Commitment Issues

Luke 8:40-46

April 27, 2025 • Mount Pleasant UMC

We live in a lonely world, a world that is literally dying for connection. Now that’s a great way to start out a new series, isn’t it? Really uplifting and encouraging. But it’s true. We were already headed in this direction, but the pandemic accelerated our disconnection with each other when we were mandated to stay home or wear masks and stand six feet apart. People continue to debate the merits of those directive, but we do know it became a problem not only for our mental health, but also for our physical health. The Surgeon General’s study from a couple of years ago found that “lacking connection can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day” (https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173418268/loneliness-connection-mental-health-dementia-surgeon-general). The Surgeon General goes on to say that “poor connection” with others results in “a 29% increased risk of heart disease; a 32% increased risk of stroke; and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults…This was most pronounced in young people aged 15-24 who had 70% less social interaction with their friends.” More than that, the study also found that social media is not an adequate substitute for in-person interaction. Who knew? 

Well, we should have because our very make-up is for interaction. God made us for community. God created us to be connected to others. And not just people like us. I believe wholeheartedly that one of the biggest contributors to our present struggles is that we have created echo chambers where we only hear voices we already agree with. We’re rarely challenged to think. We unfriend those who disagree with us or say things we think are wrong. Believe me, as a pastor, I’ve had that happen frequently. I used to say it wasn’t a normal week until someone unfriended me on Facebook. It probably still happens but for my own mental health I stopped checking and started being grateful for those who stick around. We need connection, more and more in this disconnected world. And so for the next five weeks we’re going to explore five characteristics of community, asking: “What does it mean to belong?”

In 2014, in the early years of social media, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said it was his goal to connect every person in the world. And while technology might be able to accomplish that (though we could question their methodology), the reality is that while we are wired for community, we also have limits as to how many we can actually connect with. People who study such things say that human beings can maintain about 150 relationships, but here’s how that breaks down. Generally our “inner circle” will consist of up to five people (Jesus had three—Peter, James and John) and then we will have up to 15 people who are “good friends” and 50 people we can call “friends.” Those are the people you might hang out with on a weekend. From there, the numbers go up and the connections get weaker: 150 meaningful contacts, 500 acquaintances and 1,500 people you can recognize (Kim, Made to Belong, pg. 52). That’s why I get on Facebook once in a while and say, “Who is that?” For the purposes of this series, we’re focused on the “up to 15” people who are “good friends.” Those are the relationships that give us life and health and peace. But sadly many of us don’t have anyone we would put in those categories.

Today, most of us, certainly most of us in this room, have the resources to live on our own. With grocery delivery and amazon.com and online everything, we could conceivably never leave our couches. But for most of human history, living alone simply wasn’t an option. You needed others for “survival and safety” (Kim 44). That’s part of what makes the story of this nameless woman in Luke 8 so heartbreaking. She is alone. And she is lonely. No one will have anything to do with her because she has been bleeding constantly for twelve years (8:43). That’s a long time, and that kind of loss of blood probably made her weak and tired most of the time. More than that, though, she would have been considered unclean. Not that she couldn’t participate in daily life; uncleanness had to do with worship. She wouldn’t be allowed in to the place of worship which would have excluded her from community life because worship was at the center, like it used to be in our culture. So while she may have interacted with others throughout the day, no one would really talk to her or pay attention to her because she didn’t belong. And no one would touch her because if they did it would make them unclean. For twelve years, she has been a nobody, an outcast. Alone, and lonely (cf. Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 77; Wright, Luke for Everyone, pg. 104; McKnight, Luke, pg. 134).

Not that she hadn’t tried to regain a place in the community. When Mark tells the story, he says she had “suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse” (Mark 5:26). “Suffered” is a good word to use there because the cures for this ailment in the first century were nasty. One suggested cure was for the patient to fish a oak grain out of cow dung and swallow it (Card 77). The grain, not the dung, but still. Other cures included drinking a glass of wine mixed with rubber alum and eating garden crocuses (Bock, Luke [IVPNTC], pg. 159). The Bible doesn’t say what she had tried, but it could have been any or all of those or even others we don’t know about. It’s interesting, though, that in Luke’s account, all we are told is that “no one could heal her” (8:43). Luke doesn’t mention the suffering under many doctors because Luke was a doctor. Gotta protect his colleagues, right? So he leaves that out, but you can still sense her desperation. To be healed, yes, for sure. But maybe more to be back in community, no longer alone or lonely. She will do most anything she can—even trying to work her way through a crowd and risk touching the hem of a passing rabbi whom she believes can do for her what no doctor has been able to do.

For me, this woman represents the first characteristic of community: priority. If we are going to be find community, connect with others, overcome the epidemic of loneliness, we have to make connecting with others a priority in our lives. We have to become as desperate for it as this woman was, because while we may not have a bleeding disease that lasts twelve years, if the research is correct, we have a life-threatening issue threatening our physical and our spiritual lives.

Out world is full of options—or maybe we should call them distractions. What we need has not changed in all of human history, but in the last 10-15 years, we have multiplied the number of things that pull for our attention. Everything has changed. See if this looks at all familiar. 

VIDEO: “BBT Thanks to Steve Jobs”

Smartphones have put unlimited access to all of human knowledge in our pockets. It also has become most people’s go-to for when there is any moment of nothing happening. We can’t be bored. In restaurants at tables, scrolling and clicking. Standing in line at the store—scrolling and clicking. Drivers at a red light—scrolling and clicking even when the light turns green. And I won’t ask how many of us take our phones to the bathroom.

Technology isn’t the only thing demanding our attention. The more stuff we accumulate, the more time it demands from us to take care of it, protect it, store it. And our jobs demand priority status, asking more and more from us as the years go by. We also get distracted just by our own restlessness, our desire for more, our discontent with the things and the place and even the people we have in our lives. Then there’s our schedule, which can fill up so quickly with things for kids or grandkids, activities at church and school, things we want to do and things we have to do (or think we have to do). It’s an endless struggle, trying to figure out what our priority is when everything and everyone demand something from us. An author of a generation ago called it the “tyranny of the urgent” and a songwriter called it “the urgency of the generally insignificant.” We don’t have time to set priorities because we are so busy trying to do everything, and we can actually go entire days without encountering anyone or having a meaningful conversation (cf. Kim 44-45). And it is killing us. Community needs to be a priority.

And for it to become such will take intentionality. That’s something this woman shows us. She was intentional about finding the healing that would allow her back in the community. Jesus is at a point in his ministry where he has become very popular; crowds gather wherever he is. In fact, Luke says on this day the “crowds almost crushed him” (8:42). So there are lots of people around, and probably lots of noise. Add to that the fact that Jesus is on his way somewhere else. His attention is focused on Jairus and his dying daughter. So Jesus and the disciples are pushing through the crowd, trying to get to Jairus’ house, and this woman sees him. She knows who he is and what he can do. Mark tells us that she believed all she had to do was touch Jesus’ clothes; that would be enough to heal her (Mark 5:28). So that’s what she does. Somehow she gets through the crowd without being stepped on, reaches out and grabs the “edge of his cloak” (8:44). Jesus, being an observant Jew, would have had a prayer shawl with tassels on the four corners (Card, Luke: The Gospels of Amazement, pg. 116), so she probably grabs one of the tassels and her bleeding stops. Immediately she knows she is healed, and once she is certified by the priest, she can be back in the community.

Now remember Jesus was surrounded by a whole lot of people. It’s a crowd, and undoubtedly there are others who are in need of healing. When Jesus asked who touched him, Peter points out there are a lot of people who were touching Jesus as the crowd jostles and moves along. Others were pressing against him, probably even some who had ailments and illnesses. But only one was healed. Only one caused power to go out from Jesus (8:45-46). Far be it for me to guess the way God works, but it seems to be that this woman was healed because she was the only one who was intentional in reaching toward Jesus. She had a mission, a goal, a priority, and she was going to do whatever it took to accomplish that goal. “The bleeding woman who was rejected, shunned, and isolated from society found belonging again” because she was intentional (Kim 49).

So this woman shows us that our first priority must be is to connect with Jesus. Without that connection, none of the rest will really matter in the long run. And it’s easy, even if we’ve been a Christian for a long time, to let that relationship lag, take it for granted. “We can be in the presence of Jesus without prioritizing Him in our minds and hearts” (Kim 48). We can come here to worship, sing worship songs, read our Bibles and even pray and do it all rather mindlessly. There are times when I get up in the morning and I sit down to read my Bible and my devotions and when I’m all done I have no idea what I’ve read. My mind was elsewhere, not with Jesus. Luke doesn’t say how large the crowd was, but undoubtedly some were just there because they wanted to see a celebrity. Maybe they had seen him heal someone before and wanted another show. Maybe some weren’t even sure why they were there; they just got caught up in the excitement. They were in the presence of Jesus but not with Jesus. He wasn’t a priority. Years ago, I had a man tell me he had come to the church I was serving at the time simply because his boss told him to. He had a job that required connecting with people and his boss was savvy enough to know that one place you can do that is at church. When he started attending, it was for his business. He had no interest in Jesus. Thankfully, he heard the message preached and saw the Gospel lived out and it changed his life. Not all people are open like that. Some can be in the very presence of Jesus and it doesn’t make any sort of difference. Prioritize Jesus.

The second priority is other people. Prioritize others. Bronnie Ware was a palliative care nurse who spent countless hours with those in their final weeks of life. Her memoir was titled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, and I’m wondering if you can guess what the top two regrets were? “I wish I had staying in touch my with my friends.” And “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard” (qtd. in Kim 42). US Senator Paul Tsongas opted not to seek re-election when he was diagnosed with a terrible form of cancer. He had been challenged by a lawyer friend, Arnold Zack, who wrote him this in a letter: “No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time on my business.’” Tsongas knew that his work in the Senate, important though it might have been, was getting in the way of prioritizing others, of connecting with those who were important to him. It’s unfortunate, as these two examples indicate, that it takes us getting to the end of our lives before we realize the truth: we were made for community. Connecting with others is a deep need for all of us.

We didn’t read the rest of this story, but Jesus calls to this woman who touched him and she kneels before him. He calls her “Daughter,” and speaks to her more tenderly than likely anyone had in the previous twelve years (8:48). But most importantly, he sees her. She’s not invisible or unclean to him. And Jesus didn’t forget about Jairus. When people arrive to tell Jairus that his daughter has died, Jesus reassures him. “Don’t be afraid,” he says. “Just believe” (8:49-50). Jesus sets the example for us: don’t miss or ignore the ones who are broken, those who are maybe uncomfortable to be around, those who need community the most. Jesus prioritized others, but he did not ignore the broken in favor of the so-called “more important.”

Jesus was intentional to connect with people all through the Gospels. When he was calling his disciples, he didn’t just wait for them to find him. He found them and said, “Come follow me” (Matthew 4:19). And if some Biblical scholars are right, the fact that they were adults and not already connected to a rabbi meant these were not the brightest bulbs in the box. They had been rejected by other rabbis, so a call from this one was both surprising and meaningful. Then there’s little Zacchaeus, the tax collector from Jericho who couldn’t see above the crowds so he climbed a tree. Jesus sought him out and said, “Come down immediately. I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5). And though there are others, there’s one more we have to talk about, from the time Jesus is dying on the cross. We don’t know how long he had been hanging there, but somewhere in the midst of those six hours, he looks down and sees his mother with his disciple John. And through his pain and suffering, he tells them both, in essence, to take care of each other. “Here is your son; here is your mother” (cf. John 19:26-27). Even on the cross, Jesus is prioritizing others (cf. Kim 50).

Then the third thing is to prioritize connection. Make a real commitment to connect in some way with others. Learn their name and use it. A lot of mornings, I find my car takes me to Starbucks, and without fail, one of the baristas calls me by name while I’m picking up my chai tea latte, non-fat milk and no water. You know when they do that, it’s more likely I will return. Even more amazing was when I visited a local bakery, a place I hadn’t been for a few months, and they knew who I was. They even remembered my son, who lives in Michigan but had called and ordered from them a while back. We all like to be noticed and remembered. If you appreciate that, think how much it will mean to someone else. Now, none of those people are likely going to be in my circle of five, but that’s not the point. The point is making an intentional connection.

Have you heard of gamophobia? I hadn’t heard of that either before this past week. It’s the fear of commitment. Sometimes it shows up in dating relationships and marriage relationships. Sometimes it keeps people from committing to a new job or a church. But it’s basically the fear that something bad might happen so I won’t make a commitment, at least not a long-term one. I will see how it goes. I’ll be your friend tentatively, and if you don’t upset me or hurt me or do something I don’t like, we can keep being friends. Or for some people it’s just the fear of anything long-term. They don’t want to be tied down. And they spend their lives looking for something else, but they don’t know what. People do it with jobs, they do it with marriages, they do it with places to live and they do it with people. We have commitment issues, and let’s be real honest here: sometimes those commitment issues are caused because of what happened. Someone abandoned us, or treated us badly, or walked away from us. Here’s the reality: sometimes people change and sometimes life circumstances change. I had a really good friend several years ago and I assumed we would continue to be friends. But I moved away and he moved to a different place and his job changed and eventually we lost touch. I made a choice in another friendship that hurt my friend deeply and while we still chat once in a while, our friendship will never be the same. Things change. As it has been said, “People come to your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.” Trust that God knows what he is doing with the people he brings into your life and make an intentional commitment to the community he has put you in.

One more practical thing and then we will wrap up. In this church, our Sunday morning worship times are not really the best time to connect with others. We know that, and so we need another setting, a smaller setting, where we can connect with people, do life together, care for one another and, since we’re Methodist, eat food together. One way do that is by offering small groups of various kinds and sizes. This morning, out in the foyer, there is a table to sign up at if you’re interested in some kind of small group connection, whether that’s a Sunday School class, a LifeGroup, a Bible Study group or something else. There will be folks out there this morning to help you be intentional about overcoming your commitment issues. If you’re not connected to a group of people, I’d encourage you to stop by and pull on the hem of their garment, so to speak. Because as we close this morning, I want to ask you a simple question: is community a priority for you? Where do you belong? Let’s pray.