in God's great plans for the world,

in ways we could never plan or schedule.

There may be someone who comes to us

needing our attention,

whether it is someone in our family,

or a friend.

And if we have space in our lives,

a margin that we have created,

we can be there for them in a way we could not,

if we were moving from task to task.

There may be someone who opens the door

to a conversation about faith,

longing for someone to guide them into

a relationship with Christ.

But we would miss that, if we have not made

a margin in our lives in which we can see

opportunities like that coming up.

There may be an entirely new calling,

that God is preparing us for,

which we can only come to understand,

when we create a margin in the midst of

all the other things we need to do.

Or there may be a lesson that we need to learn,

from some event that has happened to us

which can only be reflected on,

when we have made a margin in which to learn it.

The margins in our lives are important,

and God is willing to work with us,

to teach us, and to guide us,

into being a part of his great work of love,

but we must open up the margins of our lives,

To allow for God room to work.

And to allow us to see that work

to understand it

and participate in it.

Amen