“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.  For previous Green Room entries, click here.

This morning’s Gospel reading is Mark 5:21–43:

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea. One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward. Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” He went off with him, and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him.

There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.” Immediately her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him, turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who has touched my clothes?” But his disciples said to Jesus, “You see how the crowd is pressing upon you, and yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. The woman, realizing what had happened to her, approached in fear and trembling. She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”

While he was still speaking, people from the synagogue official’s house arrived and said, “Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?” Disregarding the message that was reported, Jesus said to the synagogue official, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official, he caught sight of a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. So he went in and said to them, “Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.” And they ridiculed him. Then he put them all out. He took along the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and entered the room where the child was. He took the child by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around. At that they were utterly astounded. He gave strict orders that no one should know this and said that she should be given something to eat.

Throughout the Bible, readers are constantly reminded that The Lord is “the living God,” not an idol or an inanimate object to be fetishized. The book of Daniel makes this point repeatedly, especially when Daniel defeats the cults of Bel and the Babylonian dragon. The letters of Paul also use the phrase several times to describe God. The first instance of this comes in Deuteronomy 5:25-7, as Moses reminds Israel of the Lord’s commandments just before they will pass into the Promised Land without him:

Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the LORD our God any more, we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire, as we have, and has still lived? Go near, and hear all that the LORD our God will say; and speak to us all that the LORD our God will speak to you; and we will hear and do it.’

The final reference to the Lord as “the living God” comes in Revelation 7:1-3, which speaks about the end of days:

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. Then I saw another angel ascend from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads.”

From the beginning to the end of Scripture, we are reminded of God’s nature as that of life, and therefore of abundance. Yet we know death in this world, but our first reading from Wisdom reminds us that this is not from God. “For He fashioned all things that they might have being,” it reminds us, and “God formed man to be imperishable” specifically, as He made man in His own image. Only by the rebellion of Adam and Eve did man choose death “through the envy of the devil,” but the Lord remains the living God — and the God of the living, as the sacrifice of Jesus would make possible.

The flip side of this is also amply demonstrated in the Scriptures, especially in the Old Testament. Death brought a particular kind of uncleanliness — literally, of course, but especially spiritually — that reflected in ancient Israelite law. In Leviticus 21:10-12, the Lord warns that the chief priest cannot touch a dead body, “even for his father or mother,” a warning repeated for the consecrated Nazirites in Numbers 6:6-8; even when death strikes suddenly and the contact is accidental, atonement must take place to restore spiritual cleanliness.  As late as the book of Haggai, in which the temple was rebuilt, the prophet reminded Israel of its unsuitability to rebuild the temple by analogizing that they had embraced the dead body of the material world rather than lived by the Lord’s command.

This adds an interesting dimension to Christ’s ministry in this Gospel reading and others. Christ as Messiah is the new Chief Priest, the one who eliminates the need for temple worship and restores to each of the members of the church the roles of priest, prophet, and king. Jesus came to restore and fulfill the law, which had necessarily been adapted to our human frailty. Under the law at the time under that human frailty, a priest should not have touched a dead person, which is likely why the synagogue official attempts to warn the father from bringing Jesus to the house.

Jesus “disregarded” the warning, though, and advised the official to “have faith.” He goes into the house and restores life to the dead body, after telling her parents that she was “but asleep,” and commanding the child, “Talitha koum!”

The message here is, of course, that death has no power over God, which foreshadows Jesus’ triumph in the tomb after His Passion. It is perhaps an even deeper lesson than this, however. In this, the Lord reminds us most powerfully of His nature of “the living God” rather than a sort of cryptkeeper-in-chief, and also of our nature. We are meant for eternity, not for a brief moment in time. Death may be the ultimate in spiritual uncleanliness, not because of the accidents of mortality but only when our faith is not strong enough to see beyond the tomb. The devil, as Wisdom instructs us, wants us to set boundaries on faith and trust in the Lord at the end of material life, which then forces us to focus on the material pleasures in this world without considering the next, and therefore fall into sin.

That is not what our Lord, the living God, wants from us or for us. He wants us to keep our faith and see that material death is but sleep in this world, and life everlasting in His presence as He intends. Jesus came to touch us all, so that we may all hear his Talitha koum! and rise again with Him. Christ frees us from both material and spiritual death, and all we need to have is the faith and trust to listen to His call, rather than the death rattle of the material world.

Consider it our wake-up call, our gift from the living God.