Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

John 6:51 – 58

When I was first ordained I gave a sermon in which I referred to the symbolism of the Eucharist. One of our parishioners decided that I was a heretic and wrote a letter to the bishop, who passed it on to Monsignor Devine, who shared it with me having blocked out the name of the sender. I've had others criticize my sermons since then, but that was devastating. Because I do believe that the Eucharist is the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ, the place where Jesus is sacramentally present, present in a unique way.

But when we feed on the Eucharist, when we eat his body and drink his blood, we are participating in a symbolic act. Saint Thomas said that if a mouse ate a crumb of the Eucharist, nothing would come of it. The mouse wouldn't go to heaven or hell, wouldn't change a bit except for being a little less hungry, I suppose. And unfortunately, many of us receive the Eucharist something like that mouse. It does not change us.

Today the gospel is a continuation of what we've been hearing for the lasts few weeks. It started with the miracle of the feeding of 5000. The next week we heard Jesus say that he was the bread of life. Last week Jesus insisted that he was the living bread that came down from heaven and those who ate it would never die. Now these passages all use the Greek word for eating. But today is different; when Jesus refers to his body and blood, the word used is more like the way an animal eats. If you've ever watched a hungry dog eating a bowl of dog food, that is the kind of eating Jesus is talking about – chewing, biting, gulping down, paying no attention to table manners.. And although all this talk about eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking his blood sounds very much like Jesus is talking about the Eucharist, I think it's important to listen to exactly what Jesus is saying – because if John's gospel was the only gospel we had, we would not hear anything about the institution of the Eucharist. John is writing his gospel to a Christian community 60 or 70 years after Jesus has been crucified, buried and rose again. John knew about the Eucharist, of course. It was, and still is, the sign of being a Christian. Even the most liberal protestants practice something resembling the Eucharist, and as far as we can tell, all of the early Christians did so as well.

We Catholics believe that the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ; the bread no longer exists as bread, the wine, no longer as wine. I don't know if John believed in transubstantiation because it was quite a while before our Church settled on this explanation of what happens during Mass; but I am sure John believed that the Eucharist became the Body and Blood of Jesus in some way. And that is why he is emphasizing Jesus' words.

The people John is addressing are probably like us. They are going forward to receive the Eucharist, But John notices that things aren't changing. They go back to their daily lives and when it's not Sunday you can't tell a Christian from a pagan; So in this discourse about the Bread of Life, John is telling his readers what all this means – he is talking about the symbolism of Holy Communion. Now don't send any nasty notes to the bishop.

John is saying that our relationship with Jesus, symbolized in the Eucharist, must be like our relationship with food and drink. If we want earthly life, we have to eat and drink, preferably every day. To eat and to drink require action. We have to use our hands and chew and swallow so that the food and drink become part of us. And Jesus is saying that if we want eternal life, our relationship with him is like that – it isn't just a matter of swallowing the host and taking a sip of the precious blood. For a Christian, as Saint Augustine pointed out, we must become what we eat and drink. We have to become Jesus, we have to “Put on” Christ as Saint Paul puts it in another way. We have to desire Jesus like a hungry dog eats a meal, wholeheartedly, with our entire beings, as though it is the most important thing in the world to become another Christ, because it is. And it is then that he will live in us, and we will share his life, which is the life which comes from the Father.

When you look at the saints, and I think we could find saints among our Protestant brothers and sisters as well as the saints of every kind who have been members of our Roman Catholic Church, what they have in common is that deep hunger for Christ, that desire to have him live through them, that need to put themselves in God's hands to do God's work, and this is what they want more than anything else. Billy Graham no less than John Paul II hungered for Christ in this way.

Do you hunger? Do I? Not as much as I would like to, I guess. After almost 76 years on earth, I am less pleased with myself now than I was when I was young. But maybe that's another way of hungering for Christ, to notice and be concerned about the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

And the Eucharist, that action of eating and drinking Christ, is indeed a wonderful gift to us, when Jesus literally becomes our food and drink. But let John the gospel writer remind us that Jesus gives us this sacrament to remind us that our goal as Christians is to become Christ, and the beginning of that process is to desire Jesus as a starving person desires food. Next week we will hear Jesus tell those who remain after hearing his shocking words, “It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.” So today when you come forward to receive the body and blood of Jesus, remind yourself what it means – may Jesus be my first, my last, and everything in between. .

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

John 6:24 - 35

When I read this Sunday's gospel, I was impressed by how the vast crowd that had just been fed from five loaves and two fish seem to have missed the larger lesson Jesus wanted them to learn. But even when he explains, they continue to be obtuse. They are following him expecting that they won't have to worry about food anymore; He reminds them that there are more important things than food. He tells them that they should do the works of God which he defines as believing in the one who God sent. They suggest he do a sign, and of course it is for more food; God provided manna for their ancestors, why don't you do likewise? And these are the people that just experienced exactly that. Finally Jesus refers to himself as the bread of life. I'm not sure the crowd was any wiser.

But then I thought about Holy Communion, when we receive the bread of life. We don't understand what is going on any more than these people did. Of course we can talk about transubstantiation, the Real Presence; we can have various shades of faith in the teachings of the Church regarding this sacrament. Someone did a study once which showed that even Catholics who go to Communion regularly don't always believe that this is the real body and blood of Christ. And of course most non-practicing Catholics have ceased to believe in any meaningful way, or they wouldn't have stopped coming to Mass.

When I received my first Holy Communion at the age of seven, I'm pretty sure I had no idea what I was doing. The sisters who taught us made sure we knew that this was not just bread; only the priest could touch it with his hands. After the consecration, the priest would go through the rest of the Mass including the distribution of communion with his thumbs and first fingers touching, only to be used to touch the sacred host, until his fingers had been rinsed when the vessels were being purified. For us receiving, we held our hands over our hearts and received on the tongue; and we knew there would be serious consequences if we so much as let the host touch our teeth. I knew in a vague way I was receiving Jesus, but how that could be and why it was important I did not know.

And I'll share a secret with you. I still don't. I see Christians in other denominations who believe the Eucharist is just a symbol, and they still seem to act like Christians. And there are many theories about how Jesus can become bread and wine besides the official theory of transubstantiation. And there are many theologians who have written about why Jesus chose bread and wine, when he could have picked anything else. But that's all they are, theories.

I think it's interesting that those of us who follow Jesus and consider ourselves Christians kind of pick and choose what to follow; who among us turns the other cheek? There are very few Christians, including our priests and bishops, who literally sell all they have and give to the poor and follow him. And all that stuff about how we treat the least of our brethren? I think I fail pretty much on every count. A few bucks to feed to hungry, clothe the naked. … I do visit the sick now and then. I don't think I've ever visited the imprisoned. After all, with more than a billion Christians in the world, there shouldn't be any poverty or war or hunger anymore. Those of us who claim to follow Christ usually don't do it very well, and it clearly doesn't matter wear you are in the church; bishops and archbishops and cardinals as we see in today's headlines, are not necessarily paragons of virtue.

But maybe that's the point. One thing all Christians do in some form or another is celebrate the Eucharist. They may not believe what we believe, but they did hear Jesus say, “Do this in memory of me” and so they do, sometimes daily, sometimes only four times a year. I suspect the apostles didn't understand either; bread becoming Jesus' body? Wine becoming his blood? And then eating it? What did it mean?

Those of us who are Christians should be spending our lives trying to figure out what this means for us. It means that God became human, but more. It means that we become one with each other in space and time, because there is only the one body, the one blood – but much more. It means that we want not only our souls but our bodies to be changed by this miraculous food which we symbolize by receiving it – but much more. It means that in receiving the body and blood of Christ we demonstrate that we want to be one with him – but much more. And we could keep on going, because there is no exhausting this mystery.

Maybe in the end Jesus does not want us to understand; maybe in the end he wants us to approach the sacrament as his first apostles did – wondering what it means, what it means to me, today, now.

In fact, maybe explanations stand as barriers between us and what He wants for us. He said, “This is my body … This is my blood....Do this in memory of me.” He is saying, perhaps, “Spend your lives bringing divinity into the world, making the material world sacred, uncovering the divine in every being, human and otherwise. I want all to be one, as I and my Father are one.”

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

John 6:1-15

If you've ever thought about why the New Testament is so important, especially the gospels, it's because reading and understanding these writings is as close as we can get to the minds of the first Christians – the people who were formed by the preaching of the apostles. When we read the acts of the apostles or the letters of Paul, the basic message keeps coming through – God sent his Son into the world to suffer, die, and rise again, and in so doing, make it possible for those who become part of his people, part of his mystical body, to be with God forever. As the people who had walked with Jesus during his ministry went around preaching this message, they threw in stories about what he had said and what he did. That's only human; we all love to learn more about people in whom we have an interest. And so a large collection of stories existed before even the first gospel was written. When the gospel writers began to set down on paper the story of Jesus, the stories, parables, and even the details would reflect the author's particular take on Jesus – his theology. And we always have to think about who they are writing for, and why. Mark is writing to Christians in Rome who are being persecuted; and his gospel reminds us that Jesus was persecuted, and nobody really understood him during his lifetime. John, writing much later, probably to Christians in Turkey who made up of Jewish exiles and pagan converts, but who are all wondering why Jesus hasn't come again, and some of whom are being tempted to go back to Judaism, wants us to see that Jesus was indeed the Son of God come to earth, the Messiah predicted by the prophets. And that is the background for this story, which is told in different ways by each Gospel writer.

Notice that it begins with Jesus taking pity on the crowd. In those days the Romans were building a great city in Northern Israel, and it takes a lot of food to feed a city. Farmers all over the land were being conscripted to produce this food, leaving very little for their families. Failure to produce meant your land was taken and given to someone else, and that's one of the reasons there is a great crowd following Jesus in the middle of the day – they have no land, they have no work, they have no food.

John has Philip and Andrew both show us readers that feeding this crowd is impossible. Philip refers to mare than half a years' wages, but also the notion that they'd have no place to buy the food if they had the money. John tells us that a little boy offered to share his lunch, a few small barley pancakes and a couple of fish. But John has already given away the plot – Jesus knew what he was going to do.

Jesus tells the crowd to make themselves comfortable. In the Greek he tells them to recline. Now this is significant because people generally reclined to eat at banquet and formal meals. The rest of the time they ate standing or sitting. John also wants us to notice the green grass. John's readers who were familiar with the scriptures would hear an echo of a familiar psalm “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want, he makes me lie down in green pastures ...”The Jesus does something that the host of a banquet or the father in a formal meal would do – he takes the food and blesses it. If you were at a formal banquet, the next step would be that the servants would serve the people invited to the banquet; if you were having a formal meal at home, like the sabbath meal or Passover, the serving would fall to the mother of the household. John surprises us, thought by telling us that Jesus handed out the food. In the other three gospels, Jesus gives the food to the disciples to distribute. John wants us to notice that Jesus takes the role of the host as well as the role of the servants.

So in this story which we've heard so often, John reminds us that Jesus is the good shepherd. The prophets predicted that there would be a banquet at the coming of the Messiah. Isaish says “And you who have no money come, buy and eat Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost.” John shows us that Jesus is the Messiah, who would call his people to be fed, and would be the servant who feeds them as well. And finally, there is the boy who brings the bread and fish. When Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the story there is no boy. I think John wants to remind us that Jesus will see to it that whatever we do for him, no matter how small, He will use it to build up his kingdom, he will multiply our gift beyond measure.

John's audience, the exiles along the Turkish coast, the ones who were beginning to wonder when the Lord would return, the ones who were finding the new life of being a Christian difficult and perhaps longing a little bit for the old life – John is reminding them that the prophecies have been fulfilled, that Jesus is the promised one, the shepherd, the Messiah, the Lord of the banquet, to servant, and last but not least, the God for whom there is no such thing as scarcity, the God who promises to multiply our gifts beyond measure.

And we should be reminded as well.

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 6:30 - 34

When I was younger than I am now, I took a certain kind of pride in having too much to do. I had a demanding job, but felt that I should also be doing some research. I had a big family, and worried that I wasn't giving enough of my time to each of them. And I worried about other relationships which I had always planned to nurture - - friends from college, for example. In the midst of all this I took up guitar lessons, which I faithfully squeezed in to my day. I'm still this way but not so much. But I always have a vague feeling that I could have done more with my day, with my week, with my year.

Turns out that this attitude is not uncommon, especially among professional people. There just isn't enough time for all the stuff we want to cram into it. But in a way, that attitude is a little perverse. Someone called it an attitude of violence towards time. After all God made enough time, and we are trying to stretch it and squeeze more into it. We are doing violence to time.

The apostles, if you remember from last week, have just returned from their first mission trip. They have been healing and teaching and driving out demons. It must have really been exciting. There is a passage in another gospel that when the disciples return they report to Jesus all that has been going on and Jesus makes a comment which might have a touch of sarcasm in it. He says, “I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven.” And then we come to today's passage. If I were an apostle, I'd be eager to get out there again, to do more, to wield the power I had been given. I couldn't wait. But Jesus says, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest for a while.” The gospel seems to indicate that they didn't make it, but I suspect this was merely the first of many times that Jesus told them to cool their heels and take it easy for a bit.

Last week we celebrated the feast of Saint Benedict of Nursia, who sort of invented western monasticism. Up till that time there were monks, especially in the eastern half of the empire. Being a monk meant that you spent all your time in prayer, you might wear a hair shirt, you did a lot of fasting – and Benedict started out that way when he organized his first monastery. The monks who followed him were encouraged to out do each other in the penances they took upon themselves. It got so bad that there was a rebellion and somebody gave Benedict a poisoned drink. Legend has it that he made the sign of the cross over it so it didn't actually kill him, but it wasn't too much longer before the band of monks dispersed. After a lot of thought, Benedict wrote a rule, much of which could apply to our lives, in addition to those of monks. The rule is all about balance.

Benedictine monks have as their motto “ora et labora” which means, “prayer and work” Benedict wrote a rule that went back and forth, between prayer and work. Penances were supposed to be light, and assigned by a superior. No more hair shirts, no more self-flagellation. Fasting was moderate, and broken with feast now and then. Benedictines brewed beer and made wine and consumed some of it. . You worked for a while, then you prayed, which meant meditation, contemplation, in addition to verbal and mental prayer.

And I think that's what Jesus is getting at today. He's saying, “there is enough time for God's plan to be carried out. It isn't something that depends on you and I. What is important is that you pause every now and then and think about what has been going on. Where do you find God in what you just accomplished? What lessons have you learned? How has the Holy Spirit spoken to you.? Are there things you should do more of? Less of? If you don't take these pauses, you may be a dynamo and impress all your friends, but you won't make any spiritual progress.

Jesus says, “come away” because we can't contemplate in the middle of the workplace. If nothing else, we have to come away in our minds and put aside the to-do list. He says, “by yourselves” because it goes without saying that we can't hear God's voice unless the other voices are temporarily silenced.

He says, “to a deserted place”. There was a movie a while ago about a woman who set up a spot in her closet where she would go to pray. She had the right idea. We should all have a favorite place to pray – preferably a place we don't use for anything else. Pope John Paul II, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa. And countless others made it a point to spend an hour a day in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Unfortunately, I guess, that spot tends to be deserted for most of the day.

He says, “for a while”. What Jesus is recommending is that we deliberately make time to recharge our batteries, but not forget that we have to get back into the world, into the world where we are all called to evangelize, to teach, to heal, to bring the good news of Christ into our workplace.

Jesus himself took his own advice. It seems as though he frequently went off to commune with his Father, and the apostles would have to go looking for him.

So today we are invited by our Lord not to more and more action, but if we don't do so already, to deliberately introduce into our lives a regular time for reflection. Only by alternating action with reflection can we hope to truly progress in our spiritual lives.

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 6:7 – 13

My wife loves to take pictures, especially of grandchildren. She has a digital camera and although she hates computers, she can do all kinds of things with the pictures before printing them out. The other day she painstakingly printed out two pictures she took on our recent trip so that she could bring them over to show our daughter. It suddenly occurred to me that she has a very nice tablet computer, and Amazon lets you put all the pictures you want in the cloud, and this means that you don't have to spend gobs of money on ink for your printer, and you could just download from the cloud when you wanted to show pictures. I realize that for anyone older than I am some of those words don't make sense. But that's not the point. As I was excitedly pointing out the advantages of this approach to my wife, she stopped me and said that I should write down the directions, then she would follow the directions, and we would keep modifying the directions until she could do it without my help. You see, for her, and for many people, it isn't enough to have something explained, nor is it enough to even read the directions. You have to actually do it over and over until it becomes second nature.

That's what is going on in today's gospel. Remember, we are only in the sixth chapter of Mark. So far the apostles have watched as Jesus preached, healed, driven out demons, and in at least one instance, raised the dead. And now it is their turn. The only way they can learn to be what Jesus wants them to be is by imitating him, by going out as he did.

He sends them in pairs, because each can reinforce the other. Jesus would later say, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am”. That's still true today. We make much better missionaries when we have companions. When we are working together in His name, not only is he present, but we draw courage from each other; and we begin to realize the qualities of the other, some good, some bad; but we break out of our own egos.. Jesus knew this, and so do the Jehovah's witnesses and the Mormons and the seventh day Adventists. They go out together, they go out reinforcing each other; and they succeed in now and then winning converts.

He tells them that they can take a walking stick and sandals. Walking stick were used in defense against wild animals and sometimes bandits that you might meet out in the woods. Sandals kept your feet from wearing out on the rocks and stones and thorns. A walking stick could be leaned on, and could help you get over obstacles. Matthew in recounting this same story, has Jesus telling the apostles not to take walking sticks and Luke has Jesus denying them sandals. They have their reasons but we are going to concentrate on Mark. The point Mark is making is that there is nothing wrong with being prudent, using things to help us in our efforts as missionaries.

But sometimes we spend all our time getting ready. A Presbyterian minister I know says that as our country expanded westward, Presbyterian missionaries had to wait till the railroads were bult because they had large collections of books they needed to set up churches in the new territories. But when they would get to these towns, the Methodists were already there. All they needed was a horse a bible. So Jesus, who understands all of this, tells the apostles not to take extra underwear, food, or money, or whatever you carried around in your sack. If he had allowed that, they would have asked, how much money is enough? Or maybe I should take two changes of underwear. But the mission is urgent.

Finally, we have Jesus telling them to depend on the goodness of others as they go – in other words, trust that God will prepare the way. God will make some people well disposed, who will offer hospitality. And when that doesn't happen, just move on.

The apostles went out at Jesus' command and as we learn later, they are elated when they return, because they themselves were getting the hang of being apostles, being sent by Jesus. By doing what he did, they could begin to see results. And that of course is the best way to get someone even more interested in being your disciple, in learning from you.

I think the lesson here is clear, but unfortunately still hard to follow. The steps to be an apostle for Jesus are first of all to be prepared. But that preparation does not need to be a theology degree. However, we should know what we are talking about, and we should be living a life that reflects our Christian beliefs. No one will believe a hypocrite. Second, we should be bold, and here is my particular hang up. I'm not bold. If someone else brings up the topic, I can talk all day about Jesus. But I don't seem to have the courage to just say to someone, even a friend, “I'd like to tell you about the most important person in my life”. Boldness has to be learned, and it is learned by doing what the apostles did – going fourth. And who is to be our companion? We married couples should be natural apostles, and you find a lot of married couples who minister together in some area or other. But most don't. And if you aren't married, it's still great to have a companion in ministry, a dear friend, another person who like you is just about ready to be an apostle, but needs a little push, so you push each other. Finally, we always have to remember that we are part of God's plan, not all of it. Maybe we are to sew the seeds and someone else will harvest; and maybe the seed we try to sew will be rejected. The important thing for an apostle is that the seed be sewn. The rest is up to God.

You can only become an apostle by doing what the apostles did. That's the real school, that's how the first apostles learned their vocation.

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 6:1-6

When I first became a deacon I went back to Montana for a summer vacation. While I was visiting my relatives who live around the little town of Belt, they had talked with the local pastor about having a Mass of thanksgiving where I would assist and also preach. I think my mother engineered the whole thing. So the day came and I walked out with the priest in an alb too small for me, and as the mass progressed it was obvious that he had not celebrated with a deacon ever, so we kept stumbling over each other. When I gave my sermon, my uncles sat there with their arms crossed, looking hostile and upset that they were missing a whole morning working on their farms, and my two aunts were making whispered comments to each other. When it was all over we went to a local restaurant where we sat around a large table and had breakfast. The conversation was mostly about the weather and crop prices – nothing about what we had just experienced. So I kind of identified with Jesus in today's gospel. It says “They took offense” at him. The Greek word is Skandalon, or stumbling block – He was a stumbling block to them. After all they had watched him grow up; that had seen him play in the streets. He probably ran errands for some of them. They remember a fairly ordinary kid who was learning the carpentry trade. And here he was, preaching with authority, quoting scripture, rumors of miracles in his wake. And he didn't seem to be able to work many miracles here, at least for anyone who was watching. They always thought old Levi was healthier than he looked, so when he got up and walked around, no surprise.

The villagers of Nazareth were scandalized by Jesus. They prejudged him based upon their familiarity with him. And because of this they turned their backs, they didn't listen; and if we were to read further, they eventually decided to throw him off of a cliff. After all, he was blaspheming. And because of their prejudging, they did not recognize that God was moving among them.

There are a lot of stumbling blocks that keep us from experiencing God in our midst. Perhaps the first and foremost is the doctrine that Jesus is at once God and Man, that God walked around not just in a human body, but as a real flesh and blood human being. Not a disguise, a reality. We don't have much trouble with God being the creator of the universe, or the source of the Moral law. What is a stumbling block is the idea that God is a human being and that means that every human being looks like God. Another stumbling block is the teaching that we are to love our enemies. Biblical love is not just an abstract good feeling towards someone. I can do that. Biblical love means we do something because of our love. How do you and I love our enemies? Jesus told us that if we were forced to walk a mile with him we should walk two. He told us that before we approach the altar, we are to seek reconciliation. And I could go on. Christianity is full of stumbling blocks,

I don't know how many times someone has said “I wish God would just tell me what to do!” Had Jesus appeared in Nazareth like he did at the transfiguration, clothed in light, so obviously God that his apostles fell on their faces, you can bet the Nazareans would. have hung on every word of His teaching. But God is not going to speak to us like that. Nevertheless, he does speak to us, all the time. Our problem is always that we don't hear him because of stumbling blocks.

He speaks to us through other people. Do you know that in every Mass he has something to say to you? Matthew Kelly suggests that we keep a mass journal, and at the end of Mass we write down one thing that struck a cord – just one thing – and make it the subject of our prayer and mediation that week. And you may believe a little bit that he speaks to you through a figure of authority – the pope, the bishop, the pastor – but he might also be speaking to you through one of your children or a neighbor who has nothing good to say about anybody. You have to listen.

He speaks to us in nature. Take a walk on a beautiful day and see how God speaks to you through beauty. Be sensitive to what is going on. Saint Francis learned this lesson; he would stop and listen to the birds, he would marvel at the sun and the moon; he even referred to death, natural death, as his sister. My heart is always gladdened when I see a beautiful flower, or a hummingbird. For some reason they always seem to lift my thoughts to God.

He speaks to us through scripture. You know this as well as I do. Do you do anything about it? We deacons like other clergy are obligated to read some bible every day. And even there, the very word of God that is passing from the page to our minds is sometimes skimmed over because our minds are busy with other things. If God speaks through the scriptures, it would seem logical that we would find time to sit for a few minutes, at least, with the scriptures every day. But I suspect most of us don't.

And finally, God speaks to us through the poor. Jesus himself said, “What you do for the least of my brothers you do for me.” If we truly want to meet Jesus we need to actually meet the poor – and I mean by that not just people who are deprived of material goods, but people who are deprived of the things we take for granted. Much of my own ministry involves people who are extremely old and have lost physical and or mental capacity. They are poor, but if we believe Jesus, this is where we can encounter him, where we can learn from him.

Stumbling blocks. The terrible thing is that if Jesus is among us, and he is, we are not recognizing it because of stumbling blocks. And it would be terrible if we got all the way through our lives and never recognized that he has been with us, speaking to us all the time.

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 5:21 - 43

Is this just another story about how Jesus can heal people? Or is there something more going on here. It's peculiar, in a way, because as you can see in your missalette, we could just tell the story of the little girl and leave out that thing in the middle about the woman with the bleeding problem. Are these really two stories or is it one. Mark means for his audience to consider the two events together. Unfortunately, we can't ask Mark what he was talking about, but there have been many people who saw something more profound here.

Father Ronald Rolheiser has perhaps one of the most unusual ideas. He says the two women in this situation have one thing in common: they cannot bear children, they cannot become pregnant. A woman who is having a constant hemorrhage would be unapproachable. Even today, Orthodox Jews are not supposed to engage in marital relations if there is any bleeding going on. And the little girl, whose age is specified as twelve, is one year short of the traditional age when she can become engaged. So neither can become pregnant, neither can give life. And Jesus restores both to this possibility. Maybe the lesson here is that if we want to be spiritually fertile we have to be touched by Jesus; only through a relationship with him can be bring others to him.

But I just mention that because I think it's interesting. Another way to look at the story is this. It is all about Jesus' ongoing ministry; it is about fear and faith. It is, in fact, all about God, since Jesus told us that if you see Him, you have seen the father.

Jarius, the first character, is an important man. Given his position in town, he would not naturally be a follower of Jesus; in fact as we see elsewhere, officials in the Jewish religion didn't have much use for Jesus. But Jarius' daughter is dying and he puts himself out; it says he “fell at his feet” – got down on his knees – and begged Jesus to save his daughter. He must have feared the reaction of his fellow pharisees and scribes and the proper members of his synagogue, but he overcame that fear and had faith. And Jesus responds with a ministry of presence – he goes off with him.

The second character is the woman. Mark in a few short words shows us how desperate she is. The hemorrhage makes her an outcast; she is unclean, and what she touches is unclean. If she sits on a chair, you can't use the chair; if she lies on a bed, same thing. It was kind of like being a leper. And she's done everything she can to get rid of her affliction, to the point of having nothing left. Not only is she unclean, she is broke and probably friendless. So when she reaches out to touch Jesus' garment, she is doing something unlawful; she is making him unclean. You could get stoned for that. But she overcomes her fear, and has faith, and Jesus responds with a ministry of promise. She feels that she has been healed, and Jesus tells her that it is her faith that healed her and accepts her back into society by calling her “daughter”. And if we were to read the Greek, it says something like “Go in peace and be cured permanently”. Jesus promises that she won't be troubled by this again.

The third character is the little girl. She doesn't have a speaking part. But if she's like twelve year old girls I've known, and I've known many, she probably spoke a great deal. And she didn't understand what was happening – what child would? But as she felt the life going out of her she must have felt fear, fear of the unknown – and it was up to her parents to have the faith. After they have been told she has died, and that they should not bother the teacher, Jesus tells them not to fear, but to have faith. And the parents continue with Jesus to the little girl's bedside; they overcome their fear, they have faith. And Jesus responds with a ministry of power. He takes the little girl by the hand – he's already unclean, after all, so he might as well touch a dead body – and Mark quotes Jesus here, using the actual Aramaic words that Jesus spoke “Talitha kum”. And she rises. Mark uses the same word he will use when he describes Jesus rising, something his readers would not have missed. And the only other time Jesus' actual words are quoted are when Mark describes Jesus passion and he calls out in aramaic, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani”.

Now it would be nice if Jesus were walking among us in the flesh, healing the terrible things that happen to people, the things that no one deserves. How I wish he would heal the people I see slipping away into Alzheimer's disease; how I used to pray that he would cure this patient with cancer, that one with leukemia. And if Jesus were walking among us, no child would be cut off from life, never having an opportunity to live his potential.

Mark's readers were just like you and I in essential respects. They were Christians living in a pagan society, and so are we. They got in trouble for opposing the spirit of the times, and so do we when we oppose abortion or physician assisted suicide, or try to defend traditional marriage, or nowadays, want some orderly way to deal with refugees from other countries while protecting what we value about our country. There are many ways you can get in trouble just like Mark's readers. All those possibilities make us fear, and fear can lead to inaction. But Jesus shows us that he is with us, he holds out the promise that in the end things will turn out right; and that he has the power to bring about the kingdom of God, where things will be on earth as they are in heaven.

And that should make us lose our fear and strengthen our faith and desire to be partners in making a new world where God;'s will is done.