| Readings: | Wisdom 1:13-15;2:23-24 |
| Date: | June 30, 2024, Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B |
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.
The Gospel of Mark is sometimes referred to as the action gospel, since the author presents his two main messages more through Christ’s compelling actions than His word. We frequently find one story ending with Jesus and his disciples, immediately from one that event to the next. Here in today's passage, he goes even farther by including one story inside another. These two stories, individually and in their intertwining are amazing and I would suggest that you take time later today or sometime this week to re-read this passage, either to yourself or read it out loud to your children or someone else.
These two stories about what can happen when we have faith and trust in Jesus are at the on one level, radically different and yet at their core are very much the same, and are constructed in a way that they make it much easier to get the message Mark is trying to convey. What do I mean by that?
In one story we have the synagogue leader, a very respected member of the community; in the other a woman at the very lowest rung of her society because she is poor, and because her affliction involve bleeding she is unclean. In one case we have the synagogue leader very publicly beg Jesus to save his daughter, while in the other the miracle cure happens without anyone noticing except for the woman and Jesus. The miracle of healing is the only one of Jesus miracles in all the Gospels that he does not initiate. But as I said at their core they are very much the same. Both the woman and the synagogue leader trust that Jesus can help them with something that is very important to them. Neither the woman who was healed nor the synagogue leader's daughter are named but both are referred to as daughter. And the number 12 plays a part in both stories: it is the number of years the woman has been afflicted and it is the age of the leader's daughter.
What an amazing composition of these two intertwined stories! So I urge you to go back and re-read them. I do so because with all those similarities and differences I listed above the main thing about these two stories, in fact, any story in Mark, is that they call us to be Jesus' disciples. In other words, they are calling us to do as Jesus does. The main point of these two stories is not that Jesus used his divine power to do something miraculous but that in each case Jesus interacts with another human being in a way that causes good things to happen to that person.
We are called to become aware of the gifts and the power that God has blessed each one of us with. We are to recognize that all of those gifts and all of that power is given to us to be used for others. As in the case of the woman afflicted with hemorrhages, sometimes those gifts or power is taken from us, depleting us, without our knowing it at first. We are called to accept that, and to have trust that God will continue to give us what we need. We are called to ignore negativity and sometimes outright hostility that tries to keep us from helping others, especially when we know we have the power to do so.
But most importantly we are to be the body of Christ, here and now, doing exactly what Jesus did during his three years of public ministry, and that is to connect with those whom God puts in our paths at a deeply human level, so that we are able to recognize what it is that each of those people really needs and what we are actually able to give to them. To me the most profound words in these two miracle stories, the words which demonstrate that these stories are not so much about spectacular displays of Jesus' divine power, but that demonstrate the depth to which Jesus connects with the people he meets, are the last words we heard in today's reading: Jesus told the family to give this 12 year old girl something to eat. That's something Jesus does that we all can imitate.