13th Sunday Year B - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2009

In the Gospel today Mark has given us two great stories: full of colourful detail. The stories go together: an older woman healed; a younger woman brought back to life.

The younger one was a daughter, daughter of Jairus. Through her father, an official of a local synagogue, she was privileged; she was part of the respectable religious establishment.  At the start of the story she was desperately sick. As the story went on, she died. By the end of the story, she was alive and well again. Mark noted that She was twelve years old.

The year that she had been born, the older woman had contracted an untreatable haemorrhage, which had remained with her for those twelve years. Within the culture, blood was life; it was sacred; so sacred, it was taboo. Haemorrhaging women were particularly taboo – or, as labelled in the culture, ritually unclean. (Remember how Mary, Jesus' mother, went up to the temple to be “purified” after her shedding blood in the process of giving birth to Jesus.)

It was bad enough for the woman to be herself unclean. But, again in the culture, her ritual uncleanness was contagious. Anyone who touched her, or whom she touched (as she touched Jesus), became ritually unclean also. She was, effectively, untouchable, quarantined, side-lined, and simply bad news - and had been so for twelve years.

Mark saw the two women, together, as symbols - he identified the younger one a Jairus's daughter, and had Jesus address the older one as My daughter. For readers familiar with the Hebrew scriptures, the title daughter immediately triggered off a connection to the Jewish people as a whole. Prophets and psalms had sometimes referred poetically to Israel as “the virgin-daughter of Israel”. Jesus' healing of the two daughters symbolised Jesus' healing of the two extremes in Israel - on the one hand, those hopelessly outcast and oppressed by the religious establishment; and, on the other hand, the respectable members of that religious establishment.

The outcasts were suffering. The establishment was dying, in fact, effectively dead. For both, the condition for their healing was faith. As Jesus said to the marginalised and despised woman: My daughter, your faith has restored you to health; go in peace, and be free of your complaint. To Jairus, the young girl's father - the embodiment of the establishment, Jesus said: Do not be afraid; only have faith.

Only have faith. What sort of faith? The sort of faith shown by the “on the margins” older woman: a faith that gave rise to hope, a faith that inspired her to move, to take action, and to risk. She couldn't recite the Creed, but she believed Jesus who said: “The Kingdom of God is close at hand: change your mind-set, and believe the good news.”
What might all this say to us?

As well as belonging to our own families and to our local community, we are all part of a world that so often seems intent on blowing itself to pieces, where so many are pushed to the edges, discounted and oppressed. The discounted and oppressed exist in our own nation: people unwelcome, picked on or scapegoated.

As well,we are all part of a Church that is changing – painfully. None of us may belong to the bottom of the pile, nor do we belong, hopefully, to the self-righteous minority; but we are somewhere there in the mix; and so often we feel powerless, lost and confused: What is going on?

Perhaps today's Gospel is saying to us: Do not be afraid, only have faith: faith like that of the ostracised woman, faith that believes that “the Kingdom of God is near at hand” (even when we can't, for the life of us, see it); faith that believes that God loves this world of ours, and everyone in it, including ourselves (even when it doesn't seem so); faith that takes on board and lives from that good news; faith that is ready to repent, to change, to see things differently: to see things, ourselves, and others, through the passionate, compassionate, and committed eyes of God; and so ready to take the risk of treating everyone, with no exceptions, with equal respect - and leaving outcomes to God.

Do not be afraid; only have faith…The child is not dead, but asleep.