Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday Year B By Fr. John Robert Skeldon
Two women, two lives, two different experiences. And yet, they are bound together in their encounter with Jesus. One is old; the other is young. One is alone; the other has family. One’s blood has not stopped flowing for twelve years; the other’s has ceased to flow at the age of twelve. One wants to touch Jesus; the other’s father wants Jesus to touch her. One hemorrhages her life away; the other is dead to life. Two women, two lives, two different experiences, yet bound together in their encounter with Jesus.
These two women stand for us. Just as the disciples in the boat in last week’s gospel stood for humanity that is always at the brink of being overcome, of drowning in the depths of the pressures of life, of being inundated by life’s trials, so, too, these two women stand for us. The old woman is us hurt, bleeding, hemorrhaging, needing the wound healed so that we may continue the journey of life. The young girl is us dead, cold, unfeeling, needing life restored in us so that we may continue the journey.
What sin or evil or past mistake continues to hemorrhage in us, crying out for the touch from the Divine Physician? What have we been bleeding away for twelve years or more? What experience of life has so overwhelmed us that we are dead to life, unable to go on, needing the touch from the Divine Healer to make us rise again? How have we been like the living dead for twelve years or more?
To the first, Jesus, the Divine Physician says, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.” The afflictions and trials of life do not have to continue hemorrhaging in us. To the second, Jesus, the Divine Healer says, “Talitha koum, I say to you, arise!” The heartbreaks and sadnesses of life do not have to continue destroying us, killing us. We can be cured! We can arise again!
Hear the psalm and be glad: “Hear, O Lord, and have pity on me; O Lord, be my helper. You have changed my mourning into dancing; O Lord, my God, forever will I give you thanks.”
St. Irenaeus, early father of the church and whose feast day is June 28th, said once: “The glory of God is the human being fully alive, and the life of the human being is the vision of God.” God wants us—you and me—fully alive, and our life comes from our experience of God, like the two female characters in our gospel passage today, one old and one young, one hurt and one seemingly dead.
To us as to them Jesus says: “Little girl, little boy, I say to you, arise!”
Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday Year B By Fr. Tim Kelly
Biblical Inspiration
a) Mark 5: 21 -43
• The daughter of Jairus
• The healing of the woman with the twelve year bleeding
b) Wisdom 1: 13 -- 23
God did not make death,
nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
For he fashioned all things that they might have being;
For God formed man to be imperishable;
the image of his own nature he made him.
C) Psalm 30
You changed my mourning into dancing;
O LORD, my God, forever will I give you thanks.
Theme of Homily; Jesus restores things to the way God intended them to be
Numbers in Judeo-Christian imagination
For Christian people and for the other religions which are rooted in the name of Abraham our father in faith, there is always some awe at the numbers which we read in scripture. We are not a people of magic, nor is our awe rooted in signs and wonders. We know that God is awesome and that he has chosen to speak to us through sign and shadows. But we also live in hope of seeing Him as he really is.
Twelve in the Gospel of Today
So today we hear of Jesus raising up a girl of twelve years. Her lifeblood has stopped flowing and she lies dead in the home of her father. We also hear of a woman whose life blood has been ebbing away from her for twelve years and whose faith in Jesus restores her to health and wholeness.
Twelve in Scriptures
1) Ancient people recognized that God has organized the life of earth in twelve lunar cycles per annum. Thus the number was seen by many civilizations as representing perfect order and government by a benign God.
2) Twelve is a perfect number in the Book of Genesis - twelve sons of Seth and twelve sons of Jacob.
First of all, there were in Genesis, twelve original patriarch between Shem the son of Adam and the birth of Noah.
Then later in Genesis, (35:22-27) there are twelve patriarch of Israel, God’s beloved people. Twelve is the number of the sons of Jacob, the patriarch from whom the tribes descend, the tribes of Israel.
3) There were twelve judges over Israel, signifying perfect government and perfect divine overview of his people.
4) Twelve is the multiple of three, the perfect number of the Trinity and four, the number of the natural world.
There were in ancient thinking four winds and four directions.
Four rivers flowed into Eden and out the other side.
Four was a world without error and disease. Four represented the ideal within nature.
Hence when you multiply that natural perfection by the three of God’s perfection one finds the Twelve Patriarchs of God’s people, whether that is the Sons of Jacob or the Twelve Apostles. (Matthew 10:2-4)
5) 12 as a sign of the future perfection of God’s rule.
When the time of our perfect consummation in Christ comes, the Book of Revelation describes that perfection in terms of twelves. T
here are 24 elders around the throne of God.
There shall be 144,000 saved people the twelve multiplied by twelve by 1000. (Revelation 4:4; 7:4).
The perfection of God’s new kingdom, the New Jerusalem, the City of God is spoken of in terms of twelves.
There shall be twelve gates of heaven, each one a pearl. And there shall be an apostle for each gate., hence twelve Apostles.
And so today, Jesus walks into the reality of the broken world, he smashes straight into the reality we all face every day, the reality that God’s perfection is not our everyday experience. We believe that perfection, the twelve – is the ideal for which we strive and hope. But we walk into the hard reality of sickness and sadness and mourning every day of our lives. Every day we face the broken world, we remember God’s promise of perfection. We hear the Book of Wisdom tell us that
“God did not make death,
nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
For he fashioned all things that they might have being;
For God formed man to be imperishable;
the image of his own nature he made him.”
But how, O Lord are we to believe in the face of so much sadness and cancer and death and broken hearts? How are we to look the other way and say that we believe when our senses tell us that there is no divine perfection around us? Even from the Cross, Jesus echoes that human longing for the perfection of God in the real now of our lives.
“My God, my God, Why have you forsaken me?”
In this gospel Jesus walks into a world of twelves, a world that should smell of perfection and happiness and God’s sweet odor and goodness. But that world is of broken twelves, of broken lives, of bleeding and dying and sickness. Where has it all gone wrong, where has the sacredness and perfection of God become so polluted and broken? Jesus takes the woman whose blood flowed in shame and sickness for twelve years and he stops the shame and he heals the wound. He takes the twelve year old girl from the bed of her death and tells her rise up and be of life.
In today’s Gospel we see Jesus as the restorer of perfection. His father made this world in perfection. Eden was a perfect place. Jesus begins the divine work of restoring Eden. He restores the twelve to where it ought to be, a number without shame, without pain and without death.