13th Sunday Year B
See Commentary on Mark 5:21-43
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.
Homily 2 – 2012
Jesus commended the haemorrhaging woman with: Your faith has restored you to health. He challenged the synagogue official, distraught over the news of his daughter's death: Do not be afraid; only have faith. Mark connected the two incidents because he saw both characters symbolizing the extremes of the community: those at the bottom and those at the top of the social and religious system. Their respective healings symbolized the wholeness that Jesus wished to bring to every level of Jewish society. Only have faith. Jesus wasn't referring to the accuracy of what they believed about him but to their capacity and readiness to trust him, to entrust themselves to him.
Church leaders today talk about the crisis of faith in Western culture. Depending on how they envisage faith, some see the solution to this crisis in what they have come to call "The New Evangelisation". Go out and teach the basics – be clear, be forceful. Undoubtedly, there is a place for that. But who will listen? Indeed, who will go further and respond with commitment? We can all be challenged on that score – those outside the Church, but also those of us within it. As I read the Gospel, I see Jesus challenging to commitment – challenging people to trust him, and his way of non-violent love and of universal outreach.
Might the religious crisis confronting the modern Western world reduce to a question of people's ability and readiness to trust and to commit themselves? … to commit themselves not only to a religious lifestyle, but virtually to anything, certainly, to anything transcendent? Have we in our Western world lost our nerve? Have we opted for security and familiarity, for abundance, and limitless information and distraction instead? Lacking trust to move beyond what we think we can control, we confine our attention to our kitchens and our home improvements?
Perhaps we have reason no longer to trust many of our institutions: the press, the banking industry, the parliamentary process, Trade Unions, the police, and, not least, the Church. Perhaps for some, their betrayed trust in certain individual persons has left them badly bruised.
We need somehow to find balance between naively giving trust and fearfully withholding trust. If we won't trust, we won't commit. If we won't commit, we can never mature and become whole. I find Jesus' comment to the synagogue official quite relevant: Do not be afraid; only have faith. We fear surrender in faith and trust. It takes courage. It also takes wisdom to sense whom we can trust. Both – courage and wisdom - are hard to cultivate. But if we don't cultivate them, we shall never become whole … never, really, surrender - even to God.
Perhaps, we can be helped, and also help others, to become increasingly trusting and trustworthy. I remember, early on in my priesthood, celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation with a young girl in grade five or six. I can still see her today calmly looking me straight in the eye with total trust. Her trust had a profound effect on me. It became an inescapable incentive to become ever more trustworthy.
We need each other. We all need others to trust us if we are to grow trustworthy. Others need us to trust them if they are to become trustworthy. We all need wisdom and discernment. We all need courage. We shall make mistakes. Our trust will be betrayed. But if we are trusted enough by enough others, we can live with betrayal and move beyond.
Your faith has restored you to health.
Homily 3 - 2015
In telling his stories of these two women the way he did, Mark was clearly up to something. One had been afflicted by her haemorrhage for twelve years. The younger one at the point of death was twelve years old. To scripturally alert Jewish readers, twelve served to put them in mind of the twelve tribes of Israel, that is, of the people as a whole. The women were both called Daughter, one by Jesus, the other by her father, the synagogue official. Suffering Israel was traditionally referred to as Daughter of Israel. So, as well as being individuals persons, the two women were also complementary symbols of Israel as a whole. By situating the stories where they are in his Gospel, Mark also showed what he was effectively up to. Remember Jesus’ comment last week to the terrified disciples caught in the storm. Why were you frightened? Have you no faith? Faith was Mark’s concern.
So what was Mark’s message? Israel was suffering. The older woman’s constant bleeding meant that she was always ritually impure, and her ritual impurity was contagious. Consequently, she was marginalised, ostracized from society. Whole swathes of Israelite society were similarly marginalised, for a variety of reasons. The society was divided. There were those on the inside, those on the outside. At least the woman in the story did not bear her marginalisation without a struggle. Long ago, she had been prepared to spend all she had on ineffectual medical interventions. Now she went so far as to touch Jesus’ clothes in the hope that he would somehow help her. In her desperation, she was open to take the risk of making him ritually impure in the process. Jesus’ response to her was to say, Daughter, your faith has made you whole.
Along with those marginalised in Israelite society, there were those who did the marginalising – the religious elite, symbolised by the synagogue leader and his daughter. His daughter was dead. Those comprising the religious elite were dead; their future was dead. But even they were not beyond rescuing. Jesus’ message to the synagogue leader was, Only have faith! Only have faith, and dead Israel could become alive once more.
Earlier in his Gospel, Mark had shown Jesus proclaiming the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent. And believe the Good news. We know that “repent” is a poor translation. What Jesus called for was a whole new way of looking at things, a whole new way of living. That new way of looking meant believing the good news that God is present; indeed, recognising that “the world is charged with the glory of God” [as the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins put it] – and treating everything, everyone, respectfully. That is what Jesus was driving at when he said to the distraught father of the privileged but dead girl, Only have faith. and to the marginalised woman, Your faith has saved you. That was the faith he was talking about – the faith that sees everyone, everything, with the loving eyes of God.
Pope Francis has just released a new Encyclical Letter dealing with “the world charged with the glory of God”, and its consequences for us. He addresses the issue of global warming, but ranges much more widely than that. He looks at the world’s fragile ecology as it is being abused even now. He sees a close connection with ecological issues and issues of justice, particularly as they inevitably affect the poorest and most marginalised of society. He sees the issues already as urgent. Briefly, he sees the factors driving the destruction of the world’s ecology as consumerism and the unbridled search for profits – though his analysis is more inclusive than simply those two issues.
He believes that saving the world will involve nothing less than a radical and urgent conversion of heart on the part of all. We need indeed to cultivate a contemplative approach to creation and to ourselves. We are not accustomed to hearing such things. Are we ready to be challenged?
Homily 4 - 2018
What a great Gospel today! And how relevant to where we are now as Church! Two women, one twelve years marginalised, discarded and excluded by a male-dominated religious culture because of an untreatable uniquely gynecological condition; the other, twelve years old, carefully protected, facing puberty, respected within the religious culture, but facing death.
And then there is the male: synagogue official, used to power and influence, but in this case helpless. Distraught, he does a deal with Jesus. He bargains his dignity, his honour, falling at Jesus’ feet and pleading with him for his desperately sick daughter. Within the honour culture of the time, his action places a duty on Jesus to return the compliment, to hear his plea and to do what he is asked. Jesus honours the transaction, and goes with him.
The woman has absolutely no power, nothing to bargain with. She has only need. No! she also has hope, hope in the goodness and the mysterious authority of Jesus. She takes a risk. She furtively touches Jesus’ garment and in the process ritually defiles him. But Jesus responds to her, heals her condition, listens to her whole story, reaches out to her as his daughter; and she experiences within her healing and wholeness.
To me, this story seems wonderfully relevant. Here we are as Church, experiencing humiliating marginalization. We have lost our attractiveness, and with it lost the feeling of familiar and comfortable power. We have been crumbling from within. From outside, we have been challenged to change by a Royal Commission – challenged to become aware of deep defects, to alter what the Commission calls our culture, the familiar ways we see and do things and how we interact. Specifically we have been directed to recognize the dangerous ways we have ignored the particular gifts of women and their wisdom, and used Canon Law to exclude them officially from significant decision-making and over-sight.
I believe that today’s Gospel passage indicates a few ways to face our problems. The woman showed initiative, motivated by what the translation calls faith, but involves also hope, what we might better call trust. We need women in the Church who trust enough to take initiative. It is happening. Precisely because your experience in the past has been so disheartening, you need hope, you need trust – trust in yourselves, but especially in Jesus who is interested in you and who sees in you cooperators who together can change the Church.
The Gospel passage says more. As Jesus continued his way to the official’s house, the man’s young daughter died. The situation had deteriorated from desperate to literally hopeless. The synagogue official, the man of local power and influence, representative of the religious structure, could do nothing. Not so! said Jesus. He said, “Do not be afraid; only have faith”. That meant profound change. Structures work through control. The official’s falling at Jesus’ feet, a seeming indignity, in the honour-saturated culture of the time gave him a way of controlling Jesus’ response. That is the way cultures inevitably operate – control. And why? because radically their leaders [including, in the Church’s case, bishops and priests] are unconsciously afraid that without controlling, things will fall apart.
Jesus got to the heart of the problem: the fear that generates control. Could the official trust? Can the male-focussed Church trust the authority, not of control but of truth, and integrity; not of law, not of government sanction, not of personal learning? Can it learn to trust Jesus, to trust the guidance of the Spirit, to trust the attractiveness of truth and genuine value, of love, of non-violence – and keep on trusting? Can it let go of power, of the search to dominate? Such is the cultural change that alone can lead the Church today from death to life. “Do not be afraid! Only have faith!”
The Gospel passage concluded, “Give her something to eat”. On our part, what better than the enlightened, reflective, deliberate, regular celebration of Eucharist - of the death that led to resurrection?
Homily 5 - 2021
Might today’s Gospel be saying something that we in today’s Church could well consider closely.
Centuries before Jesus, at a time in Israel’s history when the Jewish kingdom faced extinction and the people deportation to Babylon and possible genocide, the prophet Jeremiah spoke of the desperate nation as the “virgin-daughter of Israel”.
As the nation once again faced a threshold moment in its history, Mark in his Gospel showed Jesus dealing with two flesh and blood “daughters” of Israel, one, just twelve years old, daughter of the establishment, due to cross from childhood into adulthood but facing the prospect of physical death; and the other, whom Jesus tenderly referred to as “My daughter”, at her wits end after twelve years of physical pain and social and religious exclusion and consignment to the margins.
Today our Church is changing. We seem to be losing members fast, committed members, and we are not sure what to do.
Could we see the synagogue official, father of the desperately sick little girl, as symbol of the Church’s hierarchy and clerical class generally? In that case, we might see the older woman as representative of the laity.
The woman clearly trusted that Jesus could, and would, answer her need — but she had to deal with her fear. Hoping to remain anonymous and avoid notice, she managed, at least, to approach Jesus from behind and surreptitiously touch his clothes. When discovered, even though she knew she was cured, she came forward “frightened and trembling”. Jesus then gently encouraged her to grow from hesitant trust to personal relationship with him, from healing to wholeness — such that she was able to find the courage even to share with him “the whole truth” of herself and her life. By healing her, Jesus brought her in from the edges, freeing her for responsibility within the community. It was to her that Jesus said, “My daughter, your faith has restored you to health; go in peace and be free from your complaint”.
There are significant differences with the synagogue official. His initial request to Jesus seems more like desperate hope than confident trust. Jesus needed to lead him further into faith and trust. He raised the stakes, as it were: by spending time with the woman, Jesus had allowed the little girl to die. Healing sickness was one thing. To trust Jesus to do that was challenge enough. That Jesus might restore his dead daughter to life called for a radical readjustment and a level of trust in Jesus bordering on total. And then, what would it mean to him in his situation, a responsible official of the religious structure, and to the whole establishment of which he was part, if Jesus could restore the dead to life? It would mean moving well beyond the familiar and the comfortable. It would mean risking radical change, facing the unknown, moving into genuine personal relationship with Jesus. Gently, encouragingly, Jesus asked two things of the man, firstly, “Do not be afraid”, and then, “Only have faith [that is, total trust].”
If ever, whenever, you start worrying about the Church and its future, remind yourself of what we heard in today’s Gospel. Respect your fear, but be guided and encouraged by the words of Jesus:
“Do not be afraid! Only have faith”.
“Your faith has restored you to life.”
What does our Church need in these times? Courage and total trust.