Many people have their 'go-to' bible verses: for some it's John 3:16, or verses of comfort from the psalms, or the surprise and wonder of the resurrection accounts. I don't know what your favorite is - although, coincidentally, I would love to know... Know what one story in the whole of the Bible speaks to you of the nature, action, and character of God most intimately. I think those would be revelatory conversations.

Well... this story today is my favorite in the whole of the Gospels. It is the story I chose to have read at my ordination, the story I needed my pastor to preach on as I entered into a new portion of life. At that time what drew me to this gospel story was the gumption and courage of the woman who has been bleeding for innumerable years...

She may not have known the 'right' way to talk to Jesus, but that didn't stop her. She insisted He help her and grabbed hold of Him with every last ounce of strength she had. For me, this is the Gospel story for anyone who has ever felt like they don't have it all together... and life is slipping through their fingers like a sieve.

Many of you have heard me say this before, but it probably bears repeating...

When I went to seminary I didn't have it all together in my life, I was doing quite a bit of demanding of Jesus - well, actually I was yelling at him a whole lot, and I wasn't in fact sure what I even thought about Jesus.

All I knew was that in complete desperation I had reached out to God and grasped ahold of something... a teensy bit of something that I couldn't quite explain.  It was, at that time for me, the fringes of Jesus' robe.  Not him altogether.  Not His whole body.  Not His whole mind or heart.  But a piece. 

It was enough.   

I saw myself mirrored in the desperate woman.

Reading this story today gives me a fair bit of pause; I hear it differently, relate to more intimately. The woman who interrupts this tale compels us to see that our stories are not discrete and disconnected from others.

This story is no longer just about the woman's faith for me, but rather how each life's story impacts and interrupts every other life.

Some interruptions are welcome and others are not... these past two weeks have highlighted that on a large-scale level.

Being called to face the racism which does exist in our culture feels like an intrusion into our comfortable lives and yet, for Jesus' sake we cannot afford to ignore it.

Other interruptions - like marriage equality - for many is a welcome interruption to long awaited justice - giving us a chance to see the breadth of love. But it is a change for everyone.

The gospel story highlights interruption so poignantly this week... the healing of the woman becomes bound with the story of the healing of the girl, their individual stories becoming one story. In some ways, interruption becomes an intertwining: each person's story is made more whole by the joining of its parts.

The girl's life is interrupted. The father's life is interrupted. The woman's life is interrupted. Even Jesus' life is interrupted.    

And from a personal standpoint - . There are pieces which reside within this story of the woman and the unnamed father of the dying child that I can't bear to deal with yet, because interruptions in life are often very personal. They often hold shards of broken dreams that only Jesus knows...

And so today I've done something a little different - a poem on 'interruption' - forgive the frailty of my words:

I've been weeping - will anyone hear my voice?

Nobody does.

"She is but a girl...

just twelve years old.

It is not her time to go.

She should be

skipping into her mother's arms,

singing those peculiar melodies which 

are harbored only in the caverns of children,

and dreaming large dreams.

Not sleeping.  Not motionless.  Not unresponsive.

At twelve, life should hold promise.

I stand as her father, helpless.

Because

She's is a girl - 

Interrupted.  

****

And I, I was a girl once too...

Seems a lifetime ago now.

The girl who hovers near death 

she could be mine. 

From the time she entered this world, my very soul has bled out

My body has betrayed me.

I should be rocking and nursing a life  - 

a life that would carry on into another.

A life that would give me life.

I am a woman who nobody will touch.

Or hold.  Or caress.  Or kiss.

Twelve years of death.

Because

I'm a woman - 

Interrupted.

****

Why is life this way? 

We grasp for remnants of His robe, yet

Our fears shroud us and fear weaves itself into life.

Splintered, fragmented, fragile.

Interrupted.

***

But...

I am here too - I am also part of this story.

Part of the fabric of every story.

A baby, a boy, a man named Jesus.

I interrupted my mother's life...

not planned, not understood.  

Intruded upon Peter and James and John's lives.

Tore apart tradition, unstitched families.

Cities and rulers; laws and religion have all been splintered by me.

Everyone I've ever touched

or who has ever touched me. 

Has known....interruption.

But as the Son of Humanity

the Savior of the Soul

the Tailor of the Cosmos

I am interruption.  

My very being is an interruption.

as it always was meant to be....

For from an interrupted life the unimaginable has been spun...

The unthinkable

The undreamable...

Death itself has been

Interrupted.  

With aching gestures you seek to clutch my robe,

Grasping for your own life.

Healing comes when you cease to hide;

Clutching threads of life we think are

Ours alone.

Life begins again

As new colors and patterns,

hooked into my robe,

sewing you to me; us to them.

Together, we make a way

We could not find alone.

Girl interrupted; woman interrupted.

Boy interrupted; man interrupted.

Could we pray for more?

Come interrupt our lives, Dear Jesus.... and make us whole.