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New Testament Reading-Mark 5: 24-34
(This sermon was largely preached outside of the pulpit toward the front part of the center aisle.)
Imagine if you will that all of you are members of a crowd. You are a crowd back in the time of Jesus. In fact, you are a crowd that is surrounding Jesus. Now, like everyone else, you’re Jewish. As such, back then part of your basic worldview is that people can become unclean and impure. Maybe they have touched a dead body, maybe they have a disease like leprosy, maybe they have eaten the wrong foods, or maybe, if they are women, they are in the midst of their menstrual cycle. Whatever the case is, whenever you see someone who is unclean you believe them to be both ritually impure and morally impure.
The two go together, and you know that every impure person you encounter is simply a sinful person. As such, they are to be kept at a distance. They are to be segregated and removed from everyday society. So here we all are together in a crowd, and all of the sudden a woman who our community has despised for twelve years because of her impurity works her way through the crowd and touches the hem of Jesus’ garment. This woman has been impure and ostracized for twelve years because she has had an unending menstrual flow for 12 years. I know this sounds unbelievable, but that’s what the story says.
All of you just heard the scripture that tells us all about this, but what we don’t know is how the people in that crowd felt in those moments before they discover the woman is no longer impure and is suddenly worthy of their acceptance. Let’s pretend for a second that not all of us respond in the same way. Let’s pretend that all of you who are on this side of the church are really angry at this woman for barging her way among you and touching Jesus. You’re just enraged by this. This woman is violating your fundamental sense of morality and how people should act. Shake your fists and growl.
Now, let’s pretend that the other half of you has some mixed feelings. You’ve been raised going to the same Sunday school class as everyone else. You’ve got the same basic beliefs, but there is something that you know from your own personal experience that makes you feel uneasy about castigating this woman. Maybe you remember a time when you were impure and can partially imagine how bad this woman must feel. Maybe you knew someone else, a family member, who was impure and had to endure all kinds of suffering. Whatever the case is, part of you doesn’t feel it is right for this woman to be ostracized. For this reason, you get nervous when Jesus suddenly asks, “Who touched me?” “Oh, no,” you think, “this woman is about be in a world of hurt.” She is going to be singled out, vilified, and attacked by this great big mob of people. Shake your fists and growl. You can see how afraid the woman is and how she is trembling before you. But then something unusual happens. Jesus doesn’t lead the mob against this woman. Instead, he says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” Almost immediately you feel like crying because you feel so painfully relieved and so painfully grateful that at last this nameless, abandoned, and abused woman has finally accepted and affirmed as someone’s daughter. You can see a wave of healing just wash over the woman. You realize that her healing isn’t just a physical healing. It’s an emotional healing. It’s a psychological healing. It’s a social healing.
It is this experience of healing that I think open and affirming churches such as ours have a tremendous potential to provide, but I also think getting to that place of healing can sometimes be difficult, especially when it comes to issues that can get us charged up and shaking our fists. I am glad that I came down here this morning to preach because sometimes when I am up there I worry that I could sound like I am giving some kind of authoritative bombast and that my opinion counts more than others, but in an open and affirming church everyone is respected and allowed to be different, even if we disagree. So this morning I am glad I am down here because I want to discuss a topic that is a divisive topic in our society and quite likely in our church.
The topic I want to discuss this morning is abortion. I’ve been wrestling with whether and when to preach on this topic for sometime. I am generally of the belief that churches should be places where we address in a thoughtful and sensitive manner just about any and all issues that greatly affect us. We know that abortion is one of those issues. We know that chances are 35% of all women of reproductive age in United States today will have had an abortion by the time they reach the age of 45.[i] If each of us at the very least likely knows someone who will be part of that one in three, I think it is incumbent upon us as an open and affirming church to make room for that reality in one way or another regardless of where each of us might fall on the political spectrum. Beyond the frequency of abortion, we also know that our more fundamentalist counterparts are making their voices heard publicly on this issue on a daily basis in a full range of venues including Super Bowl ads. What would it say about us as an open and affirming church if we couldn’t even talk about abortion within the walls of our own church?
I’ve never liked it when preacher’s disguise their own opinions as they seek “a middle ground” because they don’t want to offend anyone, so I won’t hide from you today that I am pro-choice. Nevertheless, my goal this morning is not to progandize my own view or to win over converts to my belief that there is an important moral distinction between the potential life of a fertilized egg and the actual life of an infant. Rather, my goal this morning is in line with the scripture and it is to invite each of us to think about how we would respond if a nameless, ostracized woman were to work her way through the crowd today.
With this in mind, I recruited a brave volunteer this morning who will be reading the story of a real-life woman who made the difficult decision to have an abortion. As we hear her story, let’s listen with respect and let’s listen as members of an open and affirming church.
I had my daughter a month before my 21st birthday. The labor was easy, but life afterwards was not. I was glad for my daughter, and I was happy to have had her. But money was tight, and five days after giving birth I took a waittressing job working double shifts and reluctantly gave up breastfeeding. I was absolutely miserable, and unhappy with my new body. I was so upset by my appearance that it started to affect every aspect of my life.
A month later I was devastated to find out I was pregnant again. I had been breastfeeding when I got pregnant and was told by my mother in law that I couldn’t conceive during breastfeeding. My daughter was only a few months old, and I couldn’t imagine putting my body through that kind of hell again so soon, let alone the thought of how I would pay for anything. My husband was just as shocked as me, and supported my decision when I timidly mentioned “maybe” aborting. We both agreed we couldn’t afford another baby. I was wracked with guilt. I felt like trash, like some welfare-stricken young girl. I felt naive for believing I couldn’t get pregnant, and like a murderer for even considering an abortion–after all, I felt it was the selfish way out. I should be “taking responsibility” for my actions. I had done that once, and there I was, at the age where most young people are having the time of their lives, bar-hopping and in college, and I was working seven days a week and barely keeping my head above water.
I felt guilty. Not because I felt like I had killed a child, but because I was afraid of what others would think of me. Because I was terrified to be “that girl” that I hated–the girl with no morals, no judgment.
I am so thankful and grateful that I live in a country where I can control my own fate. I’m still trying to overcome the feeling that there’s something wrong with me, that I’m a bad person for what I’ve done. But I feel that I’ve done the best not only for me, but for my daughter. Her life, my life, and my now-husband’s life is better because of it. And for that, I don’t feel bad one bit.
There are countless stories of women who have had abortions under a countless array of circumstances. Common to many of these stories is the experience of being marked as bad, sinful, and impure by large portions of our society. What about us here? Can we imagine being different? Can we imagine being a place that is still open and affirming despite whatever differences there are among us? I think Jesus points to the matter at the heart of all this when he calls the nameless woman who touched his garment “daughter.” We often talk about being a church family. We are all sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters in Christ. Can we affirm every woman who walks through our doors as a “daughter” or as a “sister” regardless of her story? Can this be a place where she can reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ garment? Can this be a place where she experiences a healing presence that is so hard to find in the rest of our society? I believe we can be that place.
Let us close with prayer: Gracious God, we pray that we might make room for the nameless woman in the crowd. We pray that your loving presence might be felt by her before, during, and after the difficult decisions of life. We pray that she might have the courage and strength of the woman who reached out to touch Jesus, and we pray that she might still be able to still reach out and find healing in the body of Christ. We pray for your spirit to work among us and through us as you open us up to the challenges and possibilities of our faith. In the name of your Son, our Savior, our Redeemer, and our Healer, we pray. Amen.
[i] National Abortion Federation, “Women Who Have Abortions,” <http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/women_who.html#3>.
