The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 30, 2024

Mark 5, 21–43

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea. One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward. Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” He went off with him, and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him. There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.” Immediately her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him, turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who has touched my clothes?” But his disciples said to Jesus, “You see how the crowd is pressing upon you, and yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. The woman, realizing what had happened to her, approached in fear and trembling. She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”  While he was still speaking, people from the synagogue official’s house arrived and said, “Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?” Disregarding the message that was reported, Jesus said to the synagogue official, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official, he caught sight of a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. So he went in and said to them, “Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.” And they ridiculed him. Then he put them all out. He took along the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and entered the room where the child was. 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.

In today’s Gospel Reading, St. Mark recounts two events demonstrating the necessity of faith for salvation.  He presents them, as also St. Matthew does, in a story-within-a-story form, as certainly they must have occurred and as St. Peter, from whom Mark heard them, would have presented them in his preaching both in Israel after Pentecost and later in Rome.  

In the main story, a man named Jairus pleads for Jesus to come and heal his daughter.  He represents her as being “at the extremity of death”, that is, at the point where death is imminent.  When Jesus nears the house, however, those coming from there say to Jairus, “Your daughter did die.  Why are you still bothering the teacher” (literally, from the Greek).  These words strongly suggest that Jairus knew or, at least, had been told, that his daughter had died.  Losing no time, he ran out of the house where his daughter lay and found Jesus and begged him to come.  Jairus may have been suffered from denial at being told that his daughter was dead. 

Jesus agrees to go back with him.  The rebuke by those from the house seems strange to us.  These would have been mourning the death of this young girl and perhaps resented that the father had left when he should have stayed to comfort his wife and the rest of his family.  Depending on how late it was in the day, there may have been some urgency in burying her, as well, and they were responding to that.  Jesus looks upon the suffering man with great kindness and tells him not to fear but to have faith.  If we read this without knowing how the story will end, this will strike us as ridiculously beside the point.  Certainly those who have come from the house know what is going on better than Jesus, and what good is faith when there is no reason for it?  The words, “Do not be afraid” also seem very odd and out of place.  But Jesus sees the fear in the father’s eyes that it is true, that his beautiful daughter has died.

And evidently some time has passed between the time Jairus left the house and when Jesus arrives there, for, as we learn from St. Matthew’s account, the flute players have arrived and the ritual of mourning is in progress.  This would be antecedent to the body being wrapped for the burial.  Jesus looks around at all this and declares, “Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.”  The mourners doubtlessly saw this as ridicule of the grieving family and were angry with him.  But he entered the house with the father, went directly to the girl’s room, took the girl’s hand, and bid her rise,  She “arose immediately and walked around.”  She does not recover: she gets up.  It is as though she had never been sick.  The girl does not get up from her bed slowly, as though she were waking up from a long sleep.  She is suddenly alive.  Life fills her again.  The parents were utterly astounded, thunderstruck.  Outside the house the flute players are playing their doleful tunes, relatives and friends are weeping uncontrollably, but inside the girl’s room there is shock and unutterable joy.  The father had believed in Christ’s power when it was the hardest to believe, and that is real faith.  And the Lord rewarded that faith with life.  One day he will point to our graves and say, Little one, arise! and we shall, just as the daughter of Jairus did. 

The woman who suffered the blood issue likewise showed enormous faith and took terrible risks to be saved from her affliction.  Very likely she was homeless by the time she met Jesus, she entered into the crowd, where she must have covered herself up so that she would not be thrust away with sticks, for women did not mix publicly with men in those days, and since her defiling infirmity would have been known to all.  Not daring to come before the Lord but still firmly believing in his power, she thought to touch only his garment to be healed.  The Greek text for “she felt in her body that she was healed” gives the sense that she was suddenly filled with an absolute certainty that she had been healed.  It came on her like a powerful, interior jolt.  The Lord looked about himself for her — that is, giving the woman a chance to come forward — and has her tell her story for all to hear.  This gives him the opportunity to tell her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.”  That is, her strong faith in him opened the door for him to heal her.

We pray that we may so grow in our faith that we may be saved from eternal death.