In the
story in Mark 5:21-43 two females experience restoration to life.
The story of a dead girl who is raised is wrapped around the story of a woman
who is healed from her affliction of bleeding for twelve years.
One
story sits in the middle of another. The girl’s father is a synagogue leader.
Synagogues in this time were gathering spaces that
served numerous functions beyond religious worship. They were schools, places
for shared meals, centers to distribute charity, places for communal
deliberation, and legal judgments.
Jairus, as a leader of the synagogue, had substantial power in the community life. In a
desperate situation he pleads with Jesus to help his daughter who is dying.
On
the way a person who is poor, unwell, and probably isolated for her unclean
state interrupts their journey.
She has suffered many things under many
physicians, and spent all that she
had, and has benefited nothing, but
rather is worse.’ What is more, her flow of blood left her unclean and she
would not have been permitted to enter into Jairus’ synagogue.
Yet she is more than one who suffers; she is
a courageous woman who persists in her pursuit of healing. She sneaks up on
Jesus and makes her healing happen.
"Encounter" painting by Daniel Cariola, at Magdala on the Sea of Galilee.
This woman courageously wedges her way into
the context she was not supposed to enter and opens up a space for healing.
Jesus recognizing her chutzpah and invites her
to tell what has happened. Presumably Jairus hears the witness of her faith. I
imagine his mind was elsewhere, longing to keep Jesus racing to his daughter’s
need.
Jesus tells Jairus to have faith, the very
attribute that the woman who speaks in their presence embodied. Through her
witness to Jairus, we too witness a “mending of the complex fractures that rend
not only … bodies but … communities” (Loida I. Martell-Otero)
The healing of the woman offers encouragement
and opportunity to the heart-broken Jairus. Her story opens up “salvation” in
its fullness. Shalom communal and personal is about to occur. Jesus invites
Jairus in the midst of his rising fear to imitate this outcast woman. The
leader of the community must learn from the one who had been excluded from the
same. She teaches him what persistent, courageous faith looks like.
Jairus has a choice to make between fear and
trust. He is provided with the example of the woman and this leads him to go
with Jesus so that healing might come to his house. Healing only comes to the home
of the man of influence after a profound journey through the margins. By the
end of the story, three healings have taken place: the woman, the daughter, and
the now healed social fabric.
· Who
are the people we automatically endow with prestige and honor in our society?
· Who
are those denied prestige and honor?
· What
can the first of these learn from others in the moment in which we find
ourselves?
·
What would social healing look like in the
moment that we live in today?
Comments
Post a Comment