June 27, 2021
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on June 27, 2021 on the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) at St. Austin Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15; and Mark 5:21-43.
Mark the evangelist loves to use a writing technique called “the Marcan sandwich,” where he’s telling a story, and then he interrupts himself to tell a second story before he returns to finish the first story. Our gospel today is perhaps the best-known of the Marcan sandwiches. It’s pretty clear that Mark wants us to make some kind of connection between the healing of Jairus’ daughter and the healing of the woman with the hemorrhage. As we listen to these two stories today, let’s search for new connections.
Our second reading comes from the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians. This portion is part of the first ever-recorded solicitation for financial contributions. Paul asks the Corinthians to make financial donations to the poor Christians suffering in Jerusalem. He says to them: “Your abundance at the present time should supply their needs.”
Maybe – just maybe – Mark’s two healing stories are connected by the idea of spiritual poverty and spiritual abundance.
Let us take a moment to ask God to shower us with his abundant mercy.
Someone at the 5 pm Mass on Saturday suggested that I should have changed the last line of the gospel to: “he said that she should be given a sandwich.” I replied: “But Mike, I don’t know the Aramaic word for ‘sandwich.’”
Why did Mark interrupt the first healing story with a second one? Is it because they both speak to the power of touch? Is it to contrast the ages between Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage? Is it about indoor and outdoor spaces? About privacy and publicity? About insiders and outsiders? About the known and the unknown? Perhaps Mark wants us to hear a contrast between Jesus’ comments on the faith of the woman and the faith of Jairus.
Permit me to build a sandwich of my own. In our second reading, Paul’s main message to the Corinthians is this: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ should inspire us to live lives of generosity, gratitude, and interdependence.
One person who was the epitome of generosity and gratitude was a colleague of mine at St. John XXIII Parish at the University of Tennessee: Dr. Ruth Queen Smith. She had such strong, passionate faith, bringing thousands of people closer to God over the decades, even though she suffered from multiple sclerosis, lupus, and blindness. On one particular rough day for her, I said, “They say that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. You seem to be able to handle a lot.” Ruth responded, “I disagree. I think God gives us more than we can handle. We need to depend on others in the community to help us handle what God gives us.”
And with that image of our interdependence on one another in mind, let’s return to Jairus and the woman with the hemorrhage. I’ve come to believe that the healing of the woman with the hemorrhage is an essential element in the story of the curing of Jairus’ daughter.
Jairus is probably frustrated, perhaps even angry, that the crowd is slowing Jesus’ progress towards the house where his daughter is dying. For Jesus to stop and listen to the woman whom he has just cured of a hemorrhage must have alarmed Jairus, as precious moments ticked by. And then Jairus receives word that it is too late: his daughter is dead.
If Jairus had not just witnessed the healing of the woman with the hemorrhage, what would he have done? Would he have given up hope? Would he have taken Jesus’ words to heart when he said, “Do not be afraid; just have faith”?
It is the woman with the hemorrhage, the ultimate outsider, forbidden from even entering the synagogue for twelve years, who provides the synagogue official with a reason to trust Jesus with the impossible. He with the most influence and prestige in the village is enriched by the least influential member of the community.
So, one week before the Fourth of July, the Church invites us to make a declaration of INTERdependence. As much as we want to delude ourselves into thinking we can be independent from other people, God intends for us to rely upon one another. I have a few questions about interdependence for each of us to consider:
- What do you have in abundance? How are you blessed?
- What is scarce in your life? How are you impoverished?
- What does God invite us to share?
- What does God invite us to receive from others?
St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “[T]hough [Christ] was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich…. [Y]our abundance at the present time should supply [the] needs [of those who are burdened], so that their abundance may also supply your needs.”
None of us are God. All of us will need to depend on others to carry what we cannot lift ourselves. God invites us to fortify one another with our abundance whenever we can.
As any chef will tell you: the best-tasting sandwiches contain an array of contrasting ingredients and flavors. God invites each of us to be humble enough to allow others to be a story of faith within our own story of faith. And God invites each of us to be a story of faith within someone else’s story of faith. May each of us aspire to be the sweet relish in the faith lives of other people!