“Compassion and the Cult of Time”

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Sunday June 28, 2009

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27

Psalm 130

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

There seems to be a new ritual that accompanies the end of many social, personal, business and church meetings.  Just as the gathering is drawing to a close, and just as people are about to leave, the ritual begins.  We reach for our pockets, or our briefcases, or our purses, and we pull out our daytimers and begin the difficult task of finding a date that suits everyone’s busy schedules.

This ritual reveals that one of the great barometers of a person’s true status, in our modern culture, is the busyness of their daytimer – or, for those of you who are a bit more technologically attuned than myself – the ubiquitous Blackberry.  A meeting needs to be set, an appointment needs to be scheduled, a date needs to be arranged, and we begin the dance of finding a time when our calendars will grant us permission to gather together.  And, often, whoever is perceived to be the busiest person in the group becomes the central character in whatever social gathering is being planned.  In work, in family life, in church activities, and in our personal lives, it is the busiest person who tends to be the one around whose schedule we set the meeting time or event.  In that way, status and importance are often determined in relation to the relative ‘busyness’ of the individuals involved.

An equally significant but subtle way that we tend to negotiate this dimension of social status is in the way that we respond to questions about how life or work is going.  “How’s it going?” we are asked. And how do we respond to that simple question, even when we are with friends for whom we should not have to try to prove our importance? “Well, I’m doing all right – but things sure have been busy!”  Whether we intend it or not, such a response reflects a social need to declare our importance in relation to the barometer of busyness.

In such a society, a person who does not have a full daytimer, or a crammed schedule on their Blackberry, or who is not able to state how ‘busy’ they are, is deemed to be a bit less important than those who can demonstrate – or, at the very least, claim – that their lives are beset by busyness.  And what is even more troubling is that in such a society, it becomes a profound challenge to honour the full humanity of those who are no longer able to be productively busy – because of physical or mental challenge, because of the vicissitudes and vagaries of age, or because of some other form of debilitating illness.  In a certain sense, busyness determines a person’s value.

Coupled with this preoccupation with busyness is the elevation of efficiency to a place of prominence as well.  Even after we have found a convenient date for the meeting, we set a tight agenda, we learn the priorities, the processes and the procedures that will enable us to move quickly through our stated business, and we do whatever we can to minimize the amount of time that it might take to come to the decision – so that we can finish the meeting with sufficient time to rush off to our next appointment.  We complain if we think that the discussion has gone on too long, or if we think that somebody has not gotten quickly to the point, or if the decision seems to be postponed until everyone has actually felt listened to.   Efficiency is paramount -- after all, we’re all so busy.

There may be necessary – and sometimes good -- reasons for these cultural preoccupations with busyness and efficiency, and many do, in fact, lead full and busy lives.  We are not supposed to be irresponsible or lazy in the ways that we use of our time.  But there is a danger in our cultural preoccupation with busyness and with efficiency. 

And the danger is that busyness and efficiency can, at times, crowd out any time for compassion.

So what does all of this have to do with today’s readings?

The passage that we read from the Gospel of Mark, this morning, actually presents us with two stories – the story of Jesus being summoned to journey to the house of Jairus in order to heal his daughter, and the story of the unnamed woman who quietly sneaks up behind him and is healed by touching his robe.

At first glance, this passage might seem to be somewhat sloppily constructed – the story of Jesus’ conversation with the unnamed woman, after all, is awkwardly sandwiched in between the beginning and the end of the story of his journey to the bedside of Jairus’ daughter. Why not finish telling one story, and then tell the other story when the first story is completed?

But the fact that the Gospel text has woven these two stories together in fact creates wonderful levels of meaning in this passage.

We are presented, for example, with a rather intriguing comparison between the social status of the two people who needed healing that day.

The first of these characters was the daughter of Jairus.  Jairus was a leader in the synagogue.  He was an important man facing a truly horrific situation – his twelve year old daughter was dying.  As any good father would do, he was doing whatever he could to ensure that his daughter would be safe – even if it meant taking a chance on the relatively unknown young miracle worker from Nazareth.  Jesus’ decision to go with Jairus meant that Jesus was willing to use his power to help an important man facing an important crisis in the life of his beloved – and important -- daughter. 

But Jairus’ daughter was not the only person in need.  While on the way to Jairus’ house, we are introduced to the second person who was in need of Jesus’ touch -- an unnamed woman who, as the text informs us, had been suffering from a medical condition for a long period of time.  The fact that she had been bleeding for twelve years would have meant that she would have been ritually unclean, and excluded from full participation in the social and religious life of her community for over a decade of her life.  Moreover, the text states that she was a poor woman, for she had spent all that she had on physicians as she sought a cure for her disease.  Her physical problems, coupled with her economic deprivation, meant that she would have been a woman on the margins of society -- and her own actions in the story reveal her sense of inferiority and shame.  Rather than coming directly to Jesus, as Jairus and so many others did, she tried to avoid any level of attention whatsoever by anonymously pressing against Jesus’ robe as he moved through the crowd. 

In that ancient society – as in ours -- there would have been a vastly different status accorded to these two characters – on the one hand, the suffering, dying child of an important social and spiritual leader; and, on the other hand, an unnamed, unclean and marginalized woman in the crowd.

If we were to read these two stories independently of each other, they would still stand as important proclamations about the power of Christ.  But the fact that they are interwoven introduces an intriguing dynamic that challenges our busy, efficient, time-conscious lives, even today.

And this challenge is found in the way that Jesus acted.  Jesus was on his way to do something that was good, significant, compassionate and important.  He was going to help a twelve year old girl in a situation of mortal danger.  He was a busy man. 

But then the unclean woman touched him.  And he stopped.

He did not have to stop. The text explicitly states that his power had already left him, even before he knew who it was, in the crowd, who had touched him.  There was nothing else that he needed to do.  He could have kept on his journey. 

But he didn’t.

He stopped, and looked for the woman who had touched him. He sought her, he talked with her, and he commended her faith. She had approached him seeking physical healing; but what he gave her went far beyond merely physical healing.  He talked with her; in so doing, he reminded her – and the rest of the crowd -- of the importance of her own humanity, and restored her to a place in the social and spiritual life of her community.  Even though he was a busy man; even though his journey was an important one; he took the time to treat the woman with respect, with dignity, with kindness.  His busyness did not keep him from using his power, his presence and his prestige – to treat her with compassion.

The fact that he had stopped was not, however, appreciated by those in Jairus’ house.  The delay in his arrival meant that the child died before Jairus, Jesus and the others arrived.  “Your daughter is dead; why trouble the teacher any further?” stated a messenger from Jairus’ house.  They were too late. 

Or so they thought.  But the power of Christ was not undermined by the timing of the situation.  Even in the face of their resignation to the fate that had befallen the girl; even in that moment of despair; and even in the face of the jeering laughs that met him when he came to the house and said that the girl was only asleep, the power of Christ was revealed.  He raised the girl to life, and left the people in her house astounded.

We may not be able to completely understand what happened that day in Jairus’ house; but Jesus’ actions, on the way to that important encounter, leave us with a rather compelling example of compassion, even in the face of busyness.  Jesus’ actions remind us that we should never allow a sense of busyness – even when we are involved in important tasks – to deter us from helping a person in a time of need.

And when we realize this dimension to this passage, we cannot help but remember another story, in the Gospel narratives, which presents us with the contrast between compassion and busyness in the face of human need. 

Every time that we enter this sanctuary, the window that we view in the center of the chancel reminds us of the story of the Good Samaritan, another man who was not too busy to help a person in need.  In that parable – and depicted in this window – a busy priest and a busy Levite passed the beaten man by – likely because they were on their way to more important occasions, and did not want to get involved.  But it was an unlikely character, a Samaritan, who stopped, who helped the man, and who demonstrated the true nature of neighbourly compassion.  The priest and the Levite were too busy to stop; to do so would be an inefficient use of their time.  Either their indifference, or their busyness, motivated them to simply pass him by.

Both in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and in Jesus’ actions in today’s reading, we are offered telling reminders that, so often in life, opportunities to act with compassion happen while we are on the way to doing something important.  And, so often, our assessment of what is important can actually discourage us from acting compassionately when we have the opportunity.  Our busy-ness, our preoccupation with efficiency can run the risk of blinding us to those opportunities simply to be a good neighbor, to love the other as we love ourselves, to treat the other as we would want to be treated. 

It is, of course, not always easy to stop; it is not always easy to get involved; there may be times when it is unwise and even dangerous to do so.  But in those times when we feel called to act with compassion, the end of today’s Gospel text invites us to live in the faith that the power of God will not be impeded when we arrive at the destination towards which we are heading.  The fact that Jesus stopped did not undermine his power to act when he arrived in the house of Jairus.  The decision to help one did not mean, at least in this story, that the other was ignored or forgotten. Rather, by the end of the story, both characters were healed.

At times, it requires discernment, on our part, to both know and to trust how we are going to rearrange our time when an opportunity to act compassionately requires us to change our plans.  But we must trust that God will honour our desire and our decision to act compassionately; and we must trust that God’s power is not subject to the limitations that seem to press upon us by our carefully scheduled daytimers.  We must trust – and live in the knowledge – that it is compassion, and not busyness or efficiency, that is God’s priority for our lives.  It is compassion, not busyness or efficiency, that can transform the world.  It is compassion, not busyness or efficiency, that will prepare this world for the reign of God’s love.

It is good for us to remember that this world was not saved in an act of busyness or efficiency – it is not the busy who would insist that children be welcomed, it is not the efficient who would commend a woman for spending an exorbitant amount of money on perfume that was poured on a person’s feet, or think that a group of untrained fishermen might actually be the best communicators for a message that had the power to change the world. 

And, ultimately, this world was not saved by a busy man; rather, it was saved by a man who could not be busy because his hands and his feet were nailed down.

In the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God made it quite clear that this world was saved by compassion. 

As followers of Jesus Christ, may it be our prayer that we will never allow busyness and efficiency – and all of the demands of the cult of time -- to overwhelm our call to compassion.

Amen.