ORDINARY TIME, WEEK 13
June 28, 2009
Mk 5, 21-43
JESUS ‘MANIPULATED’ BY WOMEN (?)
At this time of the year the Sunday gospels show us Jesus in full public ministry. They show us what sort of a man he was among other people: a very human one, open to influences brought upon him by others around him. Especially, women!
In today’s passage from Mark, we read about the daughter of Jairus, who was dying or dead, and intertwined with this story we learn about the (unnamed) woman with the haemorrhage. Jairus, the father of the little girl, knew how to ‘get around’ Jesus. He pulled rank as a synagogue official. He was a VIP in that district. Jesus unhesitatingly went out of his way (literally) for him and for the little girl. When news comes of the ‘death’ of the girl, those around Jairus tell Jesus not to go to any further trouble. In oriental language, that is the very best way to ask Jesus to go to more trouble! And the result – Jesus goes to much more trouble and heals the girl. Oriental language loves to ask the opposite of what is wanted (‘depart from me, Lord…’).
The lady with the haemorrhage got what she wanted from Jesus, but used different skills. She touched his clothing. She must have known she could not get away with that without Jesus knowing. I think she wanted him to know. She got from him not just a physical cure (free of her complaint), but a healing (her faith restored her to full health) into peace (go in peace). She used her cunning to get all and more from Jesus.
In each of these situations, a woman is involved in ‘manipulating’ Jesus to secure what she needs and wants. It is not the only story in Mark that tells of this sort of thing.
Just before these two stories in Mark, we have the story of the demise of John the Baptist. We get the impression that Herod Antipas would very much have wanted to get rid of John. But he was afraid of him. He wouldn’t kill John, at least until Herodias gets her daughter to dance, and then he is manipulated into offering her half the kingdom, and all the head of the Baptist. It is another case of womanly wiles that worked.
Note that the episode is placed by Mark just after that of the hemorrhaging woman, and that of the daughter of Jairus.
In Mark 7, soon after these incidents, the (foreign) Syrophenician woman with the demonized daughter, holds Jesus to his commitment to loving service and prods him into healing her daughter, when, initially, he didn’t want to. This leads in Mark to what is called the second feeding miracle - which takes place in the (foreign) Gentile region of the Decapolis. [Perhaps it is the third feeding – Jesus has already fed the woman’s dog, too!]
There are scriptural stories that highlight this power of women to get the help they want. The book of Judith tells of the victory won by the chosen people over its enemies, thanks to the intervention of a woman. She overcomes the cowardice of her own people. She rebukes their leading men for their lack of faith. She prays. She goes to Holofernes (general of the army) and uses all her charm and wit. She then cuts off his head! Esther did a similar thing when Aman tried to exterminate the Jews in Persia. When the king saw her, ‘God changed the king’s heart, inducing a milder spirit’….
It is interesting to look more broadly at the figure of Jesus in Mark. In Mark’s gospel, there are no birth narratives about Jesus: we meet him immediately as an adult engaged in the issues of his life. The adult Jesus in Mark is often rightly said to be a developing, maturing figure, learning his humanness from situations and life experiences. He is not some heavenly being who has simply taken the external appearance of a man, but who internally knows everything that is going on and everything he is going to do. He is strong, but he is unsure, and when he does not know what to do he can let himself be gently led by others in ways he did not plan. Some might see him as too much like us!
There is both a realism and a gentleness in his character. Mark’s Jesus lives in stormy situations. He does not have the stature of a great man. He is without a single trait characteristic of the Roman or Greek or Jewish hero. He is seldom an outright winner. To people who aspire to greatness for him, he brings disappointment, dismay, even astonishment at his inability to take control. For them, his words are perplexing in the extreme. He goes on puzzling his disciples to the very end. He is wholly unacceptable to those who like their Jesus either tamed and conventionalized, or winning glorious victories by his bravado. He is the greatest realist that ever was, and looks at the forces of death directly in the face, but he is not immediately a conqueror of these forces. There is indeed a gentleness in him, mixed with an inability to stand up and ‘do’ much at times, and in him we see gentleness itself rising from the dead…. There are two sides to him, and He does not seem to know how to get these two sides of himself together…
In Mark, Jesus can both ‘feel compassion’ (splanchnistheis) for the downtrodden (6,34, 8,2, and 9, 22-23) and ‘become angry’ (orgistheis) when people don’t trust him (3,5) and 9,23). The Greek for ‘feel compassion’ literally means being ‘moved in his gut’. The Greek for ‘become angry’ literally means being worked up into a frenzied outburst in which he is not in real control. It is interesting that latter copyists of Mark’s gospel eliminated the latter word altogether, probably because they didn’t want that kind of Jesus and thought that someone divine ought not to feel like that! There seems to be a permanent need in many Christians to make Jesus less real and less human than he obviously was. They want him more ‘integrated’ too. They don’t like stories of women manipulating his kindness! It is possible that actually he wasn’t sure what to do next, many times, and was secretly glad someone else told me a good way to move!
In Mark, Jesus is a prophet rapidly criss-crossing Galilee and visiting Judea as the plot moves resolutely to an impending final encounter with a Roman cross. In the process in Mark, he doesn’t have it all together… I don’t think it was required of him to have it all together. All that was needed was that he mix with people and at times let them guide him in ways he did not feel able to take alone. The man who knew how to die for us was not necessarily a man who had his emotional life integrated…. That would not be a requirement for resurrection. It isn’t asked of us either. We, like Jesus, can come as we are, and still be raised from the dead.
I think we could say that he was open to woman’s leadership and guidance. He was actually ‘manipulated’ by them – more than once!