July 2, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Wisdom 1.13-15; 2.23-24 + 2 Corinthians 8.7, 9,13-15 + Mark 5.21-43
After twenty minutes of driving around the parking lot, a desperate shopper looked heavenward and said: “Lord if you help me find a parking place, I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of my life.” At that moment, a parking spot opened. The shopper looked to heaven and again said: “Never mind, I found one.” And with that thought, we are face to face with two desperate people: a highly placed, influential synagogue official and a woman who for twelve years has been isolated, untouchable, and helpless because of a flow of blood which in her culture made her unclean, impure, and totally isolated from human contact.
Again, this week we hear of astonishment at what Jesus does and wonder about what has happened and who is in our midst. The stories of today’s Gospel come after another sea journey from one shore to the next. These sea stories are numerous and important in Mark’s Gospel. The miracle stories today belong together, and the little subtle link is the number twelve. For twelve years the woman has suffered – exactly the age of the synagogue officials’ daughter. Desperation is all they seem to have in common; this powerful influential man and this poor isolated, helpless woman; except for their faith which gives them both access and the attention of Jesus. He does not see wealth or poverty, power or helplessness. He sees only their faith. They both fall down at his feet – one in front of everyone at the face of Jesus, the other crawling through the crowd behind him. In both stories, the power of human touch is unmistakable. “Lay hands on her.” begs the official, Jarius. “If I can just touch his garment……” thinks the woman.
What Mark puts before us after that sea journey across the sea is a contrast of faith. “Little faith” last week on the part of the disciples in the boat who need to be calmed down; and great faith on the part of a desperate man and a desperate woman. The two teach us something about death. Untouched for twelve years, unclean, and now penniless, the woman for all practical purposes has been dead; and death has come to the home of Jarius. The helpless, hopeless crowd ridicules Jesus, and the scoffing disciples question how he could ever know who touched him in that pushing, shoving crowd. But he dismisses their silly question, and he puts the crowd out of the house. These emotions of doubt and fear have no place or power where He is present. They must go. And when they are gone, the girl rises restored to life and her family. And also rising up, standing before Jesus, the woman is restored to life, raised up from her slowly consuming death and twelve years of isolation. And Jesus calls her “daughter” – affirming that she is a child of God. Jarius gets his daughter, God gets his daughter all because of a faith that has overcome fear.
On a hot summer Sunday in the mist of a holiday weekend, we take nourishment and hope from this place. We find in the First Reading from a Book written just before the time of Jesus, the way to interpret and integrate this Gospel message into our lives. Listen to it again in light of these details from Mark 5.
“God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
For he fashioned all things that they might have being; and the creatures of the world are wholesome,
and there is not a destructive drug among them nor any domain of the netherworld on earth, for justice is undying. For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”
As our nation celebrates its hope for and foundation on the ideals of liberty, we have reason to celebrate even more profoundly the freedom we have found in Jesus Christ. No Declaration of Independence can cause freedom. It can only express the ideal. But God can, does, and wills that we be free: free of fear, free of doubt, free of death. Because of this, we may declare what we hope for and record in writing for other generations the Enlightment’s version of Rights of Humankind.
The idea that we are created equal is lived in the ministry of Jesus and experienced by an influential synagogue official and an outcast, unclean, penniless woman. Jesus doesn’t know the difference between them because he sees with the eye of God. We might well pray this weekend in thanksgiving for the faith that we do have and for even greater faith that might cast out our fears and our doubts. In a nation that holds our lofty ideals, there is still too much power and influence, deciding who is really free and who is not, who lives and who dies, who is in and who is out. Fear these days still shapes our decisions and our visions. It becomes a tool for the savvy to manipulate opinion. Yet Christ still comes to cast it out, to silence those who scoff at thoughts of peace, and dismiss those who ridicule the idea that life is more precious in God’s sight than any death.
The woman of this Gospel models the faith Mark would teach us. She points to the power of faith in Jesus. She is anonymous and therefore stands for us all. She is an ordinary person who speaks her faith and builds up the community in her generation. She first put her trust in the professionals; the “doctors” Mark calls them. It was the wrong place to put her trust and her faith. Until she turned to Jesus, she was doomed. Shall it be so for us? Who is going to bring us peace, stop violence and killing, cast out fear and distrust? The Pentagon? The Congress? The Courts? The Presidency? These are the “doctors” of our time.
We are spending all that we have, and almost nothing is left. Only Jesus Christ. Only hearing and believing what the Book of WISDOM says will restore us and preserve us. “In the image of God’s own nature we have been made and all creatures are wholesome.” This is the Word of the Lord.