2025.03.30 | Different Pictures

“Different Pictures”
Rev. Brenda Loreman
Associate Minister for Liturgical Arts and Children’s Faith Formation
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 30, 2025
Matthew 9:18-26

One of the modern artists whose work I’ve enjoyed getting to know lately is someone whose work I first saw at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It’s the art of Chuck Close. Close is known for his large-format, photorealistic portraits, which are often so huge that they fill an entire wall. The fascinating thing about his portraits is that when you get really close to the painting, you don’t really realize you’re looking at someone’s face; what you see instead are tiny little squares full of shapes. But when you stand back from the painting and get some distance between yourself and the wall, all those little squares resolve into a fascinating, recognizable portrait of a human being. His work is essentially like a mosaic, made up of tiny individual pieces that individually are beautiful, but when put together as a whole, they make a complex and fascinating portrait.

What I didn’t know about Chuck Close, who died in 2021 at the age of 81, was that he suffered a debilitating medical crisis in 1988, when he experienced a collapsed artery in his spine that left him paralyzed. Paralysis would be a devastating event for anyone, really, but you can imagine that for an artist it would be particularly difficult since using his hands was his livelihood. After a period of therapy, Close was able to regain some use of his hands, but he had to modify his techniques in order to create the large scale paintings that he’s known for. Out of his brokenness, he found healing in creating art in a new way.

I’ve been thinking about the art of Chuck Close as I studied the scripture for this morning’s reading and the other readings from Matthew‘s gospel that we have been working with during this season of Lent and our worship series on healing and renewal. So far in the past four weeks, we have read about the healing of people with skin diseases, demon possession, paralysis, blindness, a hemorrhage, and even an illness that has caused death. All these varied individuals with their own brokenness find healing through their interaction with Jesus, and begin to create a portrait of a community that has been restored and renewed, like a mosaic of broken and polished seaglass.

Today’s story is about two healings intertwined with each other. The first story is about the healing of the synagogue leader’s daughter, which is intertwined with this second story about the healing of a woman with hemorrhage. It’s interesting to note that this story of these two healings is told in all three of the synoptic gospels, Mark, Luke, and Matthew. Unusually Mark’s version is lengthier and with more detail, and Matthew’s version is briefer with less detail. It’s usually the other way around. Mark is usually the most succinct and shortest version of any story, while Matthew and Luke both usually add some embellishments. For example, Mark’s gospel gives the synagogue leader a name, Jairus, and tells us that the child is twelve years old, making a connection with the woman who has been bleeding for 12 years. And although we are not reading Mark‘s version today, I am going to use the name, Just to be expedient and not have to say the synagogue leader’s daughter over and over.

When a story is repeated in each of the synoptic gospels, it’s usually a sign—at least to me—that this story was important to the early Christ-following communities that sprang up in the first century. And it’s not just the story itself that seems to be important, but it’s also the way that it’s told. Because all three gospels tell the story in the same way—with Jesus heading off to see to Jairus’s daughter, being interrupted by the woman with a hemorrhage who’s asking for healing, and then continuing on his way to heal Jairus’s daughter—in Matthew’s version, essentially raising her from the dead. So not only is the story important because it’s told in all three synoptic gospels, but this interweaving of the two stories also seems to be important for some reason since all three versions are told with this intertwining. The fancy literary term for this is “intercalation,” which is also a chemistry term, so you scientists out there might know that intercalation is to insert something in between layers. In a literary sense this means that the author begins one story, then starts another story before finishing the first, making a sort of literary sandwich.

So here are some thoughts about why this literary sandwich might be important. When we see these two stories together, we notice the contrasts between the characters. Jairus is a leader of the synagogue, which meant that he was a person of wealth and status in his community, someone who could afford to provide or maintain the building for the synagogue. By contrast, the woman who desperately reaches out to touch the hem of Jesus’s robe is, quite likely, an outcast. She has no name, and is only described as one who has been bleeding for twelve years. Mark tells us that she has spent all her money on doctors and is now destitute, and desperate for healing. Her physical ailment is only part of her problem; her bleeding would have made her ritually impure by Jewish custom. She wouldn’t have been able to take part in religious rituals or enter the temple. Friends and family would not have been able to touch her or touch anything she had touched. In fact, she was violating taboos by coming out into the crowd where others would be able to touch her, and she certainly violated the rules by reaching out to touch the clothing of Jesus.

This woman couldn’t be any more different from Jairus or his daughter, a beloved child of a wealthy community leader. She was one of the most marginalized sorts of people in her community. But Jesus doesn’t marginalize her, or punish her for reaching out. Instead, he acknowledges her healing. He even renames her—he calls her “daughter,” equating her now with the beloved daughter of Jairus, pulling her back into the community, and affirming her identity as a child of God. He sets her free from the restrictions of her illness and marginalization, and sets her on the path of a new, hopeful future. Jesus touches the untouchables, and instead of making him unclean, which is what his culture would assume would happen, he instead brings healing. By doing this, Jesus challenges the assumptions of his culture about who is clean and who is unclean—raising doubts about whether such categories are even appropriate. He affirms that even those considered outcasts in society are indeed part of the family of God.

Notice, though, that just because he stops to heal the woman, that Jairus and his daughter don’t miss out on the healing. In our society, we tend to assume that one person’s gain means another’s loss. We tend to think that, if the last shall be first, it means those who were first will be excluded, but this isn’t so in God’s kin-dom. The reign of God means that all shall be fed, and all shall be healed, and all shall have enough.

One of the learnings I have from this story, then, is that all are important parts of the community, not just those in power or those with authority or those who are wealthy, or those who are connected. Jairus’s daughter, a female child, is probably the least important person in first-century society and yet, she is healed. The woman with the hemorrhage is probably the next least important in first century society, because of her gender and her medical condition. And still, Jesus heals her, calls her daughter, and touches her, something no Jewish man would have done, and thus he brings her back into the community. Her health is not only restored, but her well-being and her sense of self is also restored.

When we stand back from these individual healings, and see the whole of the mosaic portrait that Jesus is creating, we see emerging a community made up of all the people who have been restored to health and and family, all who have been healed in body, mind, and spirit, and we see the inter-layering of gifts and strengths and abilities, which together builds a beloved and beautiful community.

We, who are also both beautiful and broken, like sea glass washed up on the beach, are also called to healing and restoration and renewal. We are called not only to seek the healing that Jesus offers to us individually, but we are also called to add our precious beauty to the mosaic of community that Jesus builds. When we—broken as we are—come together in solidarity, sharing our gifts and graces and abilities, we are then able to continue the healing and renewal of Jesus to a world that is deeply in need of restoration. Amen.