MARK 5: 21-43

Marginally Mark…Pentecost + 6…Revised 2018 

Anyone come crying to us & appealing, even unspokenly, for help in some way lately? When some life & death issue faces them & / or someone close to them? Anyone touched ‘the hem of our coat’ lately, maybe in some symbolic way, desperately wanting our help to be set free from something? Whom did we see when we looked around to see who’d done such a thing? Looking back just a few verses, has anyone we know who is bound by somebody, or has something evil oppressing them, or making them ‘untouchable’ like Legion, appealed to us in some way or other? Or have we ourselves been doing any of these same things, if we could only admit to it?

If today’s ‘helping’ of Gospel is to come alive for us, as Jesus brings each of its characters alive in one way or another, we need to meet these same characters not in the streets of old, but in & around the streets where we live & worship! Why preach about (Legion), Jairus, his young daughter, or the woman who’s bleeding to death, if not physically, at least in quality of life, if they’re not names & faces around us? Are we honest enough to be able to recognise ourselves as among those needing to lower any barriers we’ve placed between us & our reaching out for help? Crying aloud one way or another to find a new name & face & place in God’s eyes & in people’s eyes?

Finding oneself involves knowing who we are. Coming to terms with whom we are, whom we’re called to be. Today, Jairus is given a name but his daughter isn’t; neither is the woman with her issue of blood. We all deserve a name & a face, so let’s call Jairus’ young daughter ‘Deborah’, & the older woman, 'Judith'. All three face life predicaments for themselves or for another. Can I remind us, too, how immediately before today’s ‘helping’ of Scripture Legion has named himself to indicate the possessed life he leads. How he has to exist as an untouchable out there among the dead. I wonder, now that he’s healed, & ‘in his right mind’ does he resume his real name? What is our real name in God’s eyes? Have we found it yet?

Today’s little glimpses of Jesus' compassion for the troubled & excluded take us to the heart of Gospel. Could ‘Good News’ be another way of putting what it means for us to have a name & a face in God’s eyes & in God’s Kingdom? And know that name here & now? On earth as it is in Heaven? How can we preach to today’s Legions & Jairuses, Deborah’s & Judith’s, & all the other names we go by, or are known to others by, so we can all be open to the possibilities of new life in God? In Christ; by His Spirit?

Brian