One of my best friends growing up was Lynn Hutchinson. Lynn had a lot going for him because he was the fastest runner in our class. I don’t know about you but that was a big deal. Recesses seemed to always end with a great game of tag and Lynn just couldn’t be caught. He was lightning fast and avoided the dreaded tag, even if more than one of my friends and I ganged up on him. He would just turn on the jets and *whoosh* he would be gone.
We spent a lot of time riding our bicycles and that same speed could keep back a few bike lengths from him if he put just a little bit of effort into pedaling. Most of our bike rides were leisurely so that wasn’t much of a problem. We spent a lot of time on those bikes, and I have many fond memories of long rides on gravel roads, hiking up hills and coasting down the other side. As I recall we would often end our journey by heading over to a local grocery store where we put our dimes in the pop machine where the bottles nestled together in ice cold water. Orange Nehi was my favorite flavor and if you were lucky to have an extra penny, a wad of gum could maintain that flavor for several minutes.
Our lives were filled with fun and adventure, always looking for an abandoned road that might take us on a short cut to either an abandoned and haunted farmhouse or maybe, we thought, to a short cut that would take us to some distant land where pirates, damsels in distress or a lost treasure might be found. Saturday mornings were made for those adventures so week after week, we headed out on and adventure that was pregnant with possibilities.
As in all good things, those days came to an end with Lynn and his family moved from our small town to a small city many miles away. Our hope was to find a way to overcome the distance so that our adventures could begin anew.
We were in the third grade when Lynn moved. As it turned out, Lynn had a way to make everyone feel as if they were his best friend and so as our third grade year began, Lynn began to send letters to our class to be read by our teacher. It was great fun to hear from him as I would close my eyes and savor every word. Lynn was as good a writer as he was a bike rider.
One day our teacher stood in front of us to tell us something that most didn’t know. Lynn had an illness that seemed to have been disguised. I didn’t know he was sick and I wouldn’t have been able to pronounce it, let alone spell it. Our teacher said he had something called leukemia and it had caused him to go to the hospital. That seemed odd and for several weeks, we didn’t get a letter from Lynn. Instead his mother wrote the letters and so we began to follow his journey, in and out of the hospital. Then one day, through choked back tears and sobs, our teacher read the letter from Lynn’s mother that told a classroom full of unsuspecting children that Lynn had died. Just like that. Lynn was gone.
How do you tell a third grader that one of his best friends had died? I knew death was final but how was it even possible that a child could die? What did that mean? Dealing with such trauma as a child had an effect on me that lingers to this day. I suspect it’s one of the biggest reasons I struggle with the story that we heard this morning. The woman with the flow of blood isn’t a challenge for me, the little girl who’s father was the head of the synagogue, challenges me. It seems so out of whack, so counter intuitive that someone like Lynn would die, yet the little girl lived. It would be easy to spiritualize it all, keeping from the reality of the struggle. What is here that not only helps, but reveals the truth?
I know what it’s like to stand over a dying child. I’ve done that too many times in my life as a priest. I know the pain, the panic, the sense of disbelief as a child slips away from all those that love her. I have no pixie dust to spread over the child or the family to fix it. I only have empathy that feels the pain, the loss, the unbearable realization that death seems so uncompromising. I cannot give false hope, nor does giving a canned response about heaven helpful to anyone. Death seems so unrelenting.
The reality of life isn’t always comforting. Too often faith seems to be a way to avoid the reality that we all face. So unless we just write off this story as either a fable or simply a spiritual story that has nothing to do with a sick child overcoming illness an living, we have to encounter a truth that most don’t want to preach about: sometimes illnesses lead to death. Sometimes despite the fact that we pray hard, and enlist the help of others, people die. Is there hope in that?
Yes. Life doesn’t always turn out the way we hope. But it is important that we are honest about it. Repressing those feelings always lead us away from God, not toward God. Sometimes the good guys lose and hatred can seem to overwhelm love. Sometimes our friend dies. Maybe our first step into that mystery is to acknowledge our feelings of fear, or anger or just feeling rejected. We often don’t feel God’s presence because we aren’t honest with ourselves, let alone God.
Our greatest challenge is in making God a consumer item. It’s a kind of quid pro quo: I’ll follow you Jesus and you keep all the illness and death at bay. Indeed, sometimes illness is healed. And sometimes it leads to death. But to truly follow Jesus is to let go of the outcomes and find a place for our soul. Not to spiritualize this but the goal of our faith is to lead us back to where we realize we are connected to all of humanity: those who suffer and those who are healed. There is a different place of living that God calls us. It’s a place where Richard Rohr calls “cosmic or spiritual joy.” It’s something we participate in; “it comes from elsewhere and flows through our own life. To find it is to find how the saints could rejoice in the midst of suffering, which to most of us is unthinkable.” Praise God for physical healing but when we can come to experience this spiritual joy, no matter what we face, that is true healing.
I still remember Lynn to this day. I pray for him and have, every day. I am sure those prayers have changed since my theology has graduated from third grade but his memory is seared in my heart. I know he was healed, just not the way I had hoped.