The numbers game

Sermon for 2005 June 5, St Mary Magdalen, Sheet

Bible readings: 1 Sam 18:1-16, Luke 8:41-end

Counting heads is a big part of our national and international life. Just this week we have had the French referendum result, and the Dutch, and the counting has been in millions. There are numbers and statistics everywhere: 2 million displaced from their homes in Darfur, ….

Two observations on this phenomenon of numbers. The first is that it seems to be ingrained in our nature that we like to measure success or failure by counting heads. Of course, if you run the Glastonbury or the Greenbelt festival, the head count is important: how many tickets do you sell, how much money do you make? But it goes further than that. Organisers of marches love to claim half a million people, the police might say 100,000. Does it really matter? Sadly, people are sometimes judged by the number of people who attend their weddings or parties, in the other direction schools are judged by class sizes. In our Old Testament reading today, Saul took it as a personal affront that while he was being praised for slaying thousands, the young upstart David was being praised for slaying tens of thousands. We do love to play the numbers game and sometimes it is a mistake. Certainly it would be a mistake to measure the value of an act of worship by counting the numbers who attend.

The other thing to say about numbers of people is that once we get beyond a few hundred we really can’t cope. We can’t take it in. Huge numbers of people become meaningless. Six billion people on our planet, six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands killed by a tsunami. The media are aware of this of course, which is why we have the human interest story. One small boy whose identity is unknown. His face becomes a symbol of something much bigger. We can fathom one person’s plight. That’s the best we can do, even if there is a danger that this collapses into sentimentality or over- interest in one person at the expense of others.

So we have this big gulf between the crowd of thousands and the individual. I think people try in many ways to bridge this gulf. To comprehend the big picture and yet care for the details. A couple of weeks ago I woke up and turned on the Today programme to hear the affable voice of Ken Clarke talking about jazz, especially Dizzie Gillespie. He was interviewing someone who as a young jazz musician had been given the chance to play on the stage with Dizzie Gillespie. He was somewhat overawed by this but he said that Dizzie was great because this great famous man managed to make him feel like a close friend. And their ways parted. The cult of celebrity seems to rely on two things; the celebrity has to be famous of course, probably known to millions. But also there has to be an illusion that the ordinary person can somehow know them intimately – hence the magazine articles about famous people’s wardrobes, diets, interior design and so on.

These attempts to bridge the gulf never quite succeed do they? No human being has that capacity, however good at it they seem to be. It’s probably bad form to name-drop but I have an example. Archbishop Desmond Tutu. World famous and a wonderful man. We heard him speak at a rain-swept ecumenical festival in Mid-Wales when he was still Bishop of Cape Town and before Mandela was released. He was a fantastic inspiration and we had the bonus of being in the right place just as he was leaving, able to shake his hand and hear him say "Thank you for your love". It was the kind of moment you want to savour and yet of course we knew that next day he will have met hundreds more people and will forget the personal encounter. As I said, nobody can be a world figure and yet have an individual relationship with you and me.

Except of course Jesus. We have the audacity to claim that here is God who made the universe, the 100 billion galaxies of which our star is one of 100 billion stars, that here is Jesus who even in purely human terms is a giant, the most famous person who ever lived, yet we claim to have a personal relationship with him. As we are looking at evangelism at the moment, this is something that bothers me, that we have this arrogance. OK to point to the greatness of Jesus, even to say he is the son of God, but who am I to pretend that he knows me, that I have a personal relationship with him? Isn’t it cruel for me to pretend that you can have a personal relationship with him? I have to say those words don’t come easily off my tongue.

But today’s New Testament reading is a great help. That big gulf is illustrated. Jesus is being mobbed by huge crowds. They almost crushed him. But woven through this in a very appealing way are two very individual and personal stories. The woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. And the synagogue ruler Jairus’s daughter, who was dying. In the middle of the crush of the crowd, the individuals in the story act in a very human way when faced with the sheer numbers of people. In the case of the woman who touched him, his disciples can only say "Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you". And when they think the little girl is dead, they say "don’t bother the teacher any more". As if to say in both cases that Jesus can’t possibly be concerned with individuals at such a time as this when the whole world seems to be at his feet.

But Jesus’ response is astonishing. In all the crush and confusion, Jesus feels power go from him and is interested to know who touched him. The woman had to see that she could not go unnoticed. It would have been enough for her that she had been healed, but she was noticed, so that Jesus could establish a personal relationship with her. And when the friends of Jairus would have been prepared not to bother Jesus, because they thought he was too late. But Jesus not only healed her, raised her from death, but did so by going to her house and privately caring for her, asking for her to be given something to eat and even not wishing to make a public spectacle of it.

Now what is the evidence that Jesus can have the same kind of personal relationship with us in the crowd as he did with the sick woman and the dying girl? It is a matter of faith but it is good to remember why Luke wrote his gospel, that we may know the certainty of what we have been taught. [Another quote "that believing you may have life in his name?]

One last thing to take from this story. Jesus’ encounter with these people was both special and memorable, but also universal and permanent. The woman who touched him will have remembered the moment her bleeding stopped. The girl will have remembered the moment Jesus told her family to give her something to eat. But also, the woman was healed, she did not bleed any more. The little girl was alive. Within their humanity these were permanent and lasting, more than memories. I pray that Jesus’ encounters with us will be memorable, far more than the handshake with the celebrity, but also permanent as can only be given by the one who has saved millions and millions of souls.