What is the one area of your life you would pay any price to change or fix? In today’s Gospel, we heard about two people who come to Jesus, wanting him to fix the part of their lives that they have been unable to fix by their own means. One person is the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and the other person is Jairus whose daughter is at the point of death. Through these two people, Jesus shows us his power to bring good out of the bad life throws our way.
Now, when it comes to the bad life throws our way, I think our God gets a bad rap. When something bad comes our way in life, we are often quick to point the finger at God and blame God for the bad that has been brought into our lives. Our first reading from the Book of Wisdom today reminds us that all the bad stuff in our lives was not God’s Plan A.
We hear a lot about the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, but our first reading reminds us of what came before that, God’s Original Blessing. When God first created the world and we humans, it was all good, the way God intended it to be. Originally, there was no death, disease, or destruction. Death, disease, and destruction were brought into the world by the seduction of the Devil. Sin complicates things. But God desires to take this bad that was brought into the world and to somehow bring good out of it.
In his Gospel, Mark introduces us to a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. She spent all her earthly wealth on doctors trying to secure healing, but she was left broke and broken; worse off than she had ever been before. Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t tell us this woman’s name for some strange reason.
There are two possible reasons for this that come to mind. Matthew, Mark, and Luke may have asked around “what is this woman’s name?” And the response they might have heard from individuals is “we don’t know. All we know is what they called her when they pointed, laughed, and called her the bleeding woman.” Or it could be that she is left anonymous because the mystery of this woman is meant to help us identify with her. Where we cannot know her name, we can insert our own name in the lines of scripture. When we cannot imagine her face, we see our face instead. In her story, we are meant to see our own story of brokenness.
Whether it’s a broken body, a broken relationship, a broken mind, or a broken heart, we all have a chasm between the way we are and the way we want our lives to be. Jesus wants to take this bad stuff in our lives and have it become the bridge leading us to the only one we need.
This woman shows us how the gift of humility can do just that. I know humility might not feel like a gift, but it actually is a gift. With each doctor she paid to heal her who failed, this woman became more aware of her inability to fix this problem by her own means.
This continues over and over again until she and we finally see ourselves as we actually are, a people unable to completely fix our lives by our own means. We’ve tried fixing our marriage on our own, we’ve tried fixing our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual problems all on our own, and yet they still persist just like the bleeding did for this woman for 12 years. Alone, none of us, can overcome our weaknesses, stop our sins, and obtain healing. Our attempts to control our own destinies prove ineffective. Love crumbles, we lose our jobs, we experience infertility or a miscarriage, healing doesn’t come, we lose a loved one and we become aware of our inability to pay the cost for the things we deeply desire. This is when we come to see the truth that we were never really self-sufficient at all. This humbling realization is the cost we must pay to encounter Jesus the way this woman did.
As she reached out to touch Jesus’ cloak, she came to grasp the truth that she needed someone greater than herself. Our weakness points to our need for God. This woman knew that this bleeding would be her constant companion until God healed her. It was her weakness that led her to Jesus. There was nothing else she could give to try to get better, except for her faith, and that’s all Jesus ever wanted. Jesus heals her, looks at her and says, “daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”
Her weakness was and our weakness is the pathway to Jesus. If our weaknesses act as the gateway to experiencing God’s closeness and healing, they become a great gift indeed. If we’re honest with ourselves, for many of us, this gift of humility is still sitting still wrapped and unopened. It could be that sometimes it’s not us waiting on Jesus to fix our lives as much as it is Jesus waiting on us to open and use this gift of humility he gave us.
Perhaps we’ve been slow to open the gift of humility, but quick to up the gifts of a smartphone or another smart device. These devices allow us to say, “let there be light” and there is light and allow us to say “find me a suitable partner” and a matchmaking app does just that. It’s easy to see how there is a temptation to develop a God-complex thinking we don’t need God and we can do it all on our own or we mistakenly think God should respond to our commands the same way our smart devices do.
Friends, come to Jesus with humility and faith. This is the lesson this woman and Jairus teach us today. It is the ways we fail and don’t measure up that act as a vehicle in our daily lives taking us closer to Jesus. Here are three ways we can do this: 1) Be vulnerable with Jesus in prayer, telling him the whole truth of our lives, the way this woman did, including the bad stuff that’s been brought into our lives. 2) Acknowledge that we don’t know it all and open the Bible to Mark Chapter 5 to learn the wisdom God is trying to speak into our lives through this woman and Jairus. 3) Have a heart of humility when we say we are not worthy that Jesus may come under our roof before receiving the Eucharist, which is the source and summit of our faith.
Whether our encounter with Jesus results in healing when we are still alive like it did with the bleeding woman or whether the healing comes after it appears to everyone that death has won as it did with Jairus’ daughter, it doesn’t ultimately matter in the end. The healing will come, because Jesus is Lord of both the living and the dead. When we draw close to Jesus with humility and faith, we know that Jesus will heal us at some point and bring good out of the bad that has come into our lives.
For me, this is not a matter of just putting a positive spin on things or looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. For me, this is deeply personal as I have been reminded of this truth time and time again in my life.
I was reminded recently of the amazing ways God manages to bring good out of the bad. A few weeks ago, I was at the memorial service for my Aunt Nancy. My Aunt Nancy died of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which is a terrible way to die. She was married to my Uncle Bob for 23 years and he cared for her to the end.
My Uncle Bob is a man who said what he meant and meant what he said when he looked in my Aunt Nancy’s eyes on their wedding day and spoke the words, “for better, for worse, … in sickness and in health, … til death do us part.” My Uncle Bob described the last years of my Aunt Nancy’s life as the best years of their marriage. The best years of their marriage, can you imagine that? The final years of their marriage consisted of my Uncle Bob feeding my Aunt Nancy, taking her to the bathroom, bathing her, and dressing her. Yet, he described these final years of their marriage as the best years of their marriage because of all the time they were able to spend together and how close they became.
I believe spending time together and experiencing this closeness is what God desires for each of us. When Jesus was asked the question what is the one part of your life you would pay any price to fix, he mentioned your name and that he wants to spend all eternity being close with you. Jesus desires us to draw closer to him, closer even than the woman who touched his cloak and was healed of her bleeding. Jesus paid the ultimate price shedding his blood for you so that his desire could become a reality. We don’t have to wait until we die to experience closeness to Jesus.
Jesus comes here to the altar today to meet us where we are at in the messiness of our lives. As we bring with us to the altar the area of our lives that we would pay any price to fix or change, we can come empty-handed, because Jesus has already paid the price for us.
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle B – June 27, 2021
Mass Readings:
Reading 1: Wis 1:13-15; 2:23-24
Psalm: 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11, 12, 13
Reading 2: 2 Cor 8:7, 9, 13-15
Gospel: Mk 5:21-43 or 5:21-24, 35b-43