Touch Jesus, Receive Healing
Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday of the Year (B)
It would be hard for us to imagine a world without sickness and death. Most of us have either accompanied another person through a serious illness or have been sick ourselves. Similarly most of us have suffered the loss of loved ones. We might easily then think that death is normal and natural; and of course it is in a sense, even though it always comes as a shock and catches us by surprise.
It might then be equally surprizing for us to hear that disease and death were never part of God’s plan for us. God’s intention is our abundant life here and now, and our existence for eternity. God created us for eternal life. The first reading from the book of Wisdom explains how death entered our world and our lives through the work of the Evil One and human sin.
God’s response to our experience of sickness and death is Jesus. The encounters of Jesus with the woman who was suffering from a bleeding disorder, and the daughter of Jairus, in today’s Gospel, are parables and signs of what Jesus does for all of us through his life, death and resurrection. In Jesus, we are given the remedy for sickness and death. In him, death has been conquered and eternal life is made possible for us.
This Gospel text for today from Mark, chapter 5, is both a literary and spiritual masterpiece. The literary device that Mark uses in his Gospel is called by scholars, a ‘sandwich’. This is because Mark starts with one story, in this case the story of Jairus and his daughter, and then squeezes in the middle of this story, another narrative, this time the healing of the woman who was bleeding, and then Mark continues with the story that he started with and completes it.
The point of the sandwich literary device is to emphasise the connection between these two events. The two stories are meant to be read together because they are related. To emphasise the connection between these two stories, Mark also uses the number “12” in both stories. We read that the woman had been suffering for 12 years, and the little girl was 12 years old. And there is the reference to the title “daughter” in both stories. Jesus addresses the woman as “daughter” and there is a frequent reference in the other story to Jairus’ ‘daughter’.
The link between these two stories is the Jewish Law in the Old Testament on what makes a person unclean, both in the ritual sense, but also in terms of being in, and living in the community. The Jewish Law regarded three forms of uncleanness as serious enough to exclude the infected person from society: leprosy, uncleanness caused by bleeding, and impurity resulting from touching a corpse.
Not only would the woman in in today’s Gospel text have had a physical disease, in which over 12 years she would have felt the life draining out of her, but she was also ritually unclean. So, she had far more than a physical or medical problem. This sickness of hers would have meant that she was not allowed any contact with others and neither was she allowed to worship at the synagogue or the temple. She was unclean, an outcast, a pariah. She could not go freely among people and she could not touch anyone without making them unclean. The fact that she had been paying for her medical bills and now was unaccompanied means that she had perhaps been a woman of some importance and wealth, and that probably her husband had dismissed or divorced her. It is not difficult for us to enter into the tremendous suffering of this woman. She is sick, poor and alone.
In the Gospel we hear that she had heard about Jesus and she desperately wanted him to heal her, but she knew that touching Jesus would cause him also to become ritually unclean under Jewish Law. Think of the tremendous courage it would have taken for her to reach out and touch Jesus’s clothes. In that moment, as she touched him, the source of the bleeding dried up and she felt in herself that she was healed. Then there followed the beautiful interaction between her and Jesus, in which she knelt before him and told him the whole truth.
Then there is the story of Jairus’s daughter. It is significant that Jairus, who, as a synagogue official, had some social standing, but he humbly knelt before Jesus and begged him to heal his daughter. As he approached the house with Jesus, servants came out and said that the girl was dead. Once again, the Jewish Law applies. Anyone who touches a corpse, except the immediate family while they are preparing the body for burial, is made unclean. But Jesus touched the little girl, he took her by the hand, and she was raised from the dead.
Faith-Filled Contact With Jesus
Notice the beautiful faith of both Jairus and the woman with the haemorrhage. How often in the Gospel stories when Jesus interacts with individuals or teaches in parables, doesn’t he call for faith? Also, in both stories, the action of touch is significant. In the healing of the woman who was bleeding, she touched Jesus’s clothes. In the raising of Jairus’ daughter, Jesus touched the little girl, taking her by the hand.
What we should know and experience from this Gospel passage is that Jesus wants to engage with us personally and directly. He longs for our faith. We can approach him directly with the deepest longings of our hearts, and the concerns and burdens that we carry. We can draw strength from the personal encounter of these two people with Jesus, and the words of Jesus to Jairus and the woman who was bleeding, can be words to us, when we approach him in faith. We, in our frailty, with weaknesses and wounds, know what it means to suffer, to be incomplete, and even what it means to be “unclean”, and we need to have to courage to go to Jesus for healing and forgiveness. Like the woman who fell at Jesus’s feet and told him the whole truth, we can come before Jesus and tell him our story, the whole truth.
The woman who was bleeding touched Jesus with faith. Unlike the crowd pressing around Jesus, this woman didn’t just bump up against Jesus; rather her faith brought her into a living contact with Jesus, and as a result she experienced a dramatic healing.
Perhaps it can be said that we merely bump up against Jesus instead of touching him with faith when we approach him half-consciously, our minds fixed on other things and priorities. Rather, like the woman, we can come to Jesus, determined to touch him personally, with an awareness of the grace and power that can flow from him into our lives. Remember, we do so much more than touch the clothes of Jesus every time we receive Holy Communion, or when we consciously and intentionally engage him in prayer.
Jairus and the woman who was bleeding, represent us in our needs, our confusion, our suffering and our struggles. Those powerful words – “Talitha cumi” (Little girl, arise) - are not only addressed to this young girl in Mark's story, but also to each one of us. Perhaps in our fallen and spiritually weak state, we need to hear Jesus say to us: “I say to you, get up”. Like the young girl was given something to eat, we are given the Eucharist to strengthen and sustain us; it is the food of immortality.
Or, in the person of the woman, we can hear Jesus say to us ‘My daughter, or my son, ... your faith has restored you to health; go in peace and be free from your complaint.’ Or perhaps in the person of Jairus, we need to hear Jesus say to us, ‘Do not be afraid; only have faith.’
We can touch Jesus with, and in, faith. We can be like Jairus who in faith sought the healing and raising of his daughter. We can be like the woman suffering from the haemorrhage; and touch Jesus in faith. Let’s not be like the teeming crowd made up of anonymous, nameless faces who just bump up against Jesus and press around him. Jesus calls us to faith.