On the surface, these stories in Mark look to be stories about healings.  Look deeper and you see these are really stories of faith and truth…facing our own truths about ourselves, and having faith in ourselves as God does…faith we can make a difference in our own lives.  These are stories about how two people of faith climbed a mountain of truth…a sacred mountain. That’s the phrase from the last stanza of the psalm.  Listen again to the psalm’s words: 

         O sons and daughters of the Light, welcome the Heart of your heart!
                 Then you will climb the Sacred Mountain of Truth;
                            You will know mercy and love in abundance.
                               Then will your transgressions be forgiven and redeemed.

O Sons and Daughters of Light (not children of darkness/children of heaviness, but children of light….lighten up you guys!).  Welcome the Heart of your Heart…God is the heart of your heart…let God in, go beyond opening the door to God’s possibilities but actually bring God into your heart with welcoming.  Welcome God as you would welcome a long lost friend or love….in your heart treat God the way you want to be treated when someone welcomes you…not niceties but genuine hospitality that comes from deep appreciation and trust.  ….Welcome the Heart of your Heart…. then you will be able to climb the Sacred Mountain of Truth…truth about your life and  your choices and your possibilities….and so enable yourself to be redeemed.  
               You can open to God in trust.  God is with you as you genuinely look at your feelings, motivations, agendas, choices.  It is through seeing and accepting the truth (about yourself) that you will know mercy and love in abundance and everything will be changed from the inside out….you will be redeemed.  
             You see, from the mountain top of truth everything looks different.  You get a long view of your realities.  You can see more clearly the path you chose that brought you to this place and time in your life.  You see clearly what has been and so what can be.  It’s not about a pity party or a guilt trip that things are they way they are.  It’s about claiming the power that is within you to change the way things are in your life from this point forward.  
                From the mountain top of your own truth, you can see from whence you came and can chart a new path that is loving and merciful…to you as well as to others.  When you look within and when you make even the smallest change, everything changes.  It is then your transgressions will be forgiven and you shall be redeemed.  “Transgressions” means places/times you have stepped over a boundary or limit.  A time when you have ignored your own boundary or limit, or you overstepped what is “right”.  This is forgiven and you are redeemed…that means brought back to your whole self and to God, placed again within your core self making for a new beginning…we call that powerful grace.
              Now the Mountain of Truth Jairus, a leader in the synagogue, climbed?  Jairus finally got it that his power, his status, and his achievements could not help him with what mattered most in his life…the well-being of his family.  Knowing what was of primary importance to him and finding the courage to stop ignoring the truth of Jesus, he risked everything to seek help.  Do you see your delusions about the systems you are hoping will save you?  Would you ask for the help you need….do you?  Jairus faced his own truths and climbed that sacred mountain.  Only when he faced his truth and changed his choices did what mattered most to him became possible.  This is not so much about his daughter being healed as it about him being healed.  Don’t you wonder what happened next to him…to her…to that family? 
          The Mountain of Truth of the hemorrhaging woman?  She had to face the truth that all the money in the world, all the doctors, all the so-called experts couldn’t help her.  Facing the truth brought her to the truth…she needed to help herself.  She had been hemorrhaging for 12 years…as long as Jairus’s daughter had been alive!  She’d been, figuratively speaking, hemorrhaging all over the place…don’t’ you know people like that…haven’t you at times been hemorrhaging your energy and your love and your anger and your life?  She faces herself and she faces the truth she has heard about Jesus rather than pooh-poohing it.  She climbs that sacred mountain.  She does not seek attention.  She seeks to help herself and ask for the only kind of help that could help her…self-acceptance and God’s acceptance.  She touches Jesus and he knows it immediately.  He asks and she shares with him “the whole truth”.  Most of us don’t want to face even our smallest truths let alone our whole truth, let alone share it.  And Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well…your faith in God as revealed in your faith in yourself and your choice to pursue truth and “inner-ease” has made you well…not cured you, made you well.  She was healed of her “dis-ease” by joining herself to the Holy, the Unity, God.
        Jesus is close by this morning…every morning.  You could reach out and touch his cloak.  He reaches out to take you by the hand for you have been sleeping, you are not at ease. 
             Jesus offers you the peace and new life that comes from facing the truth about your feelings and desires.  
          You know, I bet if you look, Jesus is climbing that Mountain with you…that sacred mountain.  Can you see him there?  You do not travel alone.  And Jesus enlists the real help of others just for you.  You do not travel alone.  Come speak to me as your pastor or spiritual director, seek the guidance of a good counselor, share with a friend, begin a meditation practice with others, come to Faith Fellowship or Centering, a class, a retreat.  It makes the climb a lot easier when you travel with others with support….at times even fun.
            Knowing you are not alone can make it easier to set out on that new journey you keep saying you want for yourself…a new way to be family together, a new way to treat yourself so others will also treat you differently, less stress, more peace, inner freedom…you know…those things you keep saying you want for yourself!
         Do you really want them or is it a clever stall tactic…talk the talk so you don’t have to walk the walk?  The stories invite you to face the facts.  Face the faith.  Believe in yourself the way God believes in you.
         Wait for the Lord…slow down so God can catch up to you and go with you.  Climb the mountain of truth.  God is ever-ready to be with you if you would only just be with God!  God is ever-ready so that we might be healed….brought to “ease”, brought into right alignment within community, restored.
           You can’t have one without the other…healing without truth, truth without receiving healing.  But….no matter if you’re ready or not, you have God…mountain or not.  God is ever-with-you and ever-ready for the climb.  Let God know when you’re ready!