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Perseverance

The readings this Sunday have a focus on death. The first reading from the Book of Wisdom says that God neither makes nor delights in death. Mark’s Gospel talks about the impending and eventual death of Jarius’ daughter. Don’t tell Wayne, but I too have spent much time over the past year thinking about death.  On March 20, 2023, I was diagnosed with a meningioma tumor; on May 6 of this year, I was diagnosed with breast cancer; on June 19^th I was told the breast cancer tumor was aggressive; and on June 26^th I began chemotherapy. Death has been much on my mind.

However, it is not the death, and eventual resurrection of Jarius’ daughter that drew my attention in this Gospel reading. It is the story told in the few verses in the middle of that story – a story you would not even hear if the shorter version of the Gospel were proclaimed. It is the story of the hemorrhaging woman. If you happened to catch the episode where this is covered in the television series on the life of Jesus called The Chosen, it was depicted exceptionally well.

During the time of Jesus, and for centuries before that, in the Hebrew (and maybe even other) cultures, someone who was bleeding was considered ritually unclean. In fact, during their menstrual cycle, women were separated from their husbands, and spent time in a separate tent. While Anita Diamant’s book The Red Tent speaks about women gathering in a tent during this time of the month, usually women spent the time alone and isolated. In The Chosen we see the hemorrhaging woman going to great pains to hide her condition. She has been excluded from the community. She is alone and unsupported. And she has been suffering thus for 12 years. Twelve years!

Can you imagine at a time when you most need the love and support of your family, your friends, your community that you are unable to receive it? It is inconceivable to me. In these ten short verses we hear this woman’s story. After spending all that she had seeking a cure – a cure that will allow her to return to her community once again – she is no better but worse. And so, in faith … or is it desperation? What has she got to lose? … she works hard, within the crowds that press around him, to simply touch the cloak of Jesus, in the hopes that she will be healed.

Why does she not approach Jesus directly, as did so many others, to ask for this cure? By this time in his ministry, his reputation as a healer had grown. Many have come to him; many have been healed. He turns no one away. The hemorrhaging woman approaches indirectly because she knows that someone in her condition – someone ritually unclean – would make anyone she touched unclean also. Maybe she feels it is not worth the risk of rejection.  Yet when confronted by Jesus, she owns up to what she has done, indicating courage, as well as faith.

Amid all I am living now, I hear that woman’s story in a new way. How impossibly difficult it must have been for her to suffer as she did – alone, isolated, shunned. My heart breaks for her. Here sit I, 2000+ years later – with the best advances of medicine, an educated and compassionate medical team working on my behalf, surrounded by the loving support of family and friends, comforted, and encouraged by their words and their actions.

Our stories, they are very different. Still, here we are – two women of faith, who must trust. And hope. And have courage.

~Ellen Bennett