Krysallis

Today we are making a return.

We left the Christ, in his travels in the Gospel of Mark, to take a long detour through Lent and Easter. Now we’re back, reinvigorated by living springs of water. We return to what are called the Sundays in Ordinary Time, but there’s nothing Ordinary about Ordinary time. When one lives life in Christ, they live extraordinary lives. Every Sunday in “Ordinary” time is Easter revisited, and Easter thereby animates the entire liturgical year. Every Sunday thrills with the possibility of liberation for God’s sons and daughters.

We rejoin Christ today for some out-of-the-ordinary events. The Gospel offers us a miracle within a miracle, Easter doubling itself in the healing of a woman with a hemorrhage and the raising from death of the daughter of a temple official.

We see the remarkable power of God and the compassion of Christ in each instance. But we see more --- we see the faith that prompted such power and compassion, and the courage to come forward and touch the cloak of Christ or ask for such an outrageous favor as raising one’s daughter from death.

Jesus didn’t work miracles just because there was nothing better for him to do. I would be hard pressed to think of an instance in the Gospel of Mark when he wasn’t approached in some way. And each approach was prompted by faith. There is interplay between the power of God, the compassion of Christ, the asking of a favor, and the faith of the supplicant, all of which go hand in hand in to what we see as a miracle.

The struggle for liberation is often a hard and frustrating road. The world is set on maintaining an order that keep many oppressed, despite the best efforts of an Easter people. The poor in particular see no end to what some like to assign as their lot in life. Is God here all along, in power and compassion, waiting for faith and action? Are the majority of believers afraid to reach and touch the edge of Christ’s cloak?

Let us take heart from the faith and courage of the characters in today’s reading. The Lord comes with hope and Liberation. God hears the cry of the poor. We start again with the lessons of Easter fresh on our minds to change ourselves and work for a better world.