Philip Fogarty SJ discusses some of the miracles recounted in Mark’s gospel and why Jesus asks for secrecy about his miracles.
Mark tells two miracle stories: one about the cure of a seriously ill daughter of a synagogue official, and, interspersed with it, the cure of a woman with a haemorrhage (5:21-43). Before examining these two stories, it might be worth saying a few words about miracles.
Startling deeds
A miracle is (1) an unusual, startling, or extraordinary event that is in principle perceivable by any interested and fair-minded observer, (2) an event that finds no reasonable explanation in human abilities or in other known forces that operate in our world of time and space, and (3) an event that is the result of a special act of God, doing what no human can do. Christians, of course, affirm that Jesus performed startling deeds that some of his contemporaries considered to be miracles; feats beyond human capacity, accomplished by the power of God alone. Agnostics would state that miracles simply do not happen, that modern men and women cannot possibly accept the Gospel stories as literally true. But as the Jewish historian Josephus asserted, ‘Jesus was a doer of startling deeds’ and that he indeed performed miracles is attested again and again throughout the Gospels.
Different interpretations
We tend to think of a miracle as something that contradicts the laws of nature. The concept of `laws of nature’, however, is a relatively modern scientific idea. For the Jews of Jesus’ time, a miracle was any unusual act of God that astonished, surprised people or made them wonder. Hence God’s creation was a miracle. For the Jews the greatest miracle was the Exodus, their escape from Egypt and the crossing of the Reed Sea, not the Red Sea, which is a mistranslation, but rather a marsh to the north of the Red Sea. This crossing and the subsequent drowning of the Egyptian army, elaborated over the centuries, may possibly be explained by the natural phenomena of tides and winds. But for the Jews it was the greatest ‘miracle’ in their history.
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Faith healing
Now we turn to Mark’s stories. He tells us that large crowds gather around Jesus (5:21ff). A synagogue official, Jairus, comes up to Jesus and falls at his feet pleading, ‘My little daughter is Desperately sick. Do come and lay your hands on her to make her better and save her life.’ Jesus sets off with Jairus surrounded by a surging crowd.
As they head for Jairus’s home, a woman who has suffered with a haemorrhage for twelve years, and whom doctors have been unable to treat, comes up behind Jesus. ‘If I but touch his clothes,’ she says to herself, ‘I will be healed.’ On the instant, her haemorrhage stops, and she feels in her body that she has been healed of her disease.
Immediately aware that power has gone out from him, Jesus turns about in the large crowd and asks, ‘Who has touched me?’ Rather quizzically, the disciples say, ‘You see how the crowd is pressing around you and yet you say, “Who touched my clothes?” Jesus looks all around to see who has done it. The woman then comes forward, frightened and trembling, falls at Jesus’ feet, and tells him the whole truth. ‘Daughter,’ Jesus answers, ‘your faith has made you well; go in peace and be cured of your disease.’
On the margin
The narrative of the woman with the haemorrhage is a most unusual Gospel story. It centres on the delicate question of a gynaecological problem (perhaps chronic uterine haemorrhaging), which would have been not only a delicate private matter for the woman, but also a source of ‘ritual impurity’ according to rules laid down in the Book of Leviticus.
Mark tells us that the woman had been haemorrhaging for twelve years. During those years she would have been effectively marginalized, excluded from the common life of the people, because she was ritually unclean. As long as she was bleeding, she would also render ‘unclean’ anyone who touched her.
So here is her dilemma: to be healed she feels she has to touch Jesus’ cloak, but this would involve a brazen act of a ritually unclean woman communicating her uncleanness to a holy man! Nonetheless, she bravely takes her chance and tells Jesus her story. Jesus’ reply to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you,’ is a remarkable statement that lifts Jesus above any contemporary categories of physician, exorcist, wonder-worker, or holy man. He proclaims that faith has healed the woman.
Such faith is the deep conviction that God is good to humanity and that God can and will triumph over all forms of evil, even severe gynaecological problems! The woman is cured because she has faith in Jesus as the vehicle of God’s power.
Do not be afraid
As Jesus speaks to the woman, people from the house of the synagogue official arrive on the scene and inform the distraught father, ‘Your daughter is dead: why put the Master to any further trouble?’ However Jesus says to Jairus, ‘Do not be afraid; only have faith.’
He then takes Peter, James and John to the official’s house where people are weeping and wailing unrestrainedly. When he arrives at Jairus’ house, he says to them, `Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ But the mourners only laugh at him. Then he puts them all outside, and takes the child’s father and mother and the three disciples and goes into where the child is. He takes the twelve year little girl by the hand and, in Aramaic, says to her, ‘Little girl, get up,’ and the little girl gets up at once and begins to walk about. The parents are overcome with amazement but he orders them not to tell anyone and tells them to give the little child something to eat.
Messianic secret
One oddity that stands out is Mark’s comment that Jesus tells the witnesses to the miracle not to let anyone know about it, but the command makes no sense. The messengers from Jairus’ house spoke of the death of the little girl in front of a whole crowd of people. Jairus’s house is full of mourners, probably family and friends, who laughed at Jesus when he said that the girl was not dead. So the command to silence is absurd now that the once-dead child is running around and munching food. The idea that the child’s parents could keep silent about her being raised to life even for a short period is ludicrous.
What we have here is another example, injudiciously placed, of Mark’s ‘messianic secret’ whereby Jesus wishes to hide his identity because of possible misunderstandings of who he really is, something that only becomes clear after his death and resurrection.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (June 2007), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
