A meditation for the thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time year B
First Reading: WISDOM: 1:13-15; 2:23-24
Responsorial Psalm: PSALMS 30:2, 4-6, 11-13
Second Reading: 2 CORINTHIANS 8:7, 9, 13-15
Gospel: MARK 5:21-43
The first reading today from the book of Wisdom tells us that God made us to live. He did not create death. Death could not have come from Him who is life Himself. He formed us to be imperishable. Satan brought death into the world out of envy. To restore man to life, Jesus voluntarily accepted death so that all who believe in Him may have life. The Psalm today invites us to praise the Lord who has rescued us from the power of death. The awareness of being saved by God should fill us with gratitude, so that we live in constant praise and thanks to God who continues to save us from the power of evil. Gospel today comes from the Gospel according to Mark. Each of the four Gospel writers tells the story of Jesus from a slightly different perspective. The interpretative key to understanding an evangelist is to look at the episode the evangelist places at the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus began his public ministry in the synagogue at Capernaum. No sooner does Jesus begin to preach than a man possessed by demons comes forward to challenge Him, “what do you want with us Jesus of Nazareth, have you come to destroy us?” The answer to this question is a resounding yes. However, all Jesus says to him is, “be quiet, come out of him.” With a loud cry, the unclean spirit goes out of the man. The worldview behind Mark’s Gospel and in fact all of New Testament is that we live in the present age and the new age is about to begin. In the present age, we live in enemy-occupied territory. An evil power has made itself, for the present, the prince of this world. So, Mark presents Jesus as the one who has come to save us from the power of evil, to set us free and to restore us to wholeness. Last Sunday we read from Mark, Jesus calming the storm. The ancients viewed the storm as the force of chaos, and symbol of the malevolence of the demonic powers of the world. The calming of the storm is a clear sign that the kingdom of God is breaking the stronghold of the demonic powers of the present age, that the devil is being defeated. Today the healing of the woman with the flow of blood and the raising of Jairus’s daughter are further signs that the stronghold of the devil is being decisively defeated, overwhelmed by the reign of God in Jesus Christ. In these two miracles, we see a literary device which Mark uses a number times in his Gospel. It is often referred to as the Markan sandwich. The technical name given to this story telling technique is intercalation. We can think about it by questioning why we bother to make a sandwich. Why not just eat two slices of bread one after the other, then the lettuce, slices of tomatoes, then some cheese, cucumber and a few slices of meat? We could, but they taste better when we place them together and eat them as sandwich. By way of analogy, the two pieces of bread in this sandwich are Jairus asking Jesus to heal his daughter and Jesus eventually arriving his house only to find that his daughter had died. But the filling of this sandwich is the story of the woman with a hemorrhage. What Mark has done is to place one story inside another. The idea is that the flavor from the inner story will add to the taste of the outer one and vice versa. The stories are joined together so that they can help interpret each other. These two stories are linked in a number of ways.
i. Neither the woman or the girl is named
ii. Jairus the father of the girl and the woman fall at the feet of Jesus
iii. Jesus addressed both the woman and the girl as daughter iv. The number 12: the girl is 12 years old and the woman has suffered her health condition for 12 years. The number 12 is a symbol of the 12 tribes of Israel and represents wholeness. v. Both the girl and the woman are ritually unclean – the hemorrhaging woman because of her flow of blood and the girl because by the time Jesus arrived, she is already deadvi. Touch of Jesus: the woman touched Jesus, saying to herself, “if I can touch his garment, I will be made whole. Jesus raised the girl by hand.vii. Life: the girl is raised to life and the woman is restored to wholeness. They are made cleanThese two miracles re-emphasize the mission of Jesus as the one who has come to save humankind. To restore us to life. He became poor so that we may become rich, He became man and shared in our death so that we may share in the very life of God. According to the thinking of the time, a dead body or anyone who touches blood was considered unclean. Death and blood were factors that excluded people from the community. So, this woman and the girl were excluded from the community. The woman with hemorrhage was by the fact of her sickness forbidden to touch anyone. Nonetheless, she came up behind Jesus and saying to herself, “if I can touch His clothes, I shall be cured.” Jesus described her faith as salvific. He said to her, “daughter, your faith has saved you.” to Jairus, Jesus is asking an even greater faith. When Jairus received the terrible News his daughter had died, Jesus said to him, “do not be afraid, just have faith.” Jesus gives us hope where there is no human cause for hope. In the 70s when Mark wrote his Gospel, there was a great tension within the Christian community. Jewish converts had difficulty living with now Jewish converts because they thought non-Jewish converts lived in impurity. These two miracles worked by Jesus were a great help in overcoming this tension. Jesus entered the house of Jairus, He went to where the girl lay and takes her by the hand. He touched her and did not become impure. As for the woman who suffered hemorrhage, while the catechism of the day said, if she touches anyone, that person will also become unclean, she touched Jesus and became clean. Jesus did not become uncleanThis passage is also dealing with structures of marginalization and exclusion in the community. Are there structures of marginalization and exclusion in our church or in our society today? Do we make laws that exclude people from coming to God and be touched by His grace? Twice in the Gospel, Jesus is either touched or Himself touches someone who is ritually unclean. Not only is Jesus not contaminated, the ones who had contact with Him were made whole. This way, Jesus pulled down the boundaries that once defined the community heralding a new dawn, the dawn of the new creation.
Happy Sunday
Rev. Fr. Chidi Onwuka msscc
Nice one father