Psalm 30
Gospel: Mark 5:21-43
We don't often get readings from Wisdom. The Book of Wisdom, also known as the Wisdom of Solomon, is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible. It is included in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) and the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Old Testament, but not part of the Tanakh or the Protestant Old Testament.
Now onto the Gospel reading. In last week's Gospel Jesus calmed the wind and sea. The blog post mentioned the miracle of walking on water in the post because the TV series The Chosen conflated the accounts of those miracles together and many of the congregation are currently watching.
This week's Gospel starts, "When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great
crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea." Two more miracles are then described. Miracles consistently highlight Jesus' divine power
and compassion. There are differences, however, on each of their unique natures and what they emphasize. Some of those differences depend on where they take place, including which side of the Sea of Galilee they were on.
The feeding of the 5,000 obviously takes place on land. It also takes place on the non-Jewish side of the sea. Calming the sea and walking on water obviously is on the sea. In today's Gospel, the setting returns to land again and back to the Jewish side of the sea. Miracles performed on land tend to focus on human needs and
direct interventions in people's lives, whereas those on water
emphasize his control over nature and the elements.
Two intertwined miracle stories, one embedded in the other, are presented here. Pastor Joan Beck was guest pastor today and she talked about these stories being layered or, as she put it, "sandwiched" together. Two stories where daughters are mentioned, one a child coming back from death briefly interrupted by a narrative of a woman healed from bleeding, paralleling how her illness is interrupting her life. Touch is important in each. The woman touches Jesus' clothes and Jesus takes Jairus' daughter's hand.
Again, when this morning’s gospel opens, Jesus and the disciples are going back over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee and the two dramatic healings follow. Besides being dramatic, they were also shocking. This is where "touching" becomes important in another way. In both cases, Jesus was touched or touches someone deemed impure in those times - a woman with an uncontrollable menstrual flow and a newly dead girl, who is at the average age for menstrual cycles to start.
On both sides of the lake, there are people who are outcast and suffering. On the “unclean” side, with the Gentiles, it would be expected that Jesus and the disciples would encounter people who were completely different, those considered unworthy and untouchable — whom respectable people held in contempt.
The two healings also happen to people respectable Jewish people would not be comfortable touching and that doesn't seem accidental. Consider the crowd in this story initially holding Jesus in contempt and ridicule by laughing at him when he declares Jairus' daughter is only sleeping. Interestingly this comes after last Thursday's debate where one candidate expressed a cynical contempt for what is happening currently in the nation, and the other struggled hard to articulate his positions against that contempt.
For Jairus' daughter, after she gets up, Jesus tells them to get her something to eat. As Pastor Joan preached, the two healings were not the end of these stories. The woman was recognized to no longer be unclean. She could participate in public life with her neighbors. And the broader community is given responsibility to take care of Jairus' daughter when Jesus tells them to give her something to eat.
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