‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’ - Matthew 9. 12&13
During Covid, I found myself turning again and again to this story from Matthew’s Gospel where the woman who has been suffering with haemorrhages for fourteen years is healed. It seemed to have particular relevance, since the woman’s long suffering and the nature of her illness meant that according to the religious laws and customs of her day she was unclean and therefore exiled from…well, from everybody. That is why she touches just the fringe of Jesus' cloak, not Jesus himself. It is from her a kind of act of kindness.
During those testing and difficult days back in 2020 and 2021 we couldn't touch or hold each other. The colleague’s funeral I took in the summer of 2021 was the saddest I've ever attended. A handful of relatives gathered in the crematorium chapel, socially distanced from each other they were not allowed to hold and comfort one another in their grief.
Looking back, it hardly seems real that we lived through such times, so fearful of a unknown virus, that when we did venture out to the shops we didn't just wash our hands when we returned, but every item we bought as well.
So this story of this lonely woman, isolated in her pain spoke to me about, yes, the sadness of isolation, but also wonderfully the enduring presence of Christ and how he is there in the midst of us, even the midst of suffering, and that we can come to him for meaning, affirmation, healing and peace - even if we are isolated from each other.
Of course, Matthew tells this story sandwiching it between another healing, the leader of the synagogue's daughter. In fact, it is the exchange with the isolated woman, that delays him getting to the little girl.
When he does arrive, people laugh at him when he says she’s just sleeping.
Even though she only touched his cloak, the woman who has suffered for so long is made well and the little girl does get up.
The presence of Jesus in both the healings in these two stories, the presence of Jesus brings peace, brings healing, brings blessing and connects people back with one another, communities and families are restored and reunited.
In the same way, through the lonely months of Covid we continued to find the presence of Christ in the midst of us. We found new ways of connecting with each other and serving each other. But there was also a cost, particularly for children and younger people and for the very frail.
But I also notice, that in the world since Covid, having all had to come face-to-face with our frailty and our mortality, and, indeed, experiencing fear, illness and death in ways that most of us hadn’t known before, there does appear to be a new openness to God, and a new recognition that we don't have all the answers ourselves. And this is while our world continues to become more isolated from one another, connected as never before through the wonders and horrors of the Internet, and yet more lonely than ever and filled with uncertainty. We, like those in today's gospel stories, find ourselves seeking someone to follow and someone to trust, and many people are turning again to Jesus and his Church.
Dear friends in the York diocese, as together we seek to live Christ’s story we need to be ready to receive these seekers. One of the ways of doing this is to make our Church a Pilgrim Place, the holy place for our community wherever we are so that people can learn about Jesus and the community who follows him through experiencing our buildings, our welcome, our care. There is information about Pilgrim Places that can be found on the Faith in the North website.
Each of us needs to understand the part we have to play in the ministry of God's Church by growing as disciples ourselves, by becoming more like Christ ourselves.
When people encounter the ministry of the church through us and through our witness in our communities, especially people who are lonely, isolated, neglected, excluded, it is as if they are touching the hem of the garment of Jesus himself, and through us Jesus ministers to them bringing them great joy, bringing them the healing, the affirmation and the peace the human heart craves. In so many ways in our world today we're learning that we do need a physician for the soul and that God calls us not because we are so brilliant or so holy, but because there is a need inside us, a need that only God can meet - our restless hearts finding their rest in Christ.
Today's gospel reading began with Jesus calling Matthew, the tax collector. He got up, dropped everything and followed.
Jesus is calling us today: to receive the medicine of the gospel; to be his presence in our communities, and to live his story as ministers of his reconciliation and peace.
