Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

When we are in times of trial and tribulation, when illness takes over from one day to another, a diagnosis shatters the future, what do we do with the praise of God? When healing is withheld or only remotely in sight, the wailing has not turned into dancing, what do we do with healing stories?

Both Psalm 30 and Lamentations 3 praise God and give thanks. But what when the praise gets stuck in our throat? What when it is not time for hallelujahs?

In Psalm 30 the praise and jubilation is paired with memories of the recent terror and the protest against the terror that was inflicted on the person: “What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you or declare your faithfulness?”

For Lamentations we must know the context to appreciate it.
Lamentations was written by people in Judah after Jerusalem was destroyed and a heap of rubble. The chaos of emotions, questions, accusation, grief and despair is put in a literary device that provides an extremely organized structure in order to channel the chaos into something somewhat expressible. Four chapters are written as acrostics, poems in which each unit of two or three lines begins with a letter of the alphabet. From A to Z the entirety of chaos and pain gush out, but at the same time contained and channeled so that it can come to expression and does not choke the praying person. The last chapter is a variation on the same literary device. The drama of the composition is heightened by distinctly different speaking voices who alternate and sometimes span across the literary units pushing the boundary of the imposed order.

Our lines in chapter 3 are enveloped by cries and protest. “He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace....The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall. My soul ... is bowed down within me.”
And then comes our passage with hope that can be called tentative, as if to try out how it sounds, if the familiar words - the praise of God’s mercies - will hold and provide a safe ground to walk on: “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases... The Lord is my portion, ... therefore I will hope in him.” (Verses 16-24) Yes, there is hope.

Different attitudes are then tried out how to deal with disaster. One says: The Lord is good to those who wait for him. One should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Another suggestion is: It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth, to sit alone in silence when the Lord has imposed it. And: ... to put one’s mouth to the dust (there may yet be hope), to give one’s cheek to the smiter, and be filled with insults. For the Lord will not reject forever. - Here the voice of Israel’s wisdom is speaking.

There is in Lamentations true grappling with the traditional patterns of explaining disaster, namely that everything is a direct result of a cause that can be identified. The sheer magnitude of the catastrophe, the excess of suffering visited on Judah puts cracks in the confidence that crime and punishment really correspond to each other and truly reflect divine judgment.

The book of Lamentations thus offers a richness and depth for times of suffering and the haunting questions associated with it that is worth exploring.

The healing of the woman who was bleeding for twelve years and the raising of the girl who was twelve years old in Mark 5, pose the question that all healing stories do at all times: And what about me, what about my dad, my mom, my friend, my loved one? Can you not just heal these, too, Jesus?

We assemble here in this nave once a month for a Prayer for Healing Blessing at the Taizé service. We do not pronounce healing in these services, nor do we promise it. There is no throwing away the crutches. We pray that the healing grace of our Lord Jesus Christ fill the person in body, mind and spirit, protect the person from all that harms or hurts and give peace and joy. We lay on hands and anoint with oil in remembrance of baptism, trusting in God’s promise to never leave us alone in the name of his Son who became human just like us.

While the healing stories of the Gospels keep their mystery, we are invited to remain anchored in our relationship with the living God and look for clues in the stories beyond the physical acts of healing and raising. These are their healing stories. Ours, also our physical healing, will look different.

The key to the story of the woman is “..., and (she) told him the whole truth.”
The dramatic way in which the whole scene unfolds gets lost in the English translation which turns a whole string of participles into finite verbs. It should feel more like this: "And a woman—having been bleeding for twelve years, and having suffered greatly from many physicians, and having spent all she had, and having benefited not one bit but rather having gone from bad to worse, having heard about Jesus, having come in the crowd from behind—touched his cloak." And she knows immediately that her body is healed from its disease. Jesus turns and wants to know who touched him even though the whole crowd presses in on him. And with that he invites the woman to respond to him. The woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened, came and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth!

Not the whole truth of how she snuck up behind him and managed to touch his cloak, but the whole truth, the whole chaos, gushing out, like in Lamentations, the chaos, the fear, the devastation of her life. She pours it out right there on the floor before Jesus’ feet.

At this point Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

The whole truth. All of it. That happens in our lives, too. When we allow it ourselves. Telling truth takes place in places and times of trust, deep uninhibited trust. We come out of it better, stronger, grateful. Those are ingredients of healing. Building blocks in the process of healing. Even if our healing stories look different from the woman’s and the girl’s.

When I look at the work of this congregation, a lot of what is done here is working to establish trust, relationships which model good, trustworthy relationships. Trust which creates the room, the space in which the whole truth is allowed. It is the work of faith which takes place here across all age groups, children, youth, adults. What we know is essential for survival of the youngest among us, building trust in the newborns which have been entrusted to us, holds true no less for all other age groups. When truth is allowed, then we know that our faith has made us well.

Trust is also the power by which Jesus raises the girl, out of the one-ness in which the Father and the Son share absolute, uninhibited trust. Christ has shared this trust with us in the giving of his own life for us.
“If you but trust in God to guide you with gentle hand through all your ways,
you’ll find that God is there beside you when crosses come, in trying days.
Trust then in God’s unchanging love; build on the rock that cannot move.” (ELW 769)
Amen.