Power of Touch

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 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 and not as enabled them 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)

A Change in Plans

 

How often have events disrupted your plans? How do you react to these disruptions? How many times have we made plans only to change them or have them changed for us? Other people or circumstances often force us to reconsider what we want to do. Sometimes we respond with irritation at a change in plans. Sometimes we just “go with the flow.” But there are those rare times when our plans are changed because God changes them for us. 

The narrative of the Baptist’s birth revolved around the miraculous. (Luke 1:57-66, 80)An elderly couple could not have children, yet an angel told the man, Zechariah, that his prayer had been answered. Although Zechariah was a holy man, he doubted the angel’s good news and was struck speechless. But the couple did conceive a son. When Mary visited the boy’s mother, Elizabeth, the Spirit filled the boy and he lept in her womb. Now, when the child was born, Zechariah regained his power of speech, and he praised God over and over. The Spirit would also lead the boy through his adolescence until his appearance as an adult. 

 Zechariah had plans that were radically altered when God got in the way. Zechariah praised God at the birth of his son. He also showed everyone who was really in charge by the miracle of his restored voice.

Notice the faith of the couple in the face of peer pressure. The name of the child was to reflect not just a favorite relative, but the identity of the clan itself. Male children would be given the name of an elder. In turn, the boy was expected to follow in the footsteps of that elder. When family and friends wanted to name the boy after his father, they wanted the boy continue the traditions of the priestly caste. By giving him a new name, Zechariah and Elizabeth defied convention and declared his identity and role would be different, outside family traditions and expectations. When speech was restored to Zechariah, he praised God to affirm his faith in the heavenly message he was given. In other words, Luke highlighted the movement of the Spirit over the traditional concerns of the immediate community. God, not humans, would guide events. 

How many times have our conventional interests blinded us to God’s presence in our lives and his working his plans through us? Plans can change. The will of God is constant. It is his Spirit that changes us  and alters our situations, for the glory of the Father. Like Zechariah, our answer to God’s intervention should be “Praise the Lord!” (adapted from Larry Broding's Word-Sunday.Com)

The Mustard Seed

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, and two little people you and I, we don’t count at all. Hammerstein knew as he wrote that Billy was wrong, we do count. We do make a difference in the world.

Mark makes the point in his metaphoric reference to the tiny mustard seed that despite its miniscule beginning the plant grows without force of will. The sower of the parable doesn't even water or weed! The sower just sows and goes about his business while the earth produces of itself, and the mustard plant organically grows and sends out its large 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. Mark4:26-34 

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 continually “reinvent” ourselves through love. The love of God, as the tiniest of seeds, the mustard seed, grows beyond anything we can possibly imagine. It grows, roots, invades and is all encompassing. 

Our action in the world matters because it contributes both to the deeper incarnation of God and continues the work began by Jesus in the world, and the Mystical Body of Christ. 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. Rather, Christ is in evolution because we, are constantly evolving, spreading and invading the Kingdom like the mustard seed. (Adapted from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, Evolving the Universe, June 8, 2018.)

Preaching the Gospel can be risky

 

Mark (Mark 3:20-35) reveals that Jesus is precisely what the religious authorities were not expecting. They didn’t know what to make of him. He didn’t meet their expectations, and as is often the case, what doesn't fit our expectations, we typically label as abnormal, deviant, crazy, or possessed. These iconoclasts are cast as “outsiders.” We assume that what we know and have experienced becomes the standard by which we measure – and judge – the thoughts and actions of others.

Religion was intended to serve as a way to bring us closer to God. The root of the word itself comes from the Latin ligare, which means to bind. It provides the roots of the words "ligament" (tissue that binds together) and "obligation" (the duties to which one is bound.) Religion, then, most often serves to connect us again to God by specifying what actions, duties, and obligations we should undertake out of reverence to God. On one level there's something absolutely right about this. Religion gives us a way to orient our thinking about and our relationship with God. It provides the “training wheels” that enable us to express our thanks for all things in our lives. The trouble arises, however, when we don’t let go and soar on our own “power” and allow religion to become a substitute for a genuine, living relationship with God. This happens when we use to manage and control our relationship or, even worse, to attempt to “manage” and control God.

This is why Jesus was against anything that separated people from the abundant life God had intended. Jesus introduced a new vision and a new way to relate to God...and it's nothing what man could possibly have invented or designed. God knows we try. (David Lose, “Working Preacher,” 6/5/12)