(Originally posted 1/31/2017)
When my brother was near his death back in 1995, we sat down together and talked about his memorial service. Despite the difficulty and intensity of doing this, my brother was able to pick out a Scripture that really spoke to him. It seemed quite natural for my family to choose the same scripture for the funeral mass of my mother in 2016. Like so much of Scripture, its levels of insight and meaning are inexhaustible. Today’s daily mass Scripture readings include this Gospel (MK 5: 21-43).
“When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea.”
This is the opening line of Mark’s Gospel story of what some refer to as the “miracle-within-the-miracle.” It is this opening line that jumps out at me upon reading the familiar story again. More on that later…
In the story, Jesus is approached twice by persons in need of healing. First he is approached by a synagogue official, named Jairus,” whose 12 year old daughter is near death. Jairus pleads with Jesus to come lay hands on her so “that she may get well and live.” So Jesus starts off towards Jairus’ home to see the girl. Now, of course, there is a crowd following Jesus, and in the midst of the crowd is a woman “afflicted with hemorrhages for 12 years.” This woman who has been suffering for twelve years has spent all the money she had on doctors seeking to be healed, but all of this not only failed to help her, but even made her worse. We can only imagine the frustration of this woman. Yet, in the midst of all this longstanding struggle and suffering she somehow realizes that this man Jesus who is walking in this crowd can heal her, and with just the seemingly slightest “gesture.” “If I but touch his clothes, I will be cured.” So what does she do? She approaches Jesus from behind in the crowd and touches his clothes. Immediately she is healed. Jesus feels the healing power go through him and out into the crowd, and so he asks his disciples WHO it was that touched hm. They have no idea, however, the woman approaches Jesus and admits that she is the one who touched him, telling “him the whole truth.”
While all this is going on, word comes that Jairus’ 12-year old daughter has died. Jairus’ friends tell him not to bother Jesus anymore. However, Jesus dismisses their attitudes and says quite clearly “Do not be afraid, just have faith.” (In an older translation, which I prefer, he says “Fear is useless, what is needed is faith”). Jesus continues on to the house and finds quite a display of grief. He addresses this by asking “Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.” To this, the crowd ridicules him and we have one of those rare Gospel moments similar to the cleansing of the temples where Jesus forces the vendors out of his Father’s House. Here, he “puts them all out.” Clearing the space of fearful sarcasm, Jesus reverences the sacred silence of this moment with the girl and her parents… simply touching the hand of the girl, He says “arise!” She immediately responds.
There is so much in this story – the connection of the two women, one young one old, and the common shared twelve years between the two. In one case, the woman suffering from a hemorrhage herself reaches out to Jesus, and in the girl’s case, she is touched by Jesus. In both cases there is the overcoming of death and how this relates to faith. And then there is this predominant theme of fear and faith. The crowd seems to “hold” the fear, and this fear is founded in a seeming hopelessness that suffering and death have no meaning. And there Is constant flowing movement: Jesus crosses in the boat to the other side, the woman in the crowd touches Him from behind in the crowd and then approaches Jesus’ head on when he inquiries about the healing, Jesus enters the dead girl’s house, and she arises and begins walking around.
Faith and fear, reaching out and receiving, weeping and healing, death and life – these are all realities that seem to cross each other in this Scripture story. I am not, though, convinced that the Gospel story is setting up an opposition between the seeming dualities, as much as bringing them together in a new and transformative context! And this transformative context is ultimately bound to relationships.
The only relationship in fear is isolation. Suffering and dejection, when not shared, addressed and healed, within the larger community, will always result in growing fear and isolation, loneliness, skepticism and indifference, and ultimately hatred and violence. This woman who has been suffering for 12 years, from some mysterious Holy “place” in the story has the nerve to believe that she will be healed by this Master of Love who is in the crowd. She “knows” that just to touch his cloak will mean that she is healed. But she has to be in the crowd to do it! She has to maneuver within this environment of confusion, perhaps ridicule and fearful skepticism in order to be healed. I don’t know why this is the case, but it seems to be so. And how wonderful is it that in this story the woman, without the familiar scene of Jesus asking her “what she wants from him,” simply acts in faith and risk to receive (not take) what she knows is offered.
Equally amazing is how the crowd, who witnesses this bold act of faith, immediately goes back to the fear environment, when they hear that the young girl whom Jesus was to heal has now died. So, the story is repeated, but in a continuous flow, this time Jesus reaches out and touches the hand of the dead girl to heal her, and in the process calls into account the atmosphere of fear and cynicism that the crowd is intent on holding. The woman suffering from a hemorrhage (which itself could be explored separately from this reflection) realizes and responds to the relationship that Jesus invites, in fact, that Jesus IS. And then, Jesus Himself it seems is inspired or even empowered to move forward and extend the relationship of faith, trust and healing forward and outward, now to the twelve-year-old who has died and her family.
But what of the fearful crowd? The crowd is not separate from what is going on. The relationship is happening within the crowd, beaconing to the crowd to join in and appreciate and indeed reap the fruits of this transformative relationship. What will it take for us to let go of the fears that prevent us from not just seeing the miracle of Love and Healing, but more importantly prevent us from participating in it. The flow of Healing cannot be stopped, but we can certainly manufacture some pretty hefty obstacles that fool us in to believing that the God in Love with us is not always seeking to Love us in and through each other.
Suffering and death are realities that we face each day on different levels in our relationships with each other and the world. The question though is how will we allow Life in all of its experiences to “cross” us, or to transform us, like the meeting point of the two pieces of timber in a cross. The meeting point is not static but flowing out in all directions.
Now back to where we began this reflection… Just as Jesus “crosses” again to the “other side” as we hear in today’s Gospel, we are called not to cross out “sides” of life, but to cross through them, realizing and responding to our own suffering and fear BY and THROUGH responding to other’s suffering and fear (and vice versa). In this way we cross fear IN faith, staying in and near the crowd and staying close to the “sea” of Love and healing that constantly longs to wash over us.
Peace
Thomas
The soul is the delicate yet durable cloth woven and laced together in loving pattern by the merciful strokes of God’s Passings…
And the sheen of our soul is the ever-glowing awareness we have of this sacred-stitched fabric.