A Prophet is Not Without Honor

 

Because we focus on the life of Jesus during his ministry, we lose sight of the fact that he lived his life fully human. While we have little knowledge of his formative years, Luke tells us that “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” Like us, he fully entered into the human journey. Yet when he returned home, he was ridiculed and scorned. How could this lowly carpenter, Mary and Joseph’s son, be capable of knowing and doing such notable things. He did not fit into the world of His family and old friends. He was no longer what his home town folks of Nazareth expected him to be. They did not trust him. In a culture that measured a person's worth by his place in society, Jesus had clearly exceeded anything one would have expected from an itinerant carpenter. Carpenters were poorly regarded as men who left their families without economic security to seek work. They did not even have the respect of their own families. (Mark 6: 1-6)

God’s divine revelation in creation is evident everywhere. Needless to say God was not silent for the 14 billion years before Scriptures were written. Although God was  in the world at the very beginning of time, His relationship with man was made manifest to the world in His incarnation of Jesus. "We needed a God with skin on" it to help us understand God’s unconditional love for us and showed us how to share this love with one another. While present one with the father throughout all creation as “Christ,” the second person, Jesus, in all his humanity, enters our world to proclaim the Kingdom of God and our way back to the Father.

 

Who Touched Me

 

In January 2018, David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column entitled “Now Is the Time to Talk About the Power of Touch.” Brooks wrote: “Emotional touch alters the heart and soul in ways that are mostly unconscious. It can take a lifetime of analysis to get even a glimpse of understanding.” 

There could hardly be a better introduction to today’s Gospel. So many times when we hear this Gospel, we focus on the woman’s healing and the little girl’s resuscitation, but as Mark tells the story, those are only the backdrop to what’s going on. In this account, Mark mentions touching seven times. (Mark 5:21-43)

Mark builds today’s Gospel around two subjects: a father’s request for the healing of the daughter of a synagogue official, and the healing of the woman with a chronic hemorrhage. In between the father’s request and the girl’s rising, Mark describes both “meaningless” and “healing” touch. Meaningless touch occurs when a group becomes a crowd and tries to move en masse. The crowd’s attention is focused on its goal and who bumps into whom is of no account. That’s how the disciples saw this walk with Jesus; they were on the way to the synagogue official’s house and their intention was to remain near and see what would happen. Jostling was inconsequential as long as they could maintain a good viewing position.

But the crux of the story focused on the woman they didn’t even notice, the one who had suffered for 12 years — symbolically forever. Mark subtly leads us through her journey of faith. First, she had heard about Jesus. What she heard sparked her hope and kindled her faith. Like someone who approaches God based on God’s merciful reputation rather than personal knowledge, she snuck up behind Jesus, believing that simply touching his cloak would save her. She was right. Just coming in contact with him healed her infirmity. But for Jesus that was not enough. Jesus was not teaching theology or representing a distant benevolent miracle-working deity; Jesus was bringing people into God’s kingdom, the real presence of his loving Father for whom all things were possible.

Jesus perceived that someone in the crowd had touched him for who he was to enter into personal relationship. By calling her “daughter,” Jesus assured her that she could go in peace, her affliction was healed by her faith. The bold woman Jesus called “daughter,” reminds us that if we will risk reaching out in hope, the results can be beyond our imagining just another curious onlooker in the bustling crowd. She sought him out and her faith was so strong that she
believed that simply touching Jesus’ garment she would be cured.

(adapted from the “Power of Touch," Mary M. McGlone, CSJ NCR, June 15-28, 2018)

What are you afraid of?

 

What are you afraid of? Lord you have to be kidding might have been our response. These men are skilled fishermen caught in the storm of their lives; their boat is about to capsize and despite all their experience, they are unable to take control and fear for their lives. And Jesus, who has done marvelous, mystical things on behalf of others,... is sleeping.

In our Gospel, (Mark 4:35-41), it’s hard to imagine that Jesus’ response and questions to the apostles were not rhetorical: Quiet! Be still!” Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?

We know that parables were used by Jesus to get us to think, expand our frame of reference and perhaps shake us up a bit. This story while not necessarily a parable, fits the bill. It does shake us up a bit. How would we have behaved as characters in this story? How would we have responded to Jesus’ question? What would it be like to trust our ability to have faith in the midst of overwhelming, and in the apostles’ case, incapacitating fear?

Have you ever gotten to a point in your life where you were powerless to control and take charge of a serious life-impacting situation? I can recall a number of times when I was confronted with having to make decisions that I knew would alter my and my family’s lives forever. These were not easy and options were very limited. In all cases, fear of the unknown resulted in feelings of helplessness, bordering on paralysis…there was no place to hide…no one to whom I could turn.

Fear or suffering gets us to a place in which our nerves are raw and exposed and that place between us and the bottom is very thin. This thin place seems to minimize the semi-permeable membrane that serves as a barrier between us and God. If we are open and receptive, in time we will hear or feel his prompting and finally be able to overcome our immobility and we begin to move. Sometimes it takes minutes, days, weeks…or even years.

Jesus’ lesson for his apostles in the midst of the storm is to trust in God. The storm will pass and we will “somehow” manage to make it through, different from the way in which we “entered,” transformed, with insight and a greater inner experience of God in us than we ever had before.

Albert Nolan writes that “God is closer to me than I am to myself. God is one with me and with you…If God is closer to me than I am to myself and we are in some profound sense one, then I have nothing to fear. I will be cared for at all times and in all circumstances. Nothing can really harm me and whatever happens will be for the best. I am loved beyond measure because I am one with the whole mystery of life.” ( Jesus Today, A Spirituality of Radical Freedom. p 143)

To What Shall We Compare the Kingdom of God?

 

In one of the early scenes in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, Billy Bigelow sings There’s a hell of a lotta stars in the sky and the sky’s so big the sea looks small; two little people you and I, we don’t count at all. Hammerstein knew as he wrote the lyrics that Billy was wrong; we do count. We do make a difference in the world.

Mark makes the point in his metaphorical reference to the tiny mustard seed. Despite its size and unremarkable beginning, the plant grows without effort or will. The sower in the parable doesn't even water or weed the field! The sower just sows and goes about his business while the earth gives of itself enabling the plant to grow organically and send out its branches. The kingdom of God like the mustard seed, grows organically. And inevitably, as day follows night, God's hidden, mysterious work plays out in the world… and in us. Mark 4:26-34

God is in all things and the seed of His incarnation in the universe is love. God is Love. Despite man’s efforts, the future of the earth, therefore, lies not in science and technology, but in the spiritual power of faith and the power of love. We are born out of love, we exist in love, and we are destined for eternal love. We are transformed as we continually “reinvent” ourselves through love. The love of God, as with the tiniest of seeds, grows beyond anything we can possibly imagine. It grows, roots, invades and becomes all encompassing. 

Our presence in the world matters as we pick up where Jesus left-off centuries ago.  The Christ of the physical universe, the Christ of all humanity, the Christ of all religions is not a static figure, like a goal post with an endpoint in mind. We, like the incarnation of God in us, are constantly evolving, expanding our reach beyond anything imaginable and invading the Kingdom like the invasive mustard seed. (Adapted from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, Evolving the Universe, June 8, 2018.)