Sunday Meditation: The Healer

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is still on the Sea of Galilee, and now crosses back to the other side.  While in last week’s reading Jesus admonishes for lack of faith, in today’s Gospel He praises for having faith.  First He comes across a man in moment of crises, the dying of his daughter.  As He goes across town to the man’s house to cure the girl, He comes across a woman who is in her own crises, a woman with a twelve year hemorrhage.  The woman does something that is astonishing, she touches Jesus in the hope of being healed.  She is healed.  Jesus then continues on to the sick girl when it is announced that she has died.  But Jesus undisturbed goes to the home and raises her up.  These two stories are interlocked.

 

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.

One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward.

Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying,

"My daughter is at the point of death.

Please, come lay your hands on her

that she may get well and live."

He went off with him,

and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him.

 

There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years.

She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors

and had spent all that she had.

Yet she was not helped but only grew worse.

She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd

and touched his cloak.

She said, "If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured."

Immediately her flow of blood dried up.

She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.

Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him,

turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who has touched my clothes?"

But his disciples said to Jesus,

"You see how the crowd is pressing upon you,

and yet you ask, 'Who touched me?'"

And he looked around to see who had done it.

The woman, realizing what had happened to her,

approached in fear and trembling.

She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth.

He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has saved you.

Go in peace and be cured of your affliction."

 

While he was still speaking,

people from the synagogue official's house arrived and said,

"Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?"

Disregarding the message that was reported,

Jesus said to the synagogue official,

"Do not be afraid; just have faith."

He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside

except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.

When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official,

he caught sight of a commotion,

people weeping and wailing loudly.

So he went in and said to them,

"Why this commotion and weeping?

The child is not dead but asleep."

And they ridiculed him.

Then he put them all out.

He took along the child's father and mother

and those who were with him

and entered the room where the child was.

He took the child by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum,"

which means, "Little girl, I say to you, arise!"

The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around.

At that they were utterly astounded.

He gave strict orders that no one should know this

and said that she should be given something to eat.

~Mk 5:21-43 

There are so many similarities and parallels between the two stories.  A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the story-telling technique of interlocking stories that Mark seems to love as the Markan Sandwich.  

Fr. Geoffrey Plant again this Sunday explains the passage superbly. 

Sunday Meditation: "If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured."

 

Instead of a hymn this Sunday, I will provide the wonderful dramatization of this passage as performed in the series, The Chosen.

I find that very gripping.  It captures Jesus’s lack of concern for what I will call Pharisaic reverence for what is more important to Him, mercy.