The Entire Thought

Finding God and Grace in the Detours

Think for a moment and let your mind wander back to your senior year of high school. In the yearbook, beneath your picture, you probably listed the clubs and organizations you belonged to, as well as the profession you hoped to pursue. All these years later, as you examine your life, how many of those youthful plans and goals have been realized? For most of us, life has evolved quite differently than we had imagined. A variety of people and circumstances — some good and some not so good—have shaped our lives and guided our way on a route that has probably been more circuitous, with many more stops and starts and detours, than we ever expected.
However far our path through life has deviated from our initial youthful goals, there need be no regret. As we will learn from the Marcan Jesus in today’s Gospel, good things happen in the detours of life, and these can be as graced and as fulfilling as any well-executed life plan.
As Mark tells it, a very busy and devoted Jesus was on his way to the home of Jairus, a synagogue official whose daughter was near death. Obviously, death is serious business and not to be trifled with. Although “God did not make death,” as the Wisdom author has declared in today’s first reading, it is nevertheless an inherent aspect of life, and one each of us must necessarily learn to accept. This being so, the synagogue official was convinced that Jesus could do something for his daughter, and it seemed imperative that Jesus hurry to help him in whatever way he could.
Despite the urgency of the situation, Jesus did not make a beeline for the home of Jairus. He allowed himself to be detained by the woman suffering from hemorrhages. While he could have argued that he was too busy or in too much of a hurry to tend to her needs, the time he took to allow her to touch him, and the moments he spent talking with her, were moments of grace for her and discovery for him. In her, he encountered faith; in him, she met the love and peace and healing she so desired. Jesus would invite the synagogue official to develop a similar faith, and as Mark tells us, Jesus graced Jairus’ faith with the restoration to life of his daughter.
Jesus’ experience and the experiences of Jairus, his daughter and the “inconvenient” woman combine with our nostalgic remembrance of our senior yearbook entries to teach us that God can be just as present in the detours and in the details that we haven’t planned. But at times, our sensitivity needs to be awakened to the grace that life’s detours can bring. I recall the experience a pastor friend recently told to her congregation. One Sunday morning, a deacon was
traveling his regular route to church, and on the side of the road he saw a car. Its hood was open and dark smoke was
billowing forth, while a woman and four little children stood nearby. Frantically, she tried to wave him down to help them, but the deacon merely slowed down a little and shouted out the window, “I’m sorry I can’t help you; I’m on my way to church.”
While this story is laughable, it also carries an “ouch” factor. It points to the challenge of setting priorities and making plans and then being flexible enough to change them. In today’s second reading, Paul describes Jesus’ willingness to be at the service of others, regardless of his preset plans or agenda, as his becoming poor for our sake. By letting go of all things, his freedom, his well-being, his glory and even his own prerogative to live his life as he chose, Jesus has done what Paul has called “a gracious act.” That graciousness and willingness to become poor or totally bereft of his very self has made us rich. Jesus’ example calls forth a similar graciousness in his followers.
Changing plans and graciously adjusting his priorities enabled Jesus to heal not one person but two, and then many others. His availability and flexibility enabled him to elicit faith not only from one person, but several. Because he was open and sensitive to the needs of others, however and whenever those needs presented themselves, Jesus was able to extend the healing and forgiveness of God to all who would receive them. Jesus’ willingness to be inconvenienced and to allow others’ needs to set his agenda continues to challenge us, to whom he entrusted his ministry.


Patricia Sanchez
Celebration Preaching Resources, June 28, 2009

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