Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
In the passage from Mark that is before us today we encounter a Jesus we don’t hear enough about.
This is the Jesus who has performed astonishing miracles. Those miracles have been noticed, and the crowds are gathering in growing numbers. Jesus can feel the enthusiasm as crowds press in on him from all side. They want to see this amazing man. He has become a phenomenon.
With all those people, all that attention, all that anticipation from the crowd it’s surprising that he pauses. He feels something—something has been drained from him. He has a good idea that this feeling of power being drained from him has something to do with a human being. “And he looked around to see who had done it.”
Who had done it?
It was a woman. It was a woman who had been suffering for years from a medical condition that caused her to bleed. With a condition like that, she surely was in most people’s mind an unclean woman. She was the sort of unclean woman that all decent people of the time knew they should stay as far away from as possible. To do otherwise was to put at risk their own standing as people of God.
But Jesus “looked around to see who had done it.” He was looking for the person who had caused him to feel power drained from his body. He wanted to know who had called upon his powers of healing “in fear and trembling”?
It must have been hard for Jesus to see her amidst all the people in the crowd. It took some effort for him to find her. But then he sees her—that unclean woman. That untouchable woman. And what does he do? He calls her “daughter.” And he proclaims her healed. Clean.
With the news these past few weeks of so much suffering endured by girls and young women at the hands of men in authority and at the hands of all those (men and women) who looked the other way, this Jesus is just the Jesus we need. He is the one of absolute authority who stopped. Looked around. Took notice. He is the one who saw his “daughter” and took care.
To be sure, we as followers of Jesus are called to do the same. We are called to look hard for the one who is suffering and desperately needs our attention, care, support. May we be on the lookout for girls and women who are suffering at the hands of men in authority. And may we have the courage so that we will not look away but instead see our sister/daughter and take care.
Amen.
- Sue Trollinger