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Thought for the
Week 8 June 2008 – Third Sunday after Trinity
In
their generosity, the compilers of the lectionary have really given us two
Gospel passages today, and each of them would be enough for several
sermons. I am going to look at the
second one, the story of a sick woman and a dead girl. For
many reasons, most scholars agree that Mark’s Gospel was written first, in
about 60–70AD, and
that Matthew and Luke were written about twenty years later, between 80 and
85 AD, using Mark’s work as a basis for their own Gospels. However, this passage goes against the
grain. Most later works are longer
than earlier works, and contain more detail, but in this case, almost
uniquely, Mark gives us more detail than Matthew. Mark
sets the scene — we
are on the shore of the sea of Galilee, on the opposite side from So
twelve years ago, Jairus’s daughter was born, and it was at about the same
time that the woman started to suffer from her haemorrhage. Mrs Jairus would have gone to the synagogue
to be brought back into the faith community after giving birth, at the same
time that the other woman was being expelled from the Synagogue, by Jairus
and the other members of the Synagogue council. Now, twelve years later, their daughter is
on the verge of womanhood, about to have her first period, while the woman
expelled at the same time as she was born was still suffering from a period
that had been going on for twelve years.
To the
ancients, the life of a creature was in its blood, and that was why sacrifice
was so important. Not only was the
shedding of blood the way to get rid of sin, but also it was a re-enacting of
the covenant. At the Passover, the
children of Even
before that, there is the strange story of the smoking firepot, symbolising
the presence of God, passing between the two halves of the bull as Abraham
forges his covenant with Jahweh (Genesis 15, 7 – 21). It was common in the Ancient Near East for
people, both as tribes and as individuals, to enter into a covenant
relationship with their gods, and this was one way in which it was done. Later,
in the wilderness, at the foot of Mount Sinai, the Holy Mountain of God,
Moses takes the blood of the young bulls that have been sacrificed, and
sprinkles half of it on the Altar, the sign of God’s presence, and the other
half, he sprinkles on the people of Holy
stuff was blood, in Old Testament thought.
And the holy was dangerous, perhaps because all of us are
sinners. Originally, uncleanness had
nothing to do with dirtiness, it had to do with holiness. So it was that the woman with the
haemorrhage was too unclean, too holy, to be a part of the community of In our
first reading today, Hosea reminds us that sacrifice in itself is
nothing. Even the shedding of the
sacrificial blood is, in itself nothing.
What matters is the spirit in which we live out the fact of God’s
Covenant with us, his chosen people.
God desires steadfast love not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God,
not burnt offerings. Yet, no matter
how wrong we get it, and we get it very wrong indeed, God is as faithful as
showers of rain, healing and giving life to the earth. In
Psalm 50, the Psalmist says the same thing.
Is God hungry for the flesh of bulls, or the blood of goats? Of course not! God wants a sacrifice of thanksgiving; call
on Him and He will deliver us. Note
that the delivering comes before the honouring! God does not even want you to honour Him
before He will save you. Perhaps He is
pleased if we honour Him after He has delivered us, but the deliverance does not
depend on the honouring at all. Last
week, we thought a little about Luther, and his re-discovery that our
salvation cannot be earned. Luther was
re-discovering what Paul had taught, and what had been well known to both the
Psalmist and to Hosea, that salvation, like everything else in all creation,
is a gift of God. Salvation is the
result of faith, not any action that we might take, or not take. The fact is that God needs nothing from us — He is absolutely complete
without us. Nothing that any one of us
does, or fails to do, makes God love us any more, or any less. Each of us is God’s beloved child, and he
wants to offer us his love without condition, and his healing without limit. That is
what happens in today’s Gospel story.
The woman with the haemorrhage lays her hand on the fringe of Jesus’s
cloak, and she is healed. Then Jesus
lays his hand on the girl, and she too is healed. What rejoicing there must have been in
Jairus’s synagogue! The Churchwarden’s
daughter brought back to life, and the devout woman re-admitted to the family
of God after twelve years of longing and hoping from outside! May
each of us too know God’s unconditional love and healing in every little
corner of our lives. Amen. Father To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |