Over the past several days, we’ve been inundated with stories, pictures, soundbites about three high-profile people who passed away: Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and, of course, Michael Jackson. It has given us all an opportunity to think about living and dying, about fame and the cult of personality that is so much a part of our world these days.

Those people were all household names. I imagine there were few people in the civilized world who had not heard of Michael Jackson – or, at the very least, heard his music.

Contrast that with two key characters in this Sunday’s gospel – a woman with a hemorrhage, a little girl who died suddenly. Both have a dramatic encounter with Christ. And that changes everything. He brings healing, and restores life. Their stories became woven into the fabric of Christianity, and are re-told and recounted again and again, year after year, in pulpits around the world.

And yet: we never find out their names. Like so many other figures in the gospels, they have remained anonymous. Even the one name we do hear – Jairus – is something of a mystery. The rest of his life story is lost to history.

They help remind us that it’s not who you are that matters. It’s who you are, because of Christ.

While the world has been preoccupied this week with celebrities, the papers have carried some other obituaries of people who aren’t household names.

They are people like Dr. Jerri Nielsen, who died this week from cancer at the age of 57.

If you don’t recognize her name, chances are you do know her story.

In 1999, Dr. Nielsen was doing research work at a laboratory at the bottom of the world, at the South Pole, when she found a lump on her breast, and diagnosed her own cancer. It happened in the coldest and darkest part of the Antarctic winter, and it was months before rescuers were able to reach her, to bring her home and get proper treatment. But her courage and tenacity during those long months were astounding. Not only did she perform her own biopsy, but she continued to serve as a doctor to others at the base.

Her cancer was successfully treated back in the U.S. and went into remission, but returned a few years ago.

In 2006, she wrote about what she had learned. “My experience at the pole had to do with accepting things that most people fear most deeply and coming to feel that they need not be feared,” she wrote. “It certainly had far more to do with peace and surrender than it did with courage. Being ‘on the ice’ was a great good fortune: It created a much greater clarity for me about what was essential in life.”

Or to put it in the words of Christ: “Do not be afraid. Have faith.”

And then there is Fr. Tim Vakoc, who also died this week.

In 2004, he was traveling in Iraq as an army chaplain when his jeep rolled past a roadside bomb. He was the first military chaplain wounded in the Iraq war.

He lost an eye and suffered severe brain damage. He spent the rest of his life in a nursing home in Minnesota, where he struggled to speak and to pray. Just last month, he celebrated the 17th anniversary of his ordination, mouthing the prayers with his brothers and singing hymns. A friend said that seeing him in his stole that day was a powerful testament to the priesthood – and to Fr. Tim’s deep desire, despite everything, to still be a priest.

But his injuries proved too severe. Just three weeks later, he died from an infection. He was 49.

At his funeral Friday, a classmate who was ordained with him remembered that Fr. Tim was drawn to be a military chaplain not because of war…but because of the possibility of peace.

And shortly after he joined the military, he said to his sister: “The safest place for me to be is in the center of God’s will, and if that is in the line of fire, that is where I will be.”

That may be his great message to the world. It was his way of living Christ’s defining statement in the today’s gospel.

“Do not be afraid. Have faith.”

How often Fr. Tim must have heard a whispered confession, or gazed into the eyes of a frightened teenager in an army uniform and said those words: “Do not be afraid. Have faith.”

It wasn’t empty advice. He lived it.

Fr. Tim Vakoc. Dr. Jerri Nielsen They never starred on television, or had a hit on MTV. Most people have never heard of them. When you leave here this morning, you might forget their names. But, my friends: don’t forget what they did. Remember how they strove – like those we met in today’s gospel — not to have fear, but to have faith.

Faith in possibility. Faith in the future.

Faith in the Christ who brings healing and life, even in times of disease and war.

That is what God asks of all of us. To embrace that kind of faith.

It is a faith that empowers us to reach out for some kind of contact with him, even if it’s just to touch the hem of his garment.

Faith that asks for any kind of merciful healing.

Faith that will not necessarily settle for things as they are – but will accept whatever God wants them to be.

That is what we are called to believe – and where we are called to dwell, in a place of complete trust, and complete confidence.

As Fr. Tim so beautifully put it: the safest place to be is in the center of His will.

Seek it. Embrace it.

Because, only there…will we know joy.