2 Sam 1:1, 17-27; Ps 130; 2 Cor 8:7-15;
MARK 5:21-43
Let us wait for the Lord…in whose word
is my hope.AMEN.
Today we hear a tense, story within a
story, a sandwiched story. It pictures Jesus in action, showing who he is by
showing what he does. It’s worth pausing to comment about Mark’s Gospel, its
goals and techniques, because we’ll hear chunks until Advent. Today’s healings
are one story, typical of Mark in form and content.
(Mary Fairchild and Jesuit Felix Just
write overviews of this earliest Gospel, once thought to have been written
second. I paraphrase.) This Gospel was written to prove that Jesus Christ is the
Messiah. In a dramatic and action-packed sequence of events, Mark paints a
striking image of Jesus Christ, illustrating who Jesus is as a person. Mark
reveals the ministry of Jesus in vivid detail and presents the messages of his
teaching more through what he did than what he said. He shows
Jesus to be Servant. Mark records more miracles of Christ than do the other
Gospels aiming to demonstrate Jesus as divine. Mark shows Jesus, the Messiah,
giving his life in service to mankind and explaining his mission and message
through his actions. Mark shows these actions for us to follow, learning by
Jesus’ example, and calling us each to personal fellowship with Jesus through
daily discipleship.
Mark’s Gospel uses several striking
narrative techniques. Jesus is always on the move. Mark links the stories,
often beginning sentences with “and” which pushes the narrative along, as does
using “immediately” over and over. Both words propel the Gospel, giving it a
somewhat breathless feel. Mark also tells stories within a story to emphasize
its point. This is a pattern repeated ten times—ten—so it must be intentional.
Some lectionary choices though have omitted the middle story in this morning’s
narrative. Such choose to tell the story of Jairus’s plea and Jesus’ action for
his daughter, leaving out the woman who interrupts that action. I think there
are three reasons for that mistaken editing of this healing story. First I
think there’s male squeamishness with the woman’s hemorrhages, whether for the
blood or the reason for that bleeding, a visceral or even visual antipathy to
the story. Next I think there has been a resistance to noticing patterns of
writing that show clearly that the Gospel didn’t fall out of someone’s mouth as
is, or as it happened, but clearly was created in a form to best demonstrate
the points of the story. To those critics Jesus is better shown to be Messiah
if the Gospel is understood as a play-by-play account without artistry,
technique, or intentional writing a factor— it just happened like this. They
recognize that the sandwiched stories are too crafted to be just as it
happened. Those critics find these stories both less authentic and in some way
diminish the Messiah-ship of Jesus. That’s just silly. Third, some critics
think the point of this story is the last sentence, “He strictly ordered them
that no one should know this.” This is referred to as the Messianic Secret,
that Mark was showing that Jesus wanted his identity to be a guarded secret.
This was an academic theory of the early nineteenth century, and apparently
scholars have repudiated it since the 1970’s, thinking instead that Jesus was
not keeping his identity a secret, but wanted to be able to move around, go
where he chose, without being crowded out by masses of people.
If the point of Mark’s Gospel is to see
Jesus demonstrate through his actions that he is Messiah, keeping those actions
secret makes little sense, making Mark’s point less effective. Clearly, I
hear this Gospel as one: a story within a story.
There are two healings in today’s one
narrative. It begins with Jairus, a frantic father, demanding, begging,
imploring Jesus to come and lay hands on his daughter, at the point of death.
Consider time and distance in antiquity, and yet we feel the urgency of Jairus’
plea. We ask ourselves questions like—how did Jairus know his daughter was so
sick, who told him, how long was there between knowing she was ill and getting
to Jesus, and so on. Mark conveys that breathless quality of Jairus’ begging
Jesus to come, and come immediately.
A woman, a no one, one without name or
status, and made unclean by her years of hemorrhaging, interrupts Jairus, a man
of rank and status. She had heard about Jesus and said to herself, “If I but
touch his clothes, I will be made well.” She did and immediately her bleeding
stopped, but Jesus felt some power had gone out of him. He asks who touched
him, and his disciples try to dissuade him from pausing to find that out, given
the size and pressure of the crowd. The woman came to him in “fear and
trembling” to admit that she’d touched him. “Daughter, your faith has
made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” These details and
more fill out this scene, making it real. Can’t you hear this woman sigh, and
say, “Caught. Here I am, I touched your garment, and why not? What’s it to you,
are you going to make me untouch you?” She is both scared and defensive, and
yet she must have been so elated and relieved, filled with the joy of health
and experiencing the reality of knowing Jesus as Messiah in the jolt she felt
when she touched his robe. We see her in shadow, in ragged clothes hidden and
indistinct. We see her hand reach out for that hem, and her distance from Jesus
as he raced along, and she felt her own healing, and must have felt stunned.
Did she stop in place and feel herself whole and healed, and then caught,
summoned to admit she’d grabbed at that hem. Surely she must have been torn
between wanting to melt back into the crowd and wanting to meet Jesus, look at
him, acknowledge her health and gratitude to him, and recognize him as her
hero, savior, and wonder whether he was the long awaited Messiah. Could she see
that in him? Was that too unbelievable or even scary, or was she eager to know
that of him. Because she is both unnamed and unknowable, we can put our own
questions and images into her story, leaning to reach out to him as Messiah.
We cannot linger though with her,
because Jairus is there pressing in, demanding by rank, that Jesus accompany
him immediately for his daughter. Jesus heals not to manage and maintain
an urgent care clinic, but with a bigger goal. We care about the child, since
she’s only 12, with a long life ahead of her, but she’s at the point of death.
Jairus uses his power for access to Jesus, but he sounds like any, every,
desperate parent, and we return to his urgency and forget the woman. Mark uses
details to link the stories—she’s been ill for 12 years, the child is 12—and
the latter is significant. Because the girl is 12, she’s old enough to be
married, to give life in her culture as an adult. For the woman, though, 12
doesn’t seem like a necessary number, but 12 links her to the child
artistically. There’s also the hurriedness of the woman’s encounter in
interrupting Jairus, and his hurrying for his daughter. The speediness of the
stories is about time and urgency, and that urgency melds the stories into one
narrative. Their unity then emphasizes the point of the story and so the point
of Jesus’ work, life, and mission.
Paul suggests that Jesus, or any
faithful person, is to finish doing something according to one’s available
means, and Jesus could heal these two—woman and girl. Stopping his traveling
with the disciples, he could do this, so he felt it important and urgent to do,
as we are always called to act when we can. Here, Jesus’ action kept
Jairus from being a grieving father, keening “How are the mighty fallen,” to
grieve for a beloved youth. David’s lament has echoed through the ages, and
hearing it, we’re primed to wonder whether that will be Jairus’ lot even if he
urges Jesus to come to his home for his daughter. Jairus says nothing, but is
ordered, with the household, to get her something to eat and tell no one. This
parental grief of David makes us ready to side with Jairus when he asks Jesus
to come with him.
Jesus is responding to Jairus and in
our ears Jesus keeps Jairus from repeating David’s lament. Jesus’ agenda was
not just that, though. He was serving the two sick women. While he was
following Jairus’ request, his point was to serve, to heal, and to save each
woman. He was living into his mission to serve people to save them and to
reveal himself as Messiah. Here he doesn’t talk about what he’s doing. In fact,
he tells the woman “Your faith has made you well.” With her healing in
the middle of the story of the girl, we see that it was not only faith, but it
was his action that saved both. Only the Holy One could heal a woman ill for so
long, the despair of doctors and community, a person who’d become unclean and
out of the possibility of living in community. When Jesus arrived at the girl’s
house, people reported her as dead. Only the Holy One could heal a dead person,
raise them from the dead. The two healings merge into one story previewing
Jesus’ own death, resurrection, ascension, and identification with and as
Messiah, with the living force of the Holy One, our Savior, there for us,
urging us to emulate him as servant, and there to save us always: Good
News.
© Katharine C. Black 1 July
2012
