Mark 5:21-43 (NRSV Updated Edition)
When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him, and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue, named Jairus, came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and pleaded with him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Immediately her flow of blood stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my cloak?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
While he was still speaking, some people came from the synagogue leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the synagogue leader, “Do not be afraid; only believe.” He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the synagogue leader’s house, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl stood up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat.
"In the art of narrative, every detail is there for a reason, and Mark's “aside” that the girl was twelve years old is a good case in point. She has lived affluently for twelve years, and is just on the edge of puberty. In contrast, the bleeding woman had suffered for twelve years, permanently infertile. This number symbolizes the twelve tribes of Israel (3:13; see Chapter 4), and represents the key to the social meaning of this doublet. Within the “family” of Israel, these “daughters” represent the privileged and the impoverished, respectively. Because of such inequity, the body politic of the synagogue is “on the verge of death.”
"The healing journey must, however, take a necessary detour that stops to listen to the pain of the crowd. Only when the outcast woman is restored to true “daughterhood” can the daughter of the synagogue be restored to true life. That is the faith the privileged must learn from the poor. This story thus shows a characteristic of the sovereignty of God that Jesus will later address: The “last will be first” and the “least will be greatest” (see 10:31, 43)."
- Ched Myers, with Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, and Stuart Taylor, “Say to This Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, pp. 66-67
"Here’s my proposal to you this morning: Jesus came not simply to bring healing to isolated individuals like the two daughters in this wrap-around story. He came to heal the system which makes the families of human communities outsiders to one another, declaring some to be unclean and untouchable. Jesus came daring to touch, and to be touched by, those untouchables. He was willing in the end to even let himself be declared an untouchable, hanged on the cross. He crossed those boundaries to offer healing not just to individuals but to the systems and communities of healing themselves. He came to help us see that there will never be any ultimate healing and peace until we cease to play the games of insiders and outsiders."
- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from sermon delivered on July 1, 2012 (https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_8b_2012_ser/)
"Here [Jesus] is back on the 'Jewish' side [of the lake of Galilee] and we get this wonderful [story], two women who together represent the Daughter of Zion, the one who is going to be married to The Bridegroom. We have this diptych about the coming into the midst of the people of the great High Priest, who is also the one who is setting up the possibility of the marriage between the Lord and Zion, and how this breaks through all fear of death and impurity - the great things that kept people away from the Holy of Holies such that only the High Priest could go in and only after [he] had been separated from any sort of death and from any sort of impurity.
[...]
"Jesus is going with the [synagogue] leader, remembering, someone who would bring up his daughter in very strict separation from boys and who's now coming terribly close to the moment when she is about to be marriageable. And as [for] many many young women in Middle Eastern society at that time, and maybe still in other societies, that is a real crisis point, the time when you can suddenly become marriageable. And perhaps you don't even have any choice about the matter, especially if you're in a religiously conservative household such as being in an synagogue leader's household -you're not going to choose, you're going to be forcibly married off. You're not sure whether you want to enter into that world, so developing a catatonic stupor and refusing to carry on living is a conversion, it's a recognized conversion symptom. Under those circumstances, others do the reverse, the reverse of this kind of anorexic shutdown is done by eating far too much, bloating - again trying to avoid becoming marriageable.
"[... Then] we have a mature woman, the one who'd been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. Very soon we will see that the little girl was twelve. So that's very deliberate. Mark is showing this woman for twelve years has been unable to be married, unable to enter into any sort of tactile relationship with anybody because she is ritually impure constantly. She can't be made pure, she can't go to the synagogue, she can't marry, she can't have sex, she's untouchable - quite literally can't be touched because of her condition. She's tried the doctors, the doctors can't do anything about it, she's made herself poor in this way. But she'd heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak.
[...]
"And Jesus says to her, “Daughter,” - he used not the term little girl, he uses the term daughter - “your faith has made you well, go in peace and you will be healed of your disease.” He is not treating it as though he is a father, he's using the term daughter to indicate she is a daughter of Zion. [...] She is now going to be marriageable, she's now able to enter into the marriage banquet between the Lord and Zion, what we call the marriage supper of the Lamb.
"While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, “Your daughter is dead,” - ok, so it's no longer a case of a spirit possession, she's dead - “why trouble the teacher any further?” [...] But they're also saying: don't bring him into the house, it is now an impure place and of course he will be made impure if he comes into the house. But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue “Do not fear, only believe.” In other words, [...] the synagogue leader is going to have to have believed what happened to the woman, whom he would have barred from his synagogue, and agreed to go into his own home, which is now an impure place, with Jesus in faith. It's faith that's going to make him whole. In other words, the woman cured from her bleeding is the example of faith that he's being asked to accept to go forward. It's the daughter of Zion who's at work here.
[...]
"[Jesus] took the child's father and mother, and those who are with him - that's, the three disciples, Peter, James and John - and went in to “where the child was,” it says in our version. The best Greek text is, “where the child was laid.” And the verb used for “laid” is very interesting because it's a verb with two meanings. It can be “was laid out” as a corpse is laid out, meaning that they'd washed her and laid her corpse out; or laid “was reclining,” and the same verb is used to recline as at a banquet. In other words, it's a very very clever use of a verb there to indicate that both of those might be the case. Because after all, this is the one who had died just short of becoming marriageable in just the same way as the other had been locked into the impossibility of marriage.
"He took her by the hand, which is always the sign of an invitation to marriage, and said to her, “Talitha koom,” which is Aramaic for “little girl, arise!” And it's straight out of the canticle, the Song of Songs, the Canticle of Canticles. The daughter of Zion who is being told to arise because the bridegroom is coming. And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about. [...] Obviously, this whole business of growing up and becoming marriageable had been too much for her - stressful circumstances, a bound-down religious atmosphere, marriage impossibility, inability to flourish - all of that has been solved by the arrival of the Bridegroom.
[...]
"So in today's Gospel we have the Bridegroom, the Lord, the High Priest, come into the midst of the Daughter of Zion, to call her to life, to break through the fear of death and of blood, of impossibility and impurity, to bring to life impossibility and marriage."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 13 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSJ4UYCATu8)
[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein and “Say to This Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, and for discussion and reflections on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper_8b/]
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