6 years ago, when I first started my ministry as a hospital chaplain, I came across some question about how to interact with patients and their families outside the hospital. This issue also applies to psychotherapists, medical staff, especially psychiatrists. The question is ‘What do you do when you meet your client or patient on the street outside the hospital?’ What would you do if you’re a health care provider? And what would you expect your healthcare provider to do when you meet him or her on the street outside the hospital? Does anybody know the answer to this question?
I don’t know if there’s a definite answer to this question, but here’s what’s recommended. If. you’re a patient running into your therapist or psychiatrist, you have a choice to say hi or not. You can simply ignore and pass through. Or you can just say hi. If you’re a healthcare provider, you wouldn’t acknowledge your patient first. You wouldn’t initiate anything. Whether you as a patient say hi or just pass through, it feels a bit awkward. Here, we’re not talking about which response is more appropriate or not. We’re talking about setting up boundaries. Boundaries matter to all of us. They protect us from each other. They help us stay respectful to each other, not crossing the lines we agree to draw. Another name for this agreed behavior of keeping boundaries can be ‘privacy,’ the state of being undisturbed by others. And the extreme opposite of this behavior, that is, ignoring these boundaries and disrespectfully and violently crossing them can be called ‘assault.’ There’s another extreme of keeping boundaries that function to exclude a certain group of people, which we can call ‘segregation,’ the enforced action of setting people apart from each other. (Which is happening right now in our country.) So, again boundaries matter to us. It is crucial to our personal and communal lives. What matters is not so much about having boundaries or not. It’s about what boundary line we would like to draw. I would like us to imagine more graphically what kind of boundary line we draw in our relationship with others. Is it a thick solid bold line that doesn’t allow anyone to come into your life or that you cannot cross at all, keeping everything to yourself? Or is that line very blurry and unclear as if there’s no line at all so that you kind of get involved in all matters of people around you to the point you don’t know where your personal life is? In today’s gospel, Jesus shows a third type of line, which is a dotted line. This third type of a boundary with this dotted line clarifies where I stand from others and is also able to cross that line when necessary. This dotted line can be both open and closed. Think of it as chasing your lane from left to right when you drive. Jesus shows his transformative move in and out of his dotted boundary line in today’s gospel lesson. There are two stories of the hemorrhaging woman suffering for 12 years and Jairus’ 12 years old daughter. It’s not just one healing story we hear. Two healing stories, one being cured of the illness of bleeding and the other being resuscitated, not resurrected from death. There’s no doubt that today’s gospel lesson is about healing, but what we’re interested in is how this healing takes place through Jesus, by his way of crossing the boundaries. First, let’s reflect on Jesus’ first encounter with the hemorrhaging woman. He has a huge crowd following. I imagine it’s like walking nearby Times Square during summer time when it is filled with tourists. We can easily imagine some inevitable contacts with people passing by. This seems to be what’s happening in the story. Jesus is somewhat stuck in this large crowd. The woman who has been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years hides herself in the crowd. No physicians have been able to cure her illness. Now she sees Jesus and has a clear mission, which is to touch Jesus’ clothes. This is what she says, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” As she touches his cloak, immediately her hemorrhage stops. She feels in her body that she is made well. She is healed. We want to pay attention to the part that Jesus himself is aware that the power of healing has gone forth from him immediately when the woman touches his cloak. This is the moment that shows his dotted boundary line. His power of healing is not bound by or boxed in or regulated by a thick solid boundary line. It’s open. This power of God gracefully and freely goes out and reaches out to the suffering woman. This movement of God’s healing power is strictly against the Jewish law. It’s ritual defilement. Women who are menstruating are considered unclean according to the Jewish law. In this story, not only do we see this suffering woman’s courage to go against the Jewish ritual law and cross the boundary but also her action shows the dotted boundary line of Jesus who neither excludes nor discriminates her. His boundary is crossed over at the disposal of the woman, eventually at the disposal of God’s mercy. Without her faithful action that risks ritual defilement, we wouldn’t be able to see this third boundary line, the dotted line where God’s mercy freely crosses. So Jesus affirms her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” The other healing story that we see is that of Jairus’ 12 year old daughter who is dying. By the time Jesus arrives at Jairus’ home, his daughter is already dead. Some say to Jairus, “Why trouble the teacher any further?” Jesus overhears this. He doesn’t turn away, but urges Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.” He goes into the house and sees people weeping and wailing loudly. He tells these people, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” People laugh at him. Perhaps Jesus feels a bit angry or disrespected, he kicks them out except the girl’s parents, Peter, James, and John. Now it is Jesus’ turn to cross his dotted boundary line for Jairus’ daughter. He seems to do what the hemorrhaging woman does. He goes against the Jewish law that strictly says not to touch a corpse, for it is unclean. He takes the girl by the hand and says to her, “Talitha cum,” which means “Little girl, get up!” The girl is back to life, back to his father. In these stories of the hemorrhaging woman and the once dead daughter of Jairus, we see Jesus crossing over certain religious boundaries and his personal boundary being crossed over by others. That’s what the dotted line does. It’s open to the suffering of others. Jesus doesn’t set his boundary to exclude others. He doesn’t lock himself inside his own boundary. He lets others come in. He invites others to come and dwell in God’s presence in him. He never condemns the hemorrhaging woman for crossing the boundary or violating the Jewish law or making him considered unclean because of her. He very well knows he doesn’t own the healing power of God. He doesn’t control it. He is always at the disposal of God. This healing power of God is always at the disposal of those who are not afraid to cross that dotted boundary line of Jesus the Son of God. On the other hand, Jesus himself crosses his own boundary. He gets himself out of his own comfort zone. He lets himself be ritually defiled by touch the dead body of Jairus’ daughter. And he’s able to do that because as he crosses himself over, the daughter is no longer dead. The healing of Jesus happens when we are able to set our boundaries as dotted lines and are able to cross them for the sake of our neighbors. Our Christian community is then the gathering of Jesus’ followers whose boundaries are dotted lined like Jesus. So we can cross all kinds of barriers and walls that divide and separate the world. In a way, healing happens in this solidarity of those who are open, courageous, and wise enough to go against something that the society determines illegal. Healing, this process of being made whole, takes place only in this solidarity. When we are in the place of Jesus who not only crosses his dotted boundaries but also carries the cross of the world, this faith of putting ourselves where Jesus is will make us more whole, holier, and closer to Jesus himself. Lastly, I would like share with you this short saying of the 5th-century desert father, Abba Poemen: Many old men came to see Abba Poemen and one day it happened that a member of Abba Poemen’s family came, who had a child whose face, through the power of the devil, was turned backwards. The father seeing the number of Fathers present, took the child and sat down outside the monastery, weeping. Now it happened that one of the old men came out and seeing him, asked him, ‘Man, why are you weeping?’ He replied, ‘I am related to Abba Poemen, and see the misfortune which has overtaken my child. Though I want to bring him to the old man, we are afraid he does not want to see us. Each time he hears I am here, he has me driven away. But since you are with him, I have dared to come. If you will, Father, have pity on me, take the child inside and pray for him. So the old man took the child, went inside and behaved with good sense. He did not immediately present him to Abba Poemen, but began with the lesser brethren, and said, ‘Make the sign of the cross over this little child.’ Having had him signed by all in turn, he presented him at last to Abba Poemen, Abba Poemen did not want to make the sign of the cross over him, but the others urged him, saying, ‘Do as everyone else has done.’ So groaning he stood up and prayed, saying, ‘God, heal your creature, that he be not ruled by the enemy.’ When he had signed him, the child was healed immediately and given back whole to his father. (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. & ed. by Benedicta Ward, p. 166) We see Abba Poemen’s reluctance to cross his own familial boundary, refusing to make the sign of the cross. But it is his monastic community who pushes him further. It’s almost like his monastic community removing certain parts of his thick boundary line and so creating the dotted line of Jesus. May we let ourselves inside this dotted line of Jesus. May we also surround ourselves with this dotted line of Jesus, letting our neighbors come in and letting ourselves out there. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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