Mark 5:21-43
Proper 8 (13)- Year B
Sometimes the medium is the message. Here the medium is an appreciation of interruption. The way we handle interruptions is a measure of the grace we carry with us. Also check out chapters 2 and 3 for other interruptions. Mark is telling us something in the very construct of the story, not just the words on the page.
On a wall of the office where I work I placed a gift piece of art - a collage with words woven into it, interrupting it, if you will, that reads, "Peace is when Time doesn't matter As it passes by..." I find that plays well on several different levels.
May you deal well with the interruptions of life.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/june2003.html
This past week the Supreme Court reversed/repented their Bowers v. Hardwick decision of 17 years ago. This as been described as "a sweeping declaration of constitutional liberty for gay men and lesbians..." (NYTimes, 6/26/03)
If you can understand why there were many that wept for relief and joy when they heard this decision, you will be able to get a better feel for import of Jesus in the lives of such as the woman who bled for 12 years and your own experience.
If you can't understand this, join the disciples saying, "What does it matter who touched you? It was a nobody."
There are so many liberty issues to go. Let us rejoice for those that periodically come to pass. Let us rejoice with those who are set free from such passe ideas as unclean menstrual blood and criminal gay sex.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/june2003.html
Jairus' servants show up, and try to wave Jesus off. NEVER MIND. IT'S TOO LATE.
But Jesus kept on walking, with this brave woman fresh in His mind, and when He got to this little dead girl, He reached out and took her hand, and He called her by a very unusual name.
He didn't call this little girl "DAUGHTER."
He called her "Talitha."
It was Aramaic, and it was used to signify "Little girl," but the literal translation is fascinating.
IT IS A HEBREW WORD, WITH A FEMININE ENDING.
Take the word "Talitha," and remove the feminine ending... the "a" at the end.
What do you have? TALITH
MANY JEWISH SCHOLARS THINK JESUS WAS SAYING,
"Little girl under my prayer shawl...
Placed under my covering...
Entrusted into my prayer care...
get up!"And NOW YOU UNDERSTAND, why from that time on, (Mark 6:56)
"...wherever he went-- into villages, towns or countryside-- they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed."They discovered a new thing about Jesus that day. He was willing to reach out in prayer for ANYONE!
When we have loved ones so far past helping that they cannot reach out to Him, He comes at the prayers of another... comes when WE pray, and gently takes their hands, and says, "You are under my prayer covering, and so you cannot stay dead. It is time to get up."
- - -
The above is from an online sermon which is no longer available at it original URL.
What difference does it make to you if Jesus doesn't call you by name, but identifies you simply as one who is under his prayer shawl, along with so many others you might be surprised about also being there?
When have you needed to be placed under a prayer shawl, as life was beyond you? Who have you placed under your prayer shawl and are there any you have left out? Is your prayer for them an invitation or a narrower directed vision of how life should be for them? [There are some I would prefer to not pray for me for their prayer would hold me down, not raise me up.]
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/july2006.html
"Test your genuine love against the earnestness of others."
"If eagerness is there, your gift is acceptable."
Needs around us have hastened to make themselves known. These are givens in our lives. The options regard our response.
Are we as eager to live alongside a need, taking it to our hearts, as such needs are revealed everywhere they travel? Here is a test worthy of our lives. It is a test that is as communal in nature as it is individual. Encouraging one another to do well, even to share our insights with one another, is acceptable morality in this test.
Question: Where do abundance and need meet?
Response: _______________________
If it helps you may want to also make this an open-book test as well as a communal one.
- - -
sensitive to word and touch
we journey toward
a great getting-up day
when and where
our eagerness is sufficient
for earnest need
attentive beyond death
we settle in to days no more
no more mourning
riling to despair
no more no more
holding us back
in moments of generosity
we undertake a beginning desire
little by little
through this year
according to what we have
abundance in need
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html
Continuing the parabolic nature of actions as well as words, Jesus again crosses to "the other side." That would seem to make this side the other side. Once the disorientation settles a bit we see that folks are bound here as well as there.
A Gerasene demoniac; a woman with a twelve-year-long hemorrhage; a girl bedridden to never arise again. Bondaged, one and all. Ched Meyer's ground-breaking work – Binding the Strong Man – could also have been titled Releasing the Other Side.
The demonic from the other other-side is privileged to deal directly with his experience of blessing and mercy. Folks on this other-side seem to always have to filter it through faith language and in so doing distance themselves from their experience (individually to go in peace; communally to be silenced).
Yes, different occasions require different duties, consistency is not all that great a virtue, but note how the energy drops when "faith" enters as a primary way of engaging life. It turns life over to someone else, ordinary life is returned to as the end-all and be-all of our engagement.
A storm erupts for the disciples on the way to the other other-side. A storm is set up to erupt for Jesus after returning to this other-side and will commence immediately hence in Nazareth.
If you have experienced a blessing of freedom arrived, tell it. Life is not just a matter of "our" faith and if it is strong enough we'll get what is desired and be satisfied until a next moment of crisis. To cut the faith talk and go with the experience base is to re-create the joy and energy of finding ourself in G*D's image (healed and released, whether cured or not – imprisoned or not).
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html
Stressful situations bring out different aspects of a person. In theory Jairus wouldn’t ordinarily give Jesus the time of day. But the nearness of his daughter’s death (do note it was a daughter) begins to have Jairus becoming aware (name derivation) and shifting from issues of uncleanness/sin/illness/death and Jerusalem to this popular healer but questionable person. (Do compare with Matthew 9:18 so you can decide whether to stick with this story or expand it.)
On the way an unnamed woman (do at least note it was a woman) foreshadows a daughter’s healing. For those interested in such things, her name has traditionally been remembered as either Bernice or Veronica
In both cases there is a forthrightness of approach: prostrating and touching.
Jesus is just as forthright with Jairus as he heard the news of his daughter’s death, “You trusted, keep at it.”
So Jesus and his triumvirate enter and used common street language (would that church prayers could be as simple), “Little girl, get up”. [Note: If significance is made of Jairus’ name, why not his daughter Talitha in the line of Jezreel or Lo-Ruhamah.] Mark has another “immediately” and this “unnamed” girl rises and eats. When we get to resurrection time, may we see it as plainly as this is described without going nuts with blind belief or disbelief.
For now, the pattern of Jesus’ words may suffice:
peace
do not fear - trust!
why this commotion?
get up
let it be (implied)
let’s feast (implied)
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/06/mark-521-43.html