I. Theme – Compassion and Healing
"Jesus heals the bleeding woman" – From the Catacomb of Sts Marcellinus and Peter
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Lamentations 3:21-33
Psalm – Psalm 30
Epistle –2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Gospel – Mark 5:21-43
Today’s readings encourage us to remember God’s goodness and act toward others with the same unflinching generosity and compassion. Lamentations reminds those who are suffering that God’s goodness will surely come. Paul encourages the Corinthians to offer their surplus of wealth to other communities who are in need. In the gospel, Jesus brings the daughter of Jairus, a synagogue official, back to life in anticipation of his own resurrection.
We are called to live for others and not for ourselves. We are called to share what we have with others and to be in solidarity with the poor and the marginalized. We are called, most of all, to remember that God’s love endures forever, and that at times we need to wait, and not lose hope. The woman who suffered for many years in Mark’s Gospel did not lose hope, neither did Jairus in the time of crisis for his daughter. We know that God through Jesus Christ gives us new life, a life that transcends death, a life that calls us into solidarity with others and to share what we have, for Christ lived not for himself but for all; we also are called not to live for ourselves but for others.
The Judeo-Christian concern for the poor and needy has become overwhelming in this day when the whole world of nations is at our doorstep. We hardly know how to respond. International economic injustices prevent the distribution of national resources on the basis of simple human need. Welfare and many other social obligations have largely become the responsibility of governmental agencies and institutions. We are not too conscious of the individual injunction to be our brother’s keeper.
Still, those who live under biblical mandates do what they can to relieve human need, as they are able. “For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a man has, not according to what he has not.” Voluntary and secret pledging may be hazardous to the Church, but it is in the spirit of what we are called to do. As Paul says, “…so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have.”
The motivation for such stewardship of our resources is our response to Jesus’ voluntary poverty that we “might become rich.” If our gratitude and love for his life given for us is genuine, we are spontaneous givers. Paul equates liberality with our desire to fulfill the will of God, who has given us all that is necessary for our well-being. What and how we give it is really a matter between ourselves and God and reflects our relationship with God.
The passage from Mark seems incongruous with today’s other readings, but it may be related squarely to our sense of gratitude. There are two open secrets in the Gospel of Mark. One is that Jesus is lord over all life in both the natural and spiritual worlds, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. The signs of God’s kingdom come in Christ are staked out all over the countryside if we can but read them in his words and deeds. The other secret is that faith alone will enable us to receive the blessings Jesus brings to the world.
For the first time in Mark’s gospel, a respectable member of society “falls at Jesus’ feet.” Whatever mixture of motives he might have, the ruler of the synagogue also has some faith that Jesus can help his dying child. Jesus recognizes the quantum of faith in Jairus and responds to it. Our lord is quick to respond to any budding faith, no matter how it is mixed with self-serving interests.
But the little girl dies before Jesus reaches her. Why trouble him further when death strikes in the midst of hope? We say “where there is life there is hope.” But Jesus, already challenged and victorious over the violence of nature and demonic forces, goes immediately to meet death head-on and calls the daughter of Jairus out of her “sleep.”
God is not the God of the dead but the living. “I am the resurrection and the life…He that believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” So Jesus vanquished death also, demonstrating that he is lord even over the last enemy of life.
Jesus has proved how genuine is his love for us. Our gratitude moves us to find our brothers and sisters in need and carry on his gracious work.
II. Summary
Old Testament – Lamentations 3:21-33
In 587 BCE the Babylonians captured Jerusalem, destroyed the temple and led the Jewish leaders into a fifty year exile. This traumatic event was the most desolate time for the Jewish people. Their suffering was bad enough, but their spiritual anguish was unbearable. Every way that their theological struggle took them was unacceptable: was God no longer interested in their welfare, not powerful enough to stand against the invading powers, or, worst of all, not even present in the temple?
From the depths of their suffering, the author of the book of Lamentations gives vent to his feelings of anguish in five carefully constructed laments. The first four poems are acrostics, each verse beginning with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. As we might say, these verses chart the gamut of pain “from A to Z.”
But a lament is not just an outpouring of pain. God is steadfast and always present in the greatest suffering. God is faithful to those who wait. God does remember, God does hear our prayers, and though it may be a long time, when we wait for God, God will come through. This particular reading today ends with the reminder that God does not willingly cause pain or grief. This is important for us to remember. God restores. God heals. Punishment is our own doing, suffering with the consequences of our own actions, but it is not what God desires. God’s desire is compassion and love. The mercy and compassion (“steadfast love”) that characterize God’s covenant relationship will eventually be manifest.
Psalm – Psalm 30
Psalm 30 is another song about steadfast love and waiting for the Lord. We are reminded that God is the one who brings healing and restoration, who comforts and waits, and we are called to wait faithfully for God.
This psalm is a lament, a plea for deliverance from unspecified trouble. The psalmist makes an implicit confession of sin (vv. 1-3), puts his trust in the lord and exhorts the community to do likewise. This psalm is also called the “De profundis” (from the Latin translation of its opening words, out of the depths). It is one of the seven traditional penitential psalms and has often been set to music.
Epistle – 2 Corinthians 8:7-15
At the meeting of the elders in Jerusalem that dealt with the relationship between the Jewish and Gentile churches of Christians, Paul had agreed to “remember the poor” (Galatians 2:10). The Jerusalem community, persecuted by the Jewish leaders and suffering from the effects of sustained food shortages in Judea (Acts 11:27-30), was itself in particular need of help. Paul was diligent in encouraging the communities he had founded to donate for its relief (1 Corinthians 16:1-4). 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 is a plea from Paul to the church in Corinth to remember the poor, to remember that the call of Christ is to live for others and not for themselves.
Paul speaks of a balance–it is not that one should give up everything and become poor to suffer, but it is to show solidarity and compassion. Paul is clear that he does not want those who give up to feel the pressure and suffering. It is a message of solidarity, of understanding the suffering that others go through, and recognizing that all of what we have comes from God and that we do have an abundance from God to share.
This provided a way of maintaining fellowship with the Jewish branch of the Church, with which relations were sometimes strained. In Paul’s eyes, the Gentile churches were already indebted to the Jewish church for the gift of the gospel (Romans 15:27). He cites the example of the Macedonian churches in order to incite the Corinthians to similar efforts.
Theologically speaking, Christians have already given themselves to the lord in response to God’s love shown in Christ. Their response to one another is to be patterned on Christ’s own self-emptying in the incarnation (Philippians 2:6-11). Gratitude for the riches Christ has given motivates true generosity to one’s neighbor. Imitating Christ’s generosity is the ideal to strive for.
Gospel – Mark 5:21-43
The gospel reading this week is the story of the raising of Jairus’s daughter, omitting Mark’s intervening story of the woman with the hemorrhage. Both stories speak of faith and restoration, each in a different way.
A man named Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, comes to find Jesus because his daughter is gravely ill, and while Jesus is traveling to Jairus’ house, a woman reaches out and touches the hem of his robe and is made well. The little girl is also found to be alive and Jesus calls to her to get up. Both are stories of faith, the woman having suffered from bleeding for many years, the little girl being close to death–both are brought new life. Jairus’s plea that Jesus touch his daughter, “that she may be made well, and live” may be interpreted also that she may be saved and have (eternal) life.
This resurrection, this new life through Jesus is not just found at death, but it is found in our lives now, as the woman who was healed can attest to, as the people who heard Jesus’ teachings and began to live for God and for others shared, such as the woman at the well. In this story within a story, we hear the fullness of the message of resurrection: that new life is possible now, and transcends death and this world.
The faith Jesus asks of Jairus can mediate grace to his daughter. It represents the faith of the community on behalf of the individual. Jairus is challenged (v. 36) to respond where the disciples have failed (4:40).
The term “sleeping” was a common euphemism for death, but what Jesus meant by saying “the child is not dead but sleeping” is not certain—whether she was in a coma of some sort, or whether, from the perspective of the kingdom of God, even physical death is but an interlude (John 11:1-13; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14). The Greek word for “get up” is one of the common terms describing Jesus’ resurrection (Mark 16:6). The injunction to silence signals Mark’s concern that the resuscitation of Jairus’s daughter cannot be truly understood until Jesus’ own resurrection—even though the proof of life, eating, is similar in both cases (Luke 24:30-31; Acts 10:41).
III. Articles for this week in WorkingPreacher:
Old Testament – Lamentations 3:22-33
Psalm – Psalm 30
Epistle – 2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Gospel – Mark 5:21-4