Week 5

Psalm: Psalm 30
Old Testament : 2 Samuel 1:1-27
Gospel : Mark 5:21-43
Epistle : 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

As I suggested last week, I am going to start with the Gospel and Epistle readings so I don’t short change the New Testament.  The second half of Mark 5 is the story of a healing inside a miracle. The story begins with an official named Jarius asking Jesus to hurry and heal his daughter who is essentially on her death bed.  A large crowd gathers and you can imagine that it is taking Jesus a painfully long time to arrive at Jarius’ house.  Not only is Jesus going slow, someone in the crowd reaches out and touches Jesus’ cloak and is healed.  Somehow Jesus can tell that he has healed someone though his cloak and stops the whole procession to figure it out.  The disciples sound exasperated, as if to say, “Of course someone touched you, were in a crowd!”  A lady comes forward with a 12-year-old malady and admits she reached out to touch Jesus.  Let us take a moment to understand that Jesus has just been touched by an unclean woman.  A woman who, because of her condition, hasn’t been able to be “clean” or sacrifice to God for 12 years!  But Jesus doesn’t even address that.  He heals her and tells her to go in peace.

But the story isn’t over because all of this took time away from Jarius and his daughter, who apparently has now died.  Jesus brushes that off by saying she is just sleeping.  Obviously, the people knew she had died, there wasn’t confusion in the Roman world about death.  So, Jesus goes into the house and brings her back from the dead.  In this story, we see evidence that Jesus spoke Aramaic because the Aramaic is kept here.  We also see that Jesus doesn’t want people to know that he raised this girl from the dead, presumably because the crowd already followed him around without them wanting him to raise dead people.  Finally, Jesus tells the family to give the girl something to eat.  This is a minor and important detail because it reveals that the girl is actually and bodily raised.  Just as when Jesus appears after the resurrection and eats with disciples, eating is a sign of life.  It proves you’re not a ghost or spirit.

I want to move to 2 Samuel really quickly because I find this chapter so interesting.  It starts back in the last chapter of 1 Samuel where Jonathan is killed by the Philistines and then Saul is reported to kill himself after being wounded. In 2 Sam. 1 an Amalekite comes to David and reports that he actually killed Saul because his injuries were mortal and took his crown to bring to David.  First, we have 2 conflicting accounts which is interesting since these books were originally one book.   It goes to the point I have made many times that one can’t just read the bible literally as a historical account.  (There are many conflicting and even contradictory details.) But another disturbing part of this story is that David has the Amalekite killed because he killed “the Lord’s anointed.”  It’s as if David doesn’t recognize yet that the Lord has removed his anointed.  Remember a few weeks ago when David actually became the “Lord’s anointed” and the future king.  All around this story is weird, but it reveals a few things about David, namely he was intensely loyal.   Saul tried to kill him, yet David was always loyal to him as the king of Israel.

I’ll admit I’ve really been struggling with our readings from Corinthians for the past month.  They never seem to connect with the other readings.  Today is no different.  Here in chapter 8, Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to continue to give and raise money for their offering to Jerusalem.  Paul recognizes that giving is a part of Christianity.  He actually spends all of chapter 8 and 9 encouraging the Corinthians in their giving.  I guess we can say that the Corinthians were being stingy to need this much exhortation.  We focus so much in Paul’s writing on his discussions of grace versus the law, but Paul is never one to disconnect grace from works.  For Paul grace, salvation, love, or whatever you want to call following Jesus, is never without works of mercy and love towards the fellow believer especially, but also to those in the world.

So how to wrap up? This week we had four deaths and one person brought back from the dead.  We had 2 murders/executions and we have Paul exhorting the church at Corinth to raise an offering.  All I can say is the Bible is complicated and must be read carefully.  Also remember, we are not the first to read or ponder over these texts.  We stand in a long line of almost 2,000 years of Christians who have wrestled with these texts, trying to live faithfully to the call of following Jesus.

This week, may we strive to live faithfully to God’s call in our lives to love our neighbor as Christ has loved us.  Grace and Peace.