Mark Chapter 5 starts out with Jesus venturing to the place where the demoniac lived. He casts out the legion of demons from inside the man into a herd of sheep who then go tumbling off a cliff to their death. The man became sane and began to write and publish the great things the Lord did for him to which all men marveled. IN THIS SAME JOURNEY, Jesus heads back to the other side of the sea where Jairus cometh with his problem and the story continues...
While on his way to help the daughter of Jairus, a woman, who was suffering from a blood issue for 12 years and had spent all she had to find a cure, yet no doctor could help her, the bible says she “came in the press behind, and touched his garment.” Unwittingly to Jesus, instantly his healing power was transferred to woman, and she was suddenly cured of her blood issue and felt better. “And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging, thee, and sayest thou, who touched me?” It was most likely Peter who said this as he was known as the spokesman of the group, and clearly the woman was close enough to hear Jesus’ question. So, Peter (perhaps) is wondering why Jesus has suddenly stopped and asked who touched him, seeing as there are many people touching him and have been. As Jesus looked around and saw her that had done this thing, she was sore afraid of what she had done and fell before Jesus and told him the truth, and Jesus said to her, “thy faith hath made thee whole.”
As Jesus was speaking to the woman, the ruler of the synagogues house came suddenly and said the daughter of Jairus had just died. Jesus then asked that no one follow him to the house except Peter, James, and John the brother of James. Once Jesus reaches the daughter, he tells the family that she is asleep, not dead. He ordered only the father and mother of the daughter, and his 3 disciples to enter where she was lying, took her by the hand and said, “Talitha cumi,” or “damsel arise” and she rose, and all were astonished, and Jesus charged them that no man should know it.
The two individuals who are healed by Jesus and brought to life have a lot of differences. One is an older woman whom we are not given her name, and one is a child, the daughter of Jairus, one of the rulers of the synagogue. The older woman is slowly hemorrhaging but alive, while the child we are told is “at the point of death” when Jairus approaches Jesus to ask for his help, for which Jesus obliges and they then go on their way where the bible says, “…much people followed him, and thronged him.” My father went to rock concerts in the 70’s-80’s where he told me people were literally trampled to death trying to get to the front of the stage and waiting before the concert to get in shoulder to shoulder. Not saying this was the case with Jesus, but it was likely similar in terms of the “craze” surrounding him. Hundreds - perhaps thousands of people - the bible does not say, shoulder to shoulder with Christ, bumping into him.
Jesus is the one who reveals himself as someone who is constitutionally inclined to go in at a moment when death raises its head and conquer that death. Jesus is bent towards being the revealer of the God of the living. Let’s remember, God did not, as we read in the first reading, create death. Death is the sole creation and sin the instrument of the devil’s envy and jealousy of man. Jesus is unafraid of death because his victory is there. We wish that we had that same kind of inclination, like most of the people in the gospel, we are hesitant that Jesus can do anything, like once the girl has died, to be almost sinical about it, as if nothing can be done, or we are afraid to approach those moments where other people are suffering, where they are slowly dying simply because we don’t want to get involved or it will cost us something, and yet it is precisely this grace, to be like Jesus ,that we are given as disciples, particularly in the eucharist, the ability to be generous enough as Jesus was. To “empty himself” as we heard in the second reading, in order for others to realize that God is the God of the living. Every so often we come across a situation in life where people may have revealed to us that they have been graced by Gods own power, to be able to turn away from those inclinations and impulses that want to have us take care of ourselves, selfish impulses that neglect the needs of others. Yet it is because of your care for others, when we care for others, we can forget ourselves and our own sorrows because we are more concerned about nurturing or helping someone else because they need help. Being generous and charitable is an opportunity for us be healed by being loving to others. Many people who reveal that kind of faith, that openness to God’s grace, to realize that you don’t need to accept death on its own terms, and by emptying themselves, they allow the miracle of Jesus and the miracle of life to take root in their heart and be healed by that. The miracle of realizing that when we turn away from our own selfish impulses and our own needs to help others, something good happens to us all.