Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice; *
let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication. (Psalm 130:1)

When I came home and got back here on Monday, I noticed that some of the t-shirts from our gun violence memorial out front were beginning to fall down. The wind and the weather was taking its toll. It was time to take the whole thing down before it fell down. The question became, what to do with those t-shirts that bore the stories of real people, real flesh and blood suffering. So I brought them into the church, and they are seated among us this morning, because these are members of our community, of this city of Euclid, each of them injured or killed here, one within a block of here, just since last year’s Guns to Gardens event. They are our neighbours.

In each of the healing stories interwoven into today’s Gospels, there is someone who is at their wits end, desperate for healing. The woman has spent everything she had, she has bankrupted herself with medical debt, and nothing is helping. She is getting worse. She has nothing left to lose, she thinks, by trying the power of this miracle man.

Jairus, leader of the synagogue, upstanding citizen throws himself into the dust at the feet of this itinerant preacher, because if he doesn’t do something, and soon, his daughter will die. He is desperate enough to prostrate himself in front of his congregation, in front of those whom he leads, and beg Jesus for help.

In one tight hour, Jesus has the community covered with his grace and mercy, from the highest official to the invisible woman; from the worship leader who makes his annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem to one who has not been to the temple in over twelve years.

Of course, it is not Jairus who is sick, but his daughter; still, Jairus is as much in need of Jesus’ healing as anyone, just as the family of the woman made miserable by her affliction need mercy, too. I wonder if that is why Jesus calls her out of the crowd. She is already cured, but he wants the community to see and hear that she is healed, that she, their beloved daughter, is whole, that he affirms her actions and her faith, so that they may begin to heal their relationship with her. So that they may also show her mercy.

As for Jairus, he has risked his reputation on this roving street preacher and miracle-worker. The people outside his home laugh at Jesus and his optimism that the girl’s life can be restored. Jesus does not let Jairus’ faith down; but more, and unasked, he will not allow the girl to become the source of gossip and stories that might harm her reputation: he tells them that she is not dead, only sleeping, because he does not want the stench of death to follow her around the marketplace once she is well.

Jesus understands and demonstrates that healing has not only to do with the body, but with the soul, and with the heart, and with the community.

I don’t know what faith lies in the soul of the Surgeon General, but I noticed this call to action at the close of his advisory on gun violence as a public health crisis, published earlier this week: it will take … the collective commitment of the nation – to turn the tide on the crisis of firearm violence in America. 

Experts and miracle workers, first responders and medics, community violence interrupters and kindergarten teachers each have their part to play in preventing and reducing the harm from gun violence; but it will take a change in the heart of our community to bring healing to a wound that has gone toxic. It will require repentance, a hard look at where we are going and the willingness to turn aside to Jesus, to mercy, to compassion. It will require humility, from the foremost leaders to the secret hurting souls. It will require faith, that things can change, that we can change, that we are worthy to be healed.

Are we desperate enough, keen enough, eager enough, yet?

Let’s look for the good news, though. Jesus supports our efforts toward healing, whether they be grand gestures or creeping, shuffling steps through the crowd. Jesus affirms our faith that things can be better, and that he will help make it so. For the sake of Jesus, we are gathered not as individuals wounded by violence, but as a community pulling together to heal one another’s hurts, to pray and to salve with balm the troubled spirit.

This month I have been participating in a blacksmithing marathon, part of the RAWTools 44k, a minute for each of the 44k+ lives lost to gun violence in America in 2023. By myself, I think I’ve put in barely over one thousand minutes; but between the whole community of makers, we’ve achieved well over 44 thousand. A month of minutes dedicated to the victims of gun violence, and committed to bringing healing to a horrible situation. 

I wrote to the organizer earlier this week:

No one could do it alone. No one can keep up the heat and the hammer for a month without rest, without breaking. … No one seems to have the answer to this culture of violence, of a weaponized life that can only point toward more death and destruction. 

But in community, we can do more. In community, we can create more than can be imagined in one place. In community, the tightness of our time, the tiredness of our arms, the aching of our hearts need not seem small against the Goliath of gun violence. In community, we are each contributing to a whole movement toward peace, one preached by the prophets, beating swords into ploughshares, guns into garden trowels.

My friends, we are the body of Christ. We may be a tiny fingernail on the body of Christ, but we have more healing power in that fingernail than the world has in all of its fine metal and methods. We can make a difference. For the sake of our neighbours, for the sake of ourselves, our homes and our families, as St Paul encourages, it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something– now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. (2 Corinthians 8:11)

Healing is within our reach, if we stay within the reach of Jesus.

Amen.

A sermon at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, Ohio, at the end of Gun Violence Awareness month, on the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B Proper 8