If you are one of the 400 people in our parish who participated in Vacation Bible School this past week, you could probably say these five daily themes in your sleep! What an amazing week here at Emmaus with volunteers, staff, participants and parents so intentionally reflecting on the theme that Jesus rescues, hence the shipwrecked logo!  It is amazing how our readings this weekend continue the theme of Jesus rescuing those who are lonely, who worry, who struggle, who do wrong and who are powerless.  Even our Psalm this weekend so perfectly encapsulates this theme, “I will praise you Lord, for you have rescued me.”  We have some pretty strong messages this week to reflect on the power and will of Jesus to save us.

Our Gospel this weekend is a wonderful example of a literary technique that the writer of the Gospel of Mark employs throughout his work called the Markan sandwich: where one story is embedded within another story and are meant to be seen together. These are beloved stories in Mark: the healing of Jairus’ 12 year old daughter and the healing of the woman with a 12 year hemorrhage. Both people have crossed many boundaries to get to Jesus and defy some social convention as they desperately seek His healing. First, we have Jairus, the bereaved father who approaches Jesus because his daughter is dying and wishes for the touch of the healer in a last ditch effort to save her. Jairus, a synagogue leader, would have been suspicious of Jesus on the one hand, and someone always in control on the other, but here Jairus defies social convention to approach Jesus and beg repeatedly for Jesus’ help. Jesus does not hesitate to follow him. After the delay of the woman with the hemorrhage episode, Jesus indeed raises the girl from the dead, restoring her to her family and community.

But on the way to the daughter, as the crowds press in to see what is going on, we meet the woman with a hemorrhage. First of all, we cannot but notice all the details we get about her illness: she has been suffering for a long time and has sought every effort for healing but they have only made her worse and put her in financial ruin. If we know about the purity codes of the Jewish religion, we also know that because of her bleeding, she is isolated from everyone as well. She is unclean, yet jostling about in the midst of a very big crowd to get to Jesus. She, like Jairus, crosses many boundaries to obtain the healing she so desperately wants and needs. She is also interrupting the very timely journey of Jesus, Jairus and the crowd trying to get to the sick daughter before the girl dies.  After she is healed and Jesus demands to know who has touched Him, she approaches Jesus with fear and trembling probably because of her awe, but also afraid the crowd might turn on her for crossing these social conventions. Not understanding who Jesus was, the crowd would have thought His healing power used up on the woman with not enough left for the daughter.

We notice in these stories, as would the listeners in the early church, that the main character is not only Jesus and His desire and power to heal, but also the faith of regular people who had the power to be healed and be saved. For them, they had to step out of their normal ways to experience the healing power of God. They had to defy social convention, cross some boundaries and become vulnerable to receive what they so desperately sought. For Jesus, we can make no mistake about it here – this is no regular healer whose power might be used up. He is continuing the work of God, which our first reading from the Book of Wisdom tells us, is the God who has fashioned all things that they might have being and wholeness. 

As we contemplate with our young parishioners this week that Jesus rescues, what might we be called to as we rejoice in this good news? What social conventions and boundaries do we need to cross to allow the healing power of God into our families, into our lives, into our hearts? From what loneliness, worries, struggles, wrongdoings and powerlessness do we need to be saved? What desperate hopes do we need to take to Jesus? How can we become vulnerable to this healing love of God?