On Mark 5:21 ffÂ
The last few days have been absolutely lovely. I’ve been out and about, Inman Square where I live, Harvard Square where I meet friends and where my Ecclesiastical Council was held on Thursday night. Everyone getting out, the sun shining, dozens of languages, and a mix of the well-to-do, the vastly over-educated, and the just-hanging on. I suspect this is a bit what it was like in the scenes recounted in today’s gospel. Galilee was in some sense a rural backwater, reclaimed by the Judeans only a century before Jesus. But in other ways it was a thriving cosmopolitan region. The Roman cities of the Decapolis, trade routes, Greek culture… and of course the various sects of the Judean religion.
There’s a lot going on in this particular reading just as there was probably a lot going on in the streets on Galilee’s shores. Jesus already has a band of disciples and already has a reputation as a healer. A leader of the local synagogue asks Jesus to heal his daughter, making us question what we think we know about “the Jews.†The scare quotes were on purpose, because there was no such thing as Rabbinic Judaism, and the Judean religion was complex and far from unified. And a woman who is well-to-do enough to have consulted many physicians without relief, who is willing to grasp at any straw, any cloak, for relief. And notice that Jesus doesn’t say “I know who touched me†as those who over-emphasize his divine nature would have him. No, he has to ask, and the disciples don’t wither before their master. “Please, look around you. How are we supposed to know?†And the little girl, did she die because Jesus was delayed or would she have died anyways? Does he leave most of the disciples behind so he can move faster? And of course, there’s the whole secret thing Jesus does. Shhh, don’t tell anyone. Continue reading “Contagious Cleanliness”