God's Greater Holiness

 

Sunday, June 30, 2024

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 5:21-43

God's Greater Holiness

When I was very young and I didn’t know how babies were made, I just assumed they came out of nowhere. I had some sort of logical process: that when a couple got married, God decided whether to give them babies, and how many. But it didn’t really go much further than that. It was all a mystery of God.

But then I got older and learnt a bit more. And I began to realise just how many things can go wrong: as soon as that human being starts growing in the womb, every little stage needs to go just right. We look like a little fern slowly unfurling, except instead of green leaves, we have kidneys, eyes, fingers, toes, and all sorts of things that have to come out in a certain way at a certain time.

Then there is the birth itself, full of new dangers. It is not for nothing that the old prayer book had a church service specifically to give thanks to God every time a baby was born and both mother and child survived the experience.

I sometimes feel like that’s how we look at our own faith journey. God has spoken to us and raised us from spiritual death – we have been spiritually conceived in the womb, as it were – and now we have to spend this earthly life trying to make sure we get everything just right, so that we can be resurrected on the last day as a healthy baby in the new creation. So many things can go wrong, and we have to worry about all of them.

I see this way of looking at things become dangerous when we reflect on what God thinks about us. It is far too easy to get worried, to start thinking that maybe we have let God down, and we need to work a little bit harder in making him happy again. As if our heavenly Father is a disappointed Father, or even worse, an angry Father.

The woman who couldn’t stop bleeding could have easily thought so. She knew that she couldn’t go to the temple until she stopped bleeding. And if you couldn’t go to the temple, then that meant you weren’t right with God. But she seemed to understand that that wasn’t the point. The point wasn’t that the bleeding meant you weren’t right with God. The point is that God is holy. And this woman had confidence that God’s holiness was greater than her bleeding.

We could wait until we sort ourselves out before we go to God. We could try all the self-help books and all the quack gurus. Or, we could turn to Jesus, and brush our hand against the hem of his cloak, and experience the power of God’s greater holiness.

Our heavenly Father is not a disappointed Father. He is a loving Father, who sent his Son to work out this greater holiness. And this is how he speaks to us: Daughter, your trust in my greater holiness has made you whole. Be at peace.

Our journey from this world into the next does not rely on our own efforts. Our development in the womb of this life into the new birth of the next is not something we control. We simply reach out our hand towards Christ, who is the power of God’s greater holiness, power which flows out and makes us whole, and gives us peace.

The little girl who was dead had even less control than a baby in the womb. She could not reach out her hand. And so Jesus went right up to her: Jesus, the holiness of God personified, yet completely unafraid of coming in contact with the impurity of death!

His holiness is greater even than death. And this is a place I think we all know about, too: that place where we can’t even bring ourselves to reach out our hand to God, where we are sure that all hope is lost.

Even in death (or, perhaps, especially in death), Christ walks in, finds us, and speaks to us something greater than death. Listen to how tenderly he speaks to those who are dead: “little lamb”. Death is impure, yes. But the impurity does not make God queasy, because God’s holiness is greater, and his holy love is greater than death. “Little lamb”, he says to us, “get up”.

Our Lord, high and mighty in his holiness, is meek and lowly in his loving-kindness. Gentle and tender, he finds us in death and speaks to us as little children. We grow and develop in the womb of this life, but we need not fear, because he is always within reach. Anything that threatens our growth into the fully-developed children of God can and will be overcome by God’s holiness, which is greater.

When I think of how babies a born, I think I’ve come back full circle. It is a mysterious miracle of God, just like our own adoption into God’s family by faith. We will be kept safe, and our growth and birth into the full child of God is guaranteed, because we are held in God’s holiness, which is greater than anything else.

We are the apple of his eye, the joy of his heart. Little lambs, he says to us, get up. Our trust in his greater holiness makes us whole. Be at peace.