Word to the Wise
Sunday, June 27, 2021 - 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time - B
[Wis 1:13-15, 2:23-24; 2 Cor 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43 or 5:21-24, 35-43 ,95]"Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction...." "Do not be afraid; just have faith." [Mark]
Hope and healing, death and resurrection - these are themes of the story-within-a-story that forms the gospel scripture for today from the Gospel According to Mark. A little girl's story of death and resurrection surrounds a story of a woman with an incurable disease. Talitha's father is desperate for his daughter. The woman is desperate for a cure. Jesus demonstrates his power over sickness and death by healing the woman and raising the little girl. There is compassion, faith and healing to command our attention, but the Gospel According to Mark requires a bigger picture to understand how these stories fit in the bigger story of Jesus. That bigger picture is Jesus' own death and resurrection.
In a sense, we are invited to read the Gospel According to Mark backwards so that we see everything Jesus does before the cross and resurrection is understood in the light of that cross and resurrection. This is why the disciples are consistently portrayed as misunderstanding Jesus or not understanding at all in this gospel. They and the crowd in today's story can see Jesus as a worker of miracles but not as the Son of God. That first profession of faith would come from the mouth of a Roman centurion who witnessed Jesus' death: "Truly this man was the Son of God!" [Mark 15:39]
In short, it is not simply faith in Jesus as a wonder-worker that matters but faith in Jesus as the Son of God, crucified and risen. From this faith come hope and healing. AMEN