Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

I said last week that any number of times in order to really get a sense of the Scriptural readings presented in the liturgy, a person really should read them as part of a series, rather than as isolated passages, the idea being that it is the Gospel that teaches, presents an image of Christ, rather than any particular Gospel story.

And that is certainly the case again this weekend. The two incidents in this Gospel reading are a continuation of the series begun in last Sunday's Gospel, a series of four miracle stories carefully arranged by Mark, almost orchestrated by Him to complement, fill out his version of the parables of the Kingdom presented a few weeks back. The first was the story of the calming of the storm, last Sunday, then the casting out of a demon, a story not included in the liturgical series, then the two incidents that make up this reading, the healing of the woman, and the raising to life of the child. These stories present in very concrete images the power of Christ over the natural world, the supernatural world, over illness, and ultimately even over death itself. And the fuller point made by the series of stories would be that all the power necessary to bring about the coming of the Kingdom, to make the imagery of the parables more than wishful thinking is indeed in Christ. There is nothing vain or presumptuous about His promises. He is simply describing what will be. And it will be because He chooses it so. The power to recreate the world, and humankind with it, according to the original design of the Father has been given to Christ, and it is in His company, according to His terms, that that power will be felt in the lives of human beings.

These two incidents this morning are another good example of Mark's particular flair for storytelling. They are full of detail, colorfully, dramatically staged. The healing of Jairus' daughter is presented really in two acts, the narrative interrupted by the story of the woman with a hemorrhage. I don't believe there is another composition quite like that in the Gospels. It seems to serve no purpose other than to heighten the dramatic effect, allowing a space of time for the girl to die, and so set the stage for Christ's fullest display of power. What had begun as just another healing becomes in fact so much more. Both stories are full of the kind of colorful detail that apparently appealed so strongly to Mark. You almost get a feel for the pushing and shoving of the crowds as Christ tries to work His way through a typical Oriental bazaar. Mark gives the medical history of the woman who approached Christ. She had seen all sorts of doctors, and not surprisingly, spent all of her savings in the process. Some things apparently just never change. At the house of Jairus, too, again the crowds. Everything in the Orient seems to draw a crowd, and a noisy one. It is not too difficult to imagine the sound of the keening and wailing of the mourners, and Christ's irritation with all of that noise. "Why do you make this din?" He asks, as He pushes His way inside the room, and clears out all the on-lookers. As I read this passage, it struck me for the first time that here too, as seems so many times to be the case, the only Apostles Christ took with Him as direct witnesses to this show of power were Peter, James and John. So many times it is just those three that Christ involves in His most private and telling moments. They were with Him at the Transfiguration they were with Him at the Agony in the Garden. I'm curious as to why them? Peter I suppose is obvious enough. Christ would naturally want Him to have the clearest insight possible into the work of salvation. James was to become the head of the church in Jerusalem, so perhaps Christ felt that he too needed a particularly strong base of experience. And perhaps Christ simply liked John, enjoyed having him around, wanted to share His experience with John as much out of friendship as anything else. If so, that is an appealingly human picture of Christ. John is a kind of a veiled figure in the Gospel, but an intriguing one. He was the only one of the Apostles not to die a martyr's death. In fact, it was rumored for a while in the early Church that John was not going to die at all. That did not prove to be the case however. At any rate, somehow those three seem to get in on the ground floor a good bit of the time.

There is an odd sort of twist to the story of the woman that makes Christ seem surprisingly, almost incongruously human. The picture is of Christ pushing His way through the jostling crowd trying to reach Jairus' house, hemmed in by curious, noisy people, crowding so close that He really can't see what is happening anywhere but directly in front of him. That is the kind of picture that gives most of us claustrophobia, but it was really pretty much the typical experience of anyone trying to move through an Oriental bazaar, even just to get the daily shopping done. Then to that picture is added the image of the sick woman, timidly, almost furtively sneaking up behind Christ, really hoping He wouldn't notice her, reaching out to do no more than touch the hem of His cloak, and in that unnoticed touch, to be healed. She does so, and is healed. And Christ's reaction is very strange. The Gospel says that he was aware that power had gone out of Him, but didn't know how, or into whom. It is as though Christ's power were something apart from Him, a measurable, commodity like the charge in a battery, something that could be tapped, drained, if a person had the right connection, technique. In this image, Christ's power is a possession, not a quality, something He has, not something He is. He stops, puzzled and asks, "Somebody touched Me. Who was it?" And the Apostle's response, believe it or not, is an example of what passes for a joke in the Gospel. Semitic humor 2000 years ago does not very closely parallel our own, but puns and sarcasm were considered funny stuff, and the Scriptures have plenty of both. So the answer is, "You are surrounded by hundreds of people, and You ask 'Who touched You?'" But Christ pursues the thing, and keeps looking around until the woman comes forward and admits that it was she. All in all, it is a very odd story. I doubt that there is anything quite like it anywhere else in all of Scripture, let alone in the Gospels.

And the reason why it sounds so strange in the context of Scripture is that is a very Greek story. Mark wrote for a Greek audience, his Gospel was used most extensively outside of Palestine, by a people whose literary tradition was much closer in tone and flavor to the first reading, from the Book of Wisdom, than to the rest of the Gospel. Here Christ is most uncharacteristically used as almost a sort of literary device. He is presented as something much closer to a Greek god than to Yahweh. Greek mythology is full of stories that sound like this. Zeus, Mars, Hera, and especially the demi-gods, Hercules, Perseus, and so on were beings whose power was very much a commodity, something they guarded jealously. Greek mythology has any number of stories of human beings cajoling, tricking the gods out of some of their power, winning it away from them. Usually when they found out about it, they were plenty mad, and punished the culprits drastically. Tantalus, Prometheus, and so on. For the Greeks, divine power was an automatic thing, an abstract force used by the gods, but in a sense independent of them, a natural force that they knew how to control and no one else did. For the Greeks, plugging in to that power, benefiting from it was as much a matter of knowing the right formula as anything else, being in the right place at the right time. In order to use the power of the gods for one's own ends, all a person had to do was be sneakier than they, cleverer. Mind you that never worked for too terribly long. You would be found out sooner or later. The gods were after all jealous of their power. But if you didn't mind the risk, you could get some pretty fair short-term gains.

So in this odd and uncharacteristic story Mark sets up for his Greek readers a pretty familiar scene. Humanity badly in need of re-creation moves into the presence of divine power, hoping that some of what is there will automatically rub off on them, trying to be in the right place at the right time, risking the ill-favor of the gods in the hope of being healed. Impersonal power, after all is a risky business. A person can get clobbered just as easily as cured.

And the point of all of this, is, of course, that once Mark has set up this familiar scene, he challenges it, denies it, counters it with a description of what divine power really is, and how it is to be made real in the world. Christ is suddenly very much back in character. No longer simply a literary device, He is Christ again. He seeks out the woman, speaks to her face to face. It is no longer He who is puzzled as to what has happened, rather He reveals to her what has happened. There had been a recreation indeed, the woman was wholer, closer to what God intended her to be. But that had happened not because she had planned her strategy well, or had managed to get away with a trick, or had had the boldness to run the risk of exposing herself to divine power. It had happened because she had faith. Far from recrimination, or a fit of jealous anger, Christ blesses her. "Go in peace. Because you approached Me trustingly, if a little foolishly, you are cured." And the word that is used here for "cured" means really "saved, made whole, brought to completion."

And now the impact of the interweaving of this story with that of the raising of the little girl becomes much clearer. Mark contrasts this Greek healing story with a very Semitic one indeed. Here it is Christ who approaches humanity in need of recreation, simply because He was asked to do so. He even pushes His way through the crowds to get there. And once there, His contact with the girl is far from automatic and impersonal. He sets the stage. He clears the room of pointless noisy distractions, His focus is on her, a far cry from the crowd scene of the earlier healing. He speaks to the girl, He touches her, the stuff of normal human contact, a bond between two people. And in that she is saved, made whole. In that normal human contact with Christ, everything is made as it should be. The girl walks, she eats, she lives.

So that is how it happens. That is how the re-creating power of God is made real in the world. Through the direct personal relationship we have with Christ. Through faith. Through our willingness to let Christ change us, change our experience, our world is re-created indeed. In the Gospel last Sunday, Christ told believers, "You think you are in danger, but you are not." Today He tells believers, "You think death can overtake you, end you, but it cannot. What you think you see happening around you is not. The child isn't dead. Just asleep.

So. The re-creation of the world, the building of the Kingdom. It happens first in the experience of believers, those who see and judge, and love the world as Christ does. In Greek mythology Prometheus drained an uncaring Zeus of the power of fire and with it brought new life to human beings, at great risk, and great price. In the Gospel, Christ brings the life of the Father to us in His own hands, holds it out and says, "Here, get up and take it, trustingly. If you do, you will be made whole."

Readings: Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24; 2 Corinthians 8:7-9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43. The homily was preached on Sunday, June 26, 1994.