Week 20 Day 3 - SEEL
Mark 5:21-43
Jairus’s Daughter and the Woman with a Hemorrhage.
When Jesus had crossed again [in the boat] to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea. One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward. Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” He went off with him, and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him. There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.” Immediately her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him, turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who has touched my clothes?” But his disciples said to him, “You see how the crowd is pressing upon you, and yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. The woman, realizing what had happened to her, approached in fear and trembling. She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth.
The gift inside the readings is not just a little plastic baby Jesus figurine. There are two straightforward lessons so powerful they have defined my life.
The story begins with a man seeking healing for his daughter and Jesus is willing to help him. My wife and I suffered the loss of two children in utero in about the 28th week. When our second baby died, the baby turned out to be a girl with Turner's Syndrome. Only 1% of babies with that genetic defect are carried to term. Knowing this much about how we lost the baby is still like the noise coming from a fluorescent fixture. It is just a droning noise, meaning nothing and after 35 years, knowing why is not necessary anymore.
Our first baby died for reasons we never understood and looking back on both losses from the perspective of 4 decades, FOUR decades, knowing or not knowing is the same. Loss is loss. The fundamental questions remain. How or why the babies died is no longer necessary knowledge, nor is the question of why Brian, the baby who lived, had CP any more critical. The real question is what I have learned from all three events.
I am the father. I went to Jesus to beg for help. He responded to my call for help and was traveling toward providing healing for my daughter. Along the way, another desperate person reached out to Jesus, not by directly approaching him directly as I did, but rather, covertly by touching his cloak as he passed by her. She was healed without his even laying eyes on her. She had a desperate faith and her faith was rewarded not just with healing but with something bigger than just a temporal wound; she was rewarded with salvation, a gift for eternity and not just in the moment.
"Daughter, your faith has saved you," Jesus said to the woman. I was entirely focused on my concerns and worries and missed the whole thing. I was annoyed by the delay and could not care less about the woman or her issues. I had a sick child. At that moment, my worst fears came to pass. The baby died. What point was there in having faith and asking for a successful birth when the answer was, well, no, not for you? There will be no answer you want to hear. Live with it. So I pretended to do just that as I finished the journey back home to face my daughter's loss.
Deep inside my heart and soul, I knew the real lesson was not that faith had healed a human hurt but that faith would and will heal a wounded soul with a greater reward than logic and reason say is possible. I named the baby Talitha Koum and anointed her with a name and with water hoped to be for baptism and not a benediction. The name expressed our faith that our sleeping daughter arose in heaven to be with God.
With that done, I turned away, angered at God and remained secretly separated from God because of that anger for decades. Yet today I ache to see the woman healed by touching the garment of Christ, experience her story with her and hear what Jesus said to her because I have come to understand what it means to be saved by faith.
Jesus, save me. I desire the soul's salvation more than the body's healing.
Postscript
Later in the day, I offered up this reflection, we watched an episode of "Chosen" that centered on
this passage. Why do I still think to use the term "Coincidence" when what is really at work are the graces brought by the "Holy Spirit?" The Holy Spirit at work in us caused us to watch this episode on this day when I had already spent time in the story. The way the story was depicted very nearly duplicated my imaginative immersion in the narrative. Seeing what touched my heart and soul could be brought to life and portrayed so convincingly was a comforting grace.
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