When Compassion trumps Law

‘… your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’ (Mark 5:34)

Mark 5:21-43 (Year B: Trinity+4)

This is a story about compassion..

There is something remarkably touching and simple about this very Markian passage. One of the ‘leaders of the synagogue’, Jairus by name, tells Jesus that his ‘little daughter’ is at the ‘point of death’. He says to Jesus to ‘come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live’. What parent has not experience moments of acute worry and upset when a child is very ill or in great danger?   In true Markian style there is no wastage of time or words. Mark writes, very simply: ‘So he went with him’ (verse 24).  We can just imagine Jesus ‘immediately’ (another very Markian phrase not actually used here) heading off with Jairus in a state of acute concern, worry and compassion.  Compassion was in charge here.  Form-filling, insurance numbers, ethics committees and all the paraphernalia of modern day healthcare may have their own place and use but compassion trumps everything time and time again in Jesus’ short life ministry of probably less than three years.

We hear two stories here wrapped around each other with the story of Jairus, Jesus and the child who was healed wrapped around another story about a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. What is the connection here and why did Mark use a ‘sandwich’ to relate the stories? It is unlikely to have been a case of random editorial writing on the part of Mark. All three synoptic evangelists use the same sandwich in tying these two stories together. A common thread in the stories is (a) compassion and (b) powerful ministry of God’s gentle touch where there is faith.  Compassion drove Jesus to follow Jairus immediately to a critical scene involving his sick daughter. Compassion detained Jesus when his clothes were touched by someone unknown to reveal that the healing power of God flowed freely out of Jesus’ body to someone who was suffering grievously and who was desperate for healing. Compassion drove Jesus to ignore the advice of officials sent to Jesus to tell him the little girl of Jairus was already dead and there was no need to proceed further to the house of Jairus. Compassion drove Jesus to ignore the crowds lamenting at the house of Jairus who only laughed at Jesus when he said that the little girl was only sleeping and not dead.  In these two interwoven stories we are hearing about a God acting in Jesus who is not constrained by social convention or religious taboo but who is compassion itself.  The healing and life that flows from this compassion just flows to those who ask in complete faith and trust as did Jairus on his knees as the story informs us and as did the woman in the crowd who was desperate enough to try anything including an approach to Jesus in faith.

Jesus engaged in conversation with the woman for a time. He addresses the woman as daughter hinting that in this new rule of God’s compassion (the kingdom of heaven on earth) everyone is a daughter or a son of compassion just as Jairus’ daughter is healed by compassion: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease” (verse 34). Time and time again we are told in the Gospels and in the prophecy of Isaiah, among others, that trust combined with courage leads to healing, peace and renewal.

And it is a story about two women..

The use of the Aramaic phrase ‘Talitha Kum’ points towards a phrase carried through from witnesses who probably heard and saw what is relayed to us in this passage and story. We can note that neither the daughter of Jairus or the woman who touched Jesus’ cloak are named.  In the one case a child who is a girl not yet married has a place in the patriarchy of traditional family life. A 12 year old girl was probably close to marriage age at that time in that culture.

 In the other case a woman who has a condition of bleeding for 12 years is ritually unclean – not to be touched by a Rabbi or Teacher such as Jesus as far as the traditional interpretation of the Law was concerned. There was a hint of the ancient Jewish custom of purification in the Christian practice of ‘Churching of women’ following childbirth which survived into the 20^th century in many places.  We might miss an important detail of this story, namely, that the woman who suffered from haemorrhages for many years would have been classified as unclean. According to strict religious laws at the time Jesus was touched by someone who was ritually impure. Is this an issue for Jesus? No, his overriding concern is that suffering is lessened and that the one healed is sent away in peace and newness of life.

Compassion is to be our rule of life. It trumps all.

Under stress and aiming for safe havens

‘… Peace: Be still!’. (Mark 4:39)

Mark 4:35-41 (Year B: Trinity+3)

                                     pic: http://deanroberts.net

Peace is our quest..

Peace is God’s first gift and His last. In the life of Jesus we hear about ‘peace on earth’ at this birth. We meet the message of peace throughout his ministry including this Sunday’s story of the storm on the lake and on to the various appearances after the resurrection when Jesus declared ‘My peace I give you’. We are familiar with the popular hymn taken from Isaiah 52:17:

‘How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation’

And we have heard the prayer of St Francis ‘Lord me an instrument of your peace …. etc.’

The community for which Mark wrote this Gospel in the 70s (A.D.) was the subject of persecution. The captain of the little boat in this story seemed unaware and not bothered.  Today, we are buffeted and tossed on the stormy seas of our world just as on Lake Galilee when the small band of friends of Jesus in a little boat were in a place of great fear. We are in that boat today and we, also, experience moments of anxiety – possibly acute anxiety about all sorts of things that happen at some stage to many people – a precarious job contract, no job contract, no business, illness, a broken down relationship, a loss of health, ageing. The list could go on. For many of us we have the fortune of living and working in a world where human rights and freedoms are better respected than in other parts of the world. The vast majority of us have the freedom (for example) to worship (or not) in our own place without fear of physical attack or social exclusion. Yet, millions live in a state of intense fear and anxiety. You, who read this blog, may be such a Christian in some part of the globe.

Stormy places..

Then there are times when a period of extreme difficulty arises suddenly out of nowhere like a storm sweeping in without notice across Lake Galilee. It is useful to note the geography of the location to which this story relates. The lake (it is called a sea) is the lowest freshwater lake on earth. It is 21X13 Kilometres in dimension. Due to its low-lying position in a rift valley and surrounded by hills it is liable to sudden and violent storms (source: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Galilee).  It can happen today in Israel and it happens on the Western seaboard of Ireland where fishing workers know all about the weather. In our lives we can be a little like low-lying lakes closed in by many mountains of responsibility, expectation and obligation. Storms arise from time to time and frequently without warning.

The initial response of the disciples was not one of trust. For this Mark tells us that Jesus upbraided them for lack of faith (trust).  Still, Jesus proceeded to calm the storm and ‘there was a dead calm’.  Whatever the circumstances of our lives we, too, can find places of ‘dead calm’ in our souls if we take the time and patience to go there.  The calming of the storm all around is about what happens within me, you, the next person. We can only be responsible for our part of the situation but our response to the storms can facilitate a point of calm in the ‘eye of the storm’. Finding those daily ‘still points’ is important but we can be sure of one thing – there will be storms and very often sudden and unexpected storms that defy the best meteorological forecasts and analysis.

Later in the Gospel of Mark we will encounter, once again, Jesus walking on water (Mark 8:45-52). However, in the later story it is Jesus who walks towards the troubled disciples. Still later, in the story of Jesus’ struggle in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14) roles are reversed. It is the disciples who are asleep as Jesus sweats and struggles in great fear. In the boat of today’s story (Mark 4) Jesus is on the one who sleeps while those around him are in turmoil.

When you pass through the waters..

The prophet Isaiah whose writings were so beloved by Jesus said: ‘When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;     and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.’ Isaiah 43:2:

Note that Isaiah did not say ‘if you pass through the waters’. Neither did he say ‘The Lord will not have you pass through the waters’ nor did he say ‘The Lord will not have you walk through fire’. Rather, he said ‘When you pass through the waters’ and ‘when you walk through fire’. But, this is what Isaiah said: ‘I will be with you’. And that makes all the difference to you and me today as to Peter and the other disciples 2,000 years ago as well as to those who, as we speak, read, listen and worship’ live in great fear and danger this Sunday in dark corners of the world.

A famous English mystic, Julian of Norwich, writing in the 14th century reported Divine love in this way:

"He said not: Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be afflicted’

Rather, he said:

“Thou shalt not be overcome”

(chapter 68 of Revelations of Divine Love)

And so as we pass through storms, fires and tribulations of one sort or another we walk not alone but with countless millions now and in times past and in times to come. To conclude, here is a very striking set of verses from Psalm 106(107):23-32 which runs parallel to the story of this Sunday’s gospel:

Some sailed to the sea in ships to trade on the mighty waters.
These men have seen the Lord's deeds, the wonders he does in the deep.
For he spoke; he summoned the gale, tossing the waves of the sea up to heaven and back into the deep; their souls melted away in their distress.
They staggered, reeled like drunken men, for all their skill was gone.
Then they cried to the Lord in their need and he rescued them from their distress.
He stilled the storm to a whisper: all the waves of the sea were hushed.
They rejoiced because of the calm and he led them to the haven they desired.
Let them thank the Lord for his love, for the wonders he does for men.
Let them exalt him in the gathering of the people and praise him in the meeting of the elders.

May we find a safe haven in Jesus at the beginning, the middle and the end of all our storms.

Letting go can be the hardest thing

‘… With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.  (Mark 4:33-34)

Mark 4:26-34 (Year B: Trinity+2)

Gospel as story telling…

A key feature of Jesus’ ministry was telling stories. Because it is very often hard for us and for the people who lived 2,000 years ago to ‘get it’ we need to hear and tell stories – stories about real people and their lives and the actual environment in which people live. A good story is remembered because it touches the heart, the mind and the will.  In fact, the very word Gospel means good news or good stories.

Telling stories and connecting to the social, political and economic life of others lies at the core of Jesus’ preaching ministry. Not that Jesus engaged in polemics or analysis about whatever is in the news at the time. Rather, he took natural examples from the natural world of living, working, relating and caring to illustrate what the ‘kingdom of God’ is like. The phrase ‘It is like ….’ crops up all over the gospels. We are hard pressed to draw up systematic philosophical or theological bodies of knowledge based on the gospels. These would follow later and have their own undoubted use and value at the service of the Word.

Going with the flow of nature..

We do well to pause and reflect on the gospel stories we may hear week after week and year after year. The same story is never quite the same each time we hear it.  The secret is to link it to our own personal life experience as well as that of others. This requires patience, diligence and openness.  All of this takes time – that precious commodity that seems to diminish just as ‘time-saving’ productivity innovations increase their hold on our lives.

The challenging aspect of this Sunday’s short extract from the gospel of Mark is that we are placed in a world of growth, nature, uncertainty and yields. Pictures of fields and crops are painted across our imagination.  We can rest in these images contemplating the mystery not only of nature but our own complicated lives intertwined with those of others. Gone are the textbook manuals of scientific determination. In with the organic, intuitive, living, growing, flourishing, decaying, ageing and harvesting images that best reflect the way the world works. The detached, rational, Cartesian mind is challenged.

And this is healthy.

We can strive to order our lives and plan for everything. We don’t want anything left to chance. The rent-seeking sellers of insurance and assurance enter the picture! However, life is never quite that simple. There is a natural process of growth and decay marked with unexpected turns and developments.

Not knowing where or how or when the plant and its fruit appear …

We must trust in a divine plan that cooperates with, and respects, us (as well as the other way round). Sometimes, we need to ‘scatter the seed’ on the ground and then leave it there for a time. The opposite to this is sometimes called ‘micro-management’ where – for reasons of insecurity – we seek to plan, order, manage and direct the details of a project, a relationship or an event. As it says in this Gospel passage: ‘Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.’ We just do not know How or When or Who. We only know a What - that what is sown is sown and God is active somehow but the results are not to be seen now. It is a case of doing the following:

-       We hear the Word of God as seeds of possibility in our depths;

-       We make it our own by planting deep in the garden of our soul like a mustard seed (Matthew refers to the seed being planted in the person’s own garden);

-       We live it and let it grow;

-       We do not know how it happens (the mechanic elude us); and

-       We believe that God is in charge; and

-       The results are plain to see not now but later on and perhaps only for others who come after us.

We plant or sow the seed and then we need to stand back and watch the growth. For someone familiar with computers it is the equivalent of pressing ‘system restore’ and then waiting to watch the grass grow as the little waiting symbol appears on the computer screen.

Of course, we may need to stay close at hand to where we have sown in case help and intervention might be needed. Whether in the domain of parenting or work or ministry we need to strike a balance and allow others to grow (or not as the case may be).  In the case of parenting it may involve a very gradual letting go as children move into adulthood. However, staying close and being available and stepping in are essential (and it may be an unwelcome but necessary stepping in depending on circumstances!).

The poet, mystic and monk, Thomas Merton (1915-1968), put it this way:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. (from Thoughts in Solitude).

Letting seeds grow and letting go …

Letting go is required – of our fears, our insecurities, our attachments, our detailed plans, our risk analysis, our ‘nutty, musty’ mental frameworks and our self-image. We are planted to grow in love and to help others grow in live. Like the farmer we need to work with the ‘grain of nature’ (some might say the ‘grain of the brain’) rather than try to ingrain nature. But, like the parable of the mustard seed what we sow may seem of little consequence in terms of size and standing. Later, however, the seeds give rise to ‘the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade’ (verse 32). Whether this detail matters (Matthew and Luke refer to a tree – the point still remains that what we see now and what will be is different and we don’t know how this change will be affected).

It might take a crisis or severe drought or another calamity to let go and let flourish. At that point we allow God more than ever to step in and direct our limited efforts and understanding. God’s love is bigger than our plans and expectations. All we need to do is what we can do now – to sow the seed and keep it close to our hearts and then let God lead us forward step by step.  Life is a series of steps, decisions, actions and arrivals.

As Brother Mark Brown of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist In an excellent online resource (ssje.org) puts it very concisely in a reflection entitled ‘Let Go’:

If we’re not paying attention, we can find we’ve accumulated a vast treasury, truck loads of fears and anxieties, trunk loads of resentments and grudges, crates of unrealistic expectations and boxes of presumptions and unreasonable demands. Remember to leave all this baggage behind, to travel lightly on the way. Remember to travel forgetfully and follow Jesus.

-Br. Mark Brown

Family values

‘… Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother..’ (Mark 3:35)

Mark 3:20-35 (Year B: Trinity+1)

The public ministry of Jesus is in full swing.  After Jesus heals on the Sabbath; draws large crowds; and appoints twelve apostles or disciples he ‘entered a house’.  His own ‘family’ believed that he was ‘out of his mind’ while the ‘teachers of the law’ were convinced, worse still, that he was possessed by the devil. At least his family showed some compassion by only conceding that Jesus had gone mad as opposed to bad!  What follows is a somewhat confrontational exchange where Jesus spells out some home truths by countering his religious detractors in the strongest possible terms. Not alone that, but he puts his own family in the picture by declaring openly that he is founding a much broader family rooted in God’s love and will.

It is to be noted that the word ‘family’ used in this translation is open to interpretation with scholars and translators differing on how to apply the Greek  term in this context and some opting for ‘friends’ over ‘family’. (Scholars will always differ! In any case, the scriptures (fortunately) were not written in 21^st century English!). It is reasonable to conclude that the family of Jesus was unusual in its make up and origins. An orthodox creedal understanding of the birth of Jesus confirms such a view.

One can imagine how scandalous all of this sounded to a respectable, pious, traditional, familial and ethnic 1^st century Jewish milieu. Not only did Jesus declare a new extended family but he seemed to put no boundaries on it by declaring openly in verse 35:

Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.

Note the word ‘whoever’.

This saying was not just for the religiously pure, the in-house group, ‘one’s own kind’ etc. but it was for ‘whoever does God’s will’. This echoed in the audiences hearing and reading Matthew’s gospel years later in the very different setting of expulsion, conflict and scattering. Such a daring and radical declaration by Jesus should not be taken as callousness towards his immediate family (however widely or narrowly that might be interpreted).

That we are all sisters and brothers to one another in the household of God’s family does not undermine the principle of care and responsibility among blood relatives and other close ties. The Gospel of John tells us that, when dying, Jesus was concerned that his own mother would be looked after by the disciple John. Families do matter and we are bound by a covenant of love throughout our lives. Jesus, according to the gospel of John, ensured that ‘widows and orphans’ were taken care of by treating his beloved disciple John as if he were a son of Mary and Mary as a mother to this son.  They would mind each other after Jesus’ death and resurrection. However, the radical call of Jesus to follow him and to be channels of his grace and mercy means that, in a certain sense, our ‘family circle’ is larger than we might have thought at the outset.

But, what do we make of the accusation that Jesus was more than mad but bad per the religious authorities of the time? Jesus did not mince his words by taking them on face to face. He declared a new reign of God and an outpouring of grace through the Holy Spirit. This was no shady religion founded on double-speak and divided by competing parties. Rather, it was the purest of religion in establishing the reign of God’s will which is freedom for captives and care for each other in a new family. This is real community. This is real church.  Everything else is false religion.