Pentecost 4 Year B

2 Samuel 1:1; 17-27 NRSV text
Psalm 130 NRSV text
2 Corinthians 8: 7-15 NRSV text
Mark 5: 21-43 NRSV text

Two daughters, two healings … and class war! This week’s gospel passage recounts something more than just a story of two healings. You will recall from last week’s post that Mark marks(!) the importance of the incidents he recounts by using geography as a narrative device. The lectionary has omitted his time on “Gentile” side of the Lake (the Gerasene demoniac), and we rejoin the gospel this week with Jesus crossing back again to the “Jewish” side. It’s a shame that the lectionary does this, because we lose Mark’s clear narrative intention to portray Jesus’ ministry as a series of liberative “campaigns” (see my essays on the pages, reading mark’s gospel and preaching the healing narratives in mark’s gospel). It is important to remember that Mark’s interest in Jesus’ miracles and exorcisms is christological. The point is not simply that Jesus is a remarkable man who does remarkable things: the point is that they are intimately tied to his mission of the kingdom, which is about the defeat of the “Strong Man”. The miracles and exorcisms do more than startle people, and make people well: they create a new community by subverting the old norms and standards that consign the sick and demonised to the margins of society. In today’s account, Mark presents Jesus as constructing a new social order. The healings of the woman and Jairus’ daughter are an attack on the social order of his day.

 

Linked stories across the social barriers
Here and in 7:24-37, Mark presents two double healings. The links in today’s passage are intimately close and absolutely deliberate. Mark tells the story of Jesus healing two women – Jairus’ daughter and the unknown woman with the unstoppable bleeding – from opposite ends of the social scale. There are two links.

12 years: The woman who touches Jesus has been bleeding for 12 years. Jairus’ daughter is 12 years of age. Although this is inserted in parenthesis in 4:42, it is no afterthought, but an absolutely deliberate dramatic irony. Here are two women – one whose life as a woman has apparently finished, and another whose life as a women is just starting. The woman has been bleeding for the lifetime of Jairus’ daughter. All the time the girl has been growing, she has had her life ebbing away. Two lives that should never meet. The woman is one of “the crowd” – one of the poor and socially outcast. She is doubly ostracised because of her menstrual bleeding. She has become one of the “untoucables”. Jairus’ daughter comes from wealth and privilege. Yet they are destined to meet in Jesus! Here is a sign of the new community: the barriers between rich and poor, between those at the social centre and those on the periphery, are united in Christ. Ironically, the woman is restored to life at the very moment at which the girl dies! Do you see how socially loaded this story is? For one woman, the social ostracism of the past 12 years is ending; for the other, the wealth, privilege of the past 12 years is also ending.

Daughter: Jairus’ daughter is the daughter of a leader of the synagogue. Her birth and her father’s position is the passport to wealth and social standing. When she dies, she is mourned. The woman, by contrast, is unnamed, unknown and uncared for. She has experienced the past 12 years as a living death, with no-one to mourn her. She is shunned. She is a nobody. Her condition means that she is no longer counted as a “daughter of Israel”. And yet, at the conclusion of the story, Jesus declares her to be a “Daughter”! In the new messianic community, this nameless outcast is a cherished daughter! She is given a position by Jesus even above that of the disciples! So this is the story of the healing of two “daughters” – the bringing back of both to life!

 

Jewish class relationships
We need to be sensitised to the scandal of what happens in this episode in order to understand Mark’s point that Jesus is radically subverting the social order of his day. The issue that is raised powerfully for Mark’s readers (but for which we have to work rather hard to “get”) is that of honour and shame.

“Honour” refers to a person’s standing in Jewish society. It is about how a stratified, hierarchical and patriarchal society works. Honour brings with it status and entitlement. Jairus approaches Jesus with his request because he is entitled to do so! His standing allows him that. He falls at Jesus’ feet not from a sense of unworthiness – or even desperation – but because that is what he is required to do by the social custom of his day. He approaches Jesus as an equal. His kneeling is an acknowledgement that he needs a favour from Jesus – but a favour from an equal.

The woman, however, has no such entitlement. She may not approach Jesus. Hence she touches him anonymously. Significantly, she only touches the hem of his cloak. Touch had enormous social and religious significance, and Mark hammers the point home. The woman touches Jesus’ cloak (5:27). Jesus stops in his tracks and asks, “Who touched my clothes?” (5:30) The disciples repeat his question, “Who touched me?” (5:31) Jesus takes the girl by the hand (touches her) in v41. At play here are the burning social (as well as religious) questions about who may touch whom. And the point is, the woman has been relegated by society to a position of shame (at the outset of the story) where she is literally “untouchable”.

It is significant that in Jewish society, men patrolled the boundaries of honour and shame, but women marked those boundaries of shame (cf Bruce Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology [1981]). The female role was negatively to mark the boundaries of shame. In this story, the bleeding woman personifies shame and lack of entitlement.

We ought also to note that Mark alone observes that she had suffered at the hands of quacks, having spent all she had in the fruitless search for help. In fact, she had not only received none, but had been made worse by their so-called “treatments” (5:26)! Mark emphasises the interlinking between social exclusion, vulnerability to exploitation, and poverty.

In Jesus’ time, honour could be conferred upon someone by a person of status. The person’s lowly status, or “shame”, prevented them from approaching or talking to someone higher up the scale. Like Jairus, the woman bows at Jesus’ feet - because she is not entitled to have approached or touched him! And what does Jesus do? Instead of “patrolling the boundaries” and rejecting the woman, he “raises her up” in every sense of that word - by pronouncing her healed and by calling her “Daughter”. He does that publicly - not only as man of authority and “honour”, but as the Son of God! He has declared her to be so - and so it will be.

 

“The first shall be last and the last shall be first”
Note what happens. Jairus comes and asks Jesus for a favour – and Jesus agrees. There is a social contract here. Jesus is duty bound by convention to drop everything and do what he has agreed to do. This man (Jairus) is his equal. As Jairus has prostrated himself, Jesus is bound to do what he has said he will. His priorities are established for him.

Mark’s first readers would be as shocked as the disciples are, therefore, when Jesus allows his journey to Jairus’ house to be interrupted – and by an unclean woman from among the “great unwashed” to boot! We need to try and sense the disciples’ unease and embarrassment. When Jesus stops, try and see them casting worried glances at Jairus. Jesus is causing a scene. He is embarrassing everyone. He is (literally) on a life-and-death mission for an important person – voluntarily! And now he’s stopping. Their response is to try and hurry him on – to cover the incredible social gaffe that Jesus is committing.

The point here is that Jesus allows himself to be interrupted. He is on a mission of healing to the great and the good, but in the end, the healing comes first to the least! This is to anticipate the central theme of the second half of the gospel (cf 10:31, 43) about the first/last and the least/greatest.

The scandal of Jesus’ action is heightened by the announcement that he is now to late to do what he had contracted to do. Jairus’ daughter is dead. Jesus could not have put his foot more firmly in it if he’d tried.

But Jesus has every intention of putting his foot in it! That’s precisely what he’s doing. This is an enactment of the new, radically inclusive messianic community. This is the kingdom taking shape. The old social system of honour and shame and the religious purity system is dead. That’s part of the symbolism of Jairus’ daughter. She represents wealth and privilege – honour and entitlement. There is symbolic value to her age – 12 – which is not merely about becoming a woman. Her age symbolises the tribes of Israel. She is declared “dead”, excluded from life forever. By raising her, Jesus is in effect saying that if Judaism wishes to “be saved and live” (5:23), it must embrace the faith of the kingdom: a new social order with equal status for all. This alone will liberate the lowly outcast and snatch the “noble” from death – a point that Ched Myers makes tellingly.

Here, then, is a narrative of healing which has much wider significance. This is Jesus, engaged in the construction of a new social order which does not mediate exclusion and death. It is life-giving and affirming. And it is Good News for a society structured on a class system of honour and shame – which is why it is to the least first.

 

Finance and Forgiveness (2 Corinthians 8: 7-15/2 Samuel 1:1; 17-27
It is interesting to see how uneasy good Christian people get when one starts talking about changing the social order. That sounds uncomfortably (and inappropriately) “political” for many. “It’s okay to talk theology – as though theology belongs to some private, internal realm of spirituality – but don’t get too concrete in its application! That’s where you’re straying into the realms of personal choice and opinion” (seems to be the thrust of the objection).

Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians displays no such coyness when he talks about money. This is a wonderful passage to use to preach about stewardship. Paul sees nothing incongruous about fundraising. He is clearly conscious of treading on all sorts of social conventions and sensitivities about money, but does so for theological reasons! His theology of the grace of God in Jesus Christ – the “richness” of his grace (8:9ff) – follows logically and naturally into what he assumes ought to be a generosity of spirit, manifested in generous giving. The unity in Christ that believers share means that, for him, we have a duty of care for one another that transcends social, cultural and geographical boundaries. The Corinthian Church had not only an abundance of spiritual gifts, but material gifts too (8:14). And if Jesus became poor for our sakes so that we might become rich (8:29), we who are rich ought to have a similar attitude towards those who are poor!

The interplay of gifts/donations, grace/generosity and riches/provision is not Paul playing on words as a manipulative series of puns. For him, theology makes a difference. How we live together and what we do with our money has everything to do with God and God’s saving actions in Jesus. Unlike many of us in the Church, Paul refuses to switch into another mode of discourse entirely when it comes to money. He is intensely realistic about it. Our version of “financial realism” is to move from theology and spirituality into “hard-headed” economics. Yet for Paul, this amounts to little more than an unchristian heard-heartedness. There is an “economy of grace” that is as economically relevant as Jesus’ politics of grace is politically and socially relevant! We cannot believe what we do about God in Jesus without it affecting our giving and caring. Generosity flows from compassion. It is the fruit of the Spirit – love in action.

Similarly, David, in the “Song of the Bow”, makes forgiveness a reality rather than simply a theological concept. David, who has every reason to hate and condemn Saul, mourns both him and his son, Jonathan in identical terms. David is known as “a man after God’s own heart”, and here we see something of what that means. Like God in regard to us, David refuses to judge Saul according to the way he (Saul) has treated him (David). The Song is Saul’s epitaph. It is the “official” version that David orders to be taught to the people of Judah (2 Samuel 1:17). Saul, like Jonathan, is “beloved and lovely” (v23); the “glory of Israel” (v19). His death is to be mourned, not celebrated.

Forgiveness allows a person to be celebrated. It allows their strengths and triumphs to be acknowledged. It allows the good to stand, and to stand as the last word about them. Of course, it’s easy to be cynical, and to say that it is partisan – “hagiography” rather than biography. But then, all such judgements are equally partisan. If we remember someone for their faults, we equally elide the sum of all they are. The important thing here is that David is only too well aware of Saul’s dark side. In a sense, he makes a deliberate choice about how he will treat Saul’s memory and think of him. It is a gracious choice.

And that, surely, is what grace is: a deliberate choice. God could say all sorts of things about us. God could focus on the negative things – and be absolutely right! But God does not do that. Compassion and grace are at the heart of God. That is what Jesus teaches so clearly in the parable of the Prodigal. God refuses to give up on us. It is his compassion and capacity for forgiveness that makes David great. And here, at the beginning of his reign, he chooses forgiveness as the heart of his kingdom. Saul will be loved and mourned. Forgiveness will be at the heart of human relating. Of course, it doesn’t all work out as David intends! David’s story is, in many aspects, absolutely tragic. He is a deeply flawed character and those flaws will manifest themselves in all their disastrously destructive power. Yet the text today invites us to pause for a moment, and to recognise what is being done here. David intends his kingdom to be shaped by forgiveness and love – by grace. It is very imperfectly realised, yet points towards the kingdom that David’s greater Son will inaugurate: a kingdom in which the first shall be last and the last first, because it is God’s kingdom, and God is a God of grace.

 

Amen.