IT IS not only concepts of masculinity (as last week) which are currently fraught with sensitivities. We must also wrestle with what it means to be female. The Gospel presents two women: one is on the age of burgeoning fertility, and hence marriageability, in line with Jewish tradition. As for the opposite, we may suspect from the “uncleanness” (Leviticus 15.25-28) of her bleeding, that her fertility is rapidly diminishing.
It isn’t any accident that the 2 are set side by side. The older one, after bleeding for 12 years, was surely in poor health from anaemia, if nothing more. Perhaps she prayed as her hand reached out, “There may yet be hope.” The younger, meanwhile, has for 12 years been developing, to a degree where she begins to be constrained by her fertility. She might need been told, “It is sweet for one to bear the yoke in youth” (Lamentations 3.27, 29).
In Jewish tradition, to die before one had the chance of bearing children was a matter for lamentation, as Jephthah’s daughter reminds us (Judges 11.27). This may add an additional layer of suffering for Jairus, the Jewish synagogue leader. It is unusual for Mark to present a reputation to such a personality in his story, which suggests that he wants us to pay close attention to Jairus. He shows a father’s distress at his child’s suffering, asking Jesus to revive her health; there isn’t any hint that he’s anxious about his own posterity.
Modern-day contraception, by disconnecting sexual activity from childbearing, has created a niche between female sexuality and feminine fertility that was unknown in Bible days. It is shocking to Twenty first-century Western Christians to think about girls marrying at puberty, across the age of 12. We treat adolescence — roughly, the years from 12 to 18 — as a time for learning and maturing, needing protection. The perception that biology is destiny, that girls’s fertility dictates their life selections, leaves behind it a grim trail of exploitation of the immature and vulnerable. Still, standing as much as that perception leaves us with ethical and practical issues that didn’t trouble Jesus, or Jairus, or Jairus’s “little lamb”.
The message of this difficult Gospel story is just not wholly clear on a primary reading, but a minimum of it doesn’t have the uncomfortable subtext of the epistle. If there’s one thing guaranteed to make us uncomfortable in church — even greater than the mistaken type of hymns, or Bible stories about women bleeding — it’s an excessive amount of speak about money. Or “filthy lucre” (Titus 1.11), because the Bible calls it. Or “the basis of all evil” (1 Timothy 6.10) because the Bible is claimed to call it.
My favourite Bible verse about money comes from this letter. It got here to life liturgically after I began celebrating holy communion in line with the Book of Common Prayer. In 2 Corinthians 9.6-7, Paul reminds those that “God loveth a cheerful giver.” Which could also be bad news for people like me who can at all times consider something fun to spend money on: more yarn; one other orchid; tickets for the football.
There should be a reason why this lection begins at verse 7. But the just one I can see is that, as an alternative of starting with the Corinthians’ needing to open their purses, it begins with a little bit of ego-massage (“as you excel in every little thing”). Then it starts urging them to be generous. The Greek says that they need to abound in charis, which encompasses “favour”, “gratitude”, and “gift”; the dominant meaning here is “generosity”.
Last time the query of cash got here up within the Sunday readings, it was concerning the Apostles’ holding every little thing in common. It didn’t feel odd to me, as an adolescent, that in the meanwhile when a set was taken in an enormous Baptist church, the treasurer read out the entire for the previous week’s giving, and we were told whether we had given enough, or whether there was more to be done to pay the bills. But that might be shocking in most parish churches.
One answer to Paul, and to Jairus, and to the unnamed older woman, lies within the beatific poetry of Lamentations. Suffering and poverty should not intentionally imposed on us by God. So, after we endure them, as sometimes we must, we should always accomplish that knowing that assistance will come, and that our hope is just not in vain.
Ordinary Christians may feel called to a less demanding standard.
