The Contagious Power of Life (June 30)

Reading, Mark 5:21-43
​Image, Bohumil Kubišta, The resurrection of Lazarus, 1911 to 1912. Oil on canvas
 
There’s a story in the book of Samuel. King David, having retrieved the Ark of the Covenant, leads a parade and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. In the midst of this revelry, the oxen pulling the ark of the covenant, slips. The ark begins to slide, and a man named Uzzah reaches out to hold it in place. However, so holy is the ark of the covenant, pulsating with divine presence, that for all his good intentions Uzzah is struck dead on the spot. David is filled with fear, and while continuing his dancing before the Lord, determines not to let the ark rest under his care in his own city.
 
I recount this story because it sheds light on the fear and trembling experienced by the haemorrhaging woman after she reaches out to lay a hand on the garment of Christ. We’ve talked before about the varying socio-religious categories that helped order the life of Israel. Pure/Impure – Holy/Profane. The categories function on several levels, one of which is not unlike our own rules that delineate what is and isn’t allowed to share the same space (can’t put a toilet in a kitchen, can’t sit a living animal at the restaurant table where a dead animal is being served). But they also function to safeguard God’s holy presence and protect God’s people from the consequences of wrongly approaching God. For, (as is the case of Uzzah) while God is infinitely loving and merciful, God is a powerful and holy force.
 
By the metrics of these categories, the haemorrhaging woman is considered impure, so too is the corpse of the child. To say impure, of course, is not to say sinful (however sadly those two are sometime conflated). It is not a moral failing (people moved between pure and impure at various points in their life), but the system does require separation of the impure from the pure, at least until they have been judged clean.
 
Two things are thus at risk when the impure comes into close proximity with the pure – the impure is destroyed (as is the case of Uzzah) or the pure is defiled and rendered impure. The woman in our story fears these outcomes. She has rightly recognised Jesus as holy, as possessing power enough to heal and restore her to the fullness of life in community. And yet, in recognising this, she is hesitant to touch him. When his power bursts forth from him (interestingly we note that, like the Ark of the Covenant, so potent is the force of life itself bubbling within him that this happens without his choosing) she hides, and when he demands to know the one who touched him, she approaches with fear and trembling. What if her offense is so great that like Uzzah she will simply be struck dead for infringing upon the site of God’s holiness dwelling on earth, or what if in touching the hem of his cloak she will have somehow corrupted the whole of his person through her contagious impurity?
 
Neither occurs. Instead of being struck down she is commended for her faith and courage to risk it all in trust that this man wants her to be well. The story teaches that Jesus has come not to scorn the system, but uproot the causes of impurity in this world, to beat back the forces of death which seek to smother the gift of life. Instead of him being corrupted his power is undiminished, his holiness uninterrupted. Indeed, immediately following this Jesus shows his power to overcome an even more extreme case of impurity, a more extreme affront on life, for Jesus comes into contact with a corpse, and brings her to life. 
 
All four Gospels contain accounts of Jesus interacting with corpses. In this story in Mark, the girl has only been dead a short while, and Jesus, in calling her back to life takes her by the hand. However, in other gospel stories, such as that of Lazarus, the person has been dead longer, and Jesus is able to overcome the force of death at a distance. Those first communities reading the gospels inhabited a world that almost universally perceived corpses as conveying impurity not only through contact but also through proximity. These stories testify that Jesus’ holy power not only equals but surpasses the contagious, defiling power of death. Jesus is continually brought into contact with the forces of death and impurity, and continually overcomes them; the heart of the confession then, is that Jesus is a source of holiness more powerful than death itself.
 
With Jesus, God has sent something new into the world. It is in him that the fullness of God’s holy power was pleased to dwell, but so too the fullness of God’s love and mercy. Jesus has come then, not only to overcome the power of death, but to do so in a way that the impure can approach without being destroyed, can touch without his body being corrupted.
 
This confession crescendos at Easter. The forces of death stake a claim directly upon Jesus’ body on the cross and in the tomb. They reach out a hand and grab hold of his very person, but even here Jesus’ holiness triumphs, even here the life of the world cannot be snuffed out, but swallows up death itself. If the hem of Jesus’ garments can make the woman well, his wounded body is the site that brings us all out from under the force of death.
 
And so we are baptised into Christ’s death, so that nothing can separate us from God’s loving presence. In baptism we celebrate that Christ takes us by the hand and gently instructs us to rise. Such is his holy power that when we reach out to grab the hem of his garment, or he reaches out to take our hand, we are not destroyed, death is. O death, where is your sting! Paul writes; O grave, where your victory? Jesus has come and dwelt among us, in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell – as such he is the site of God’s perfect holiness, a force more powerfully, vibrantly contagious than any force of death or impurity. For this reason, we need not fear approaching his presence, nor tremble at the majestic mystery of his lifeforce. Rather we take the leap of faith and cling to the hem of his garment, knowing that he shall take our hand, commend our audacity, and lead us into life.