In her descriptive winning sermon, Dr Masters, who has been preaching in her village church in Kent for ten years, reflects on Luke 8.40, in which a synagogue leader, Jairus, asks Jesus to heal his dying daughter. On the way to the house, Jesus heals a woman who had been “bleeding for 12 years” when she touches his cloak. He then raises Jairus’s child from the dead.
“If this was a television episode of Casualty,” Dr Masters begins, “the episode would have opened with a 999 call-handler: ‘Nearest unit divert to Church Lane, paediatric emergency at the vicarage: 12-year-old girl unconscious, breathing irregular. Hello? Are you still there Mr Jairus? Stay on the line, please, there is an ambulance on the way to your daughter.’”
Jairus would wait nervously on the drive for the ambulance, she said, only to see it flagged further down the road by a “pale and unkempt” homeless woman. This woman, an outcast, has spent all her money on unsuccessful gynaecological treatment, Dr Masters says — a detail from St Mark’s Gospel omitted from St Luke’s Gospel. “For 12 years, she has lived on the edges of society.”
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An amazing talk about love.
‘Incredible storyteller’ wins Sermon of the Year https://t.co/9VSRcVEw56 from @churchtimes
— Matt Stoney 💙💛 (@mattstoney35) July 24, 2019