REFLECTIONS
These pieces are written each month by members of our clergy team.
July Parish Magazine Leader:
This month will see the nation go to the polls to elect our next government and am writing this today on Thursday 6th June. For me, the two events are inextricably linked together as our freedom to choose our own government is so precious that thousands gave their only lives to defend it. How sad then that not everyone bothers to exercise this democratic right when the opportunity presents. For some, the cynical saying holds sway, ‘Don’t vote at elections it only encourages them.’Cynicism is sadly understandable as many of our country's problems seem deeply intractable, and many of the same problems continue to be unaddressed whoever is in power. However, if elections are about anything then they are in the first instance about engagement and some kind of responsibility towards the country we live in and the community that we are part of. In fact there are a number of countries around the world such as Australia and Brazil where voting, with a few exemptions, is compulsory.
Psalm 121 begins with the verse, ‘I will lift up my eyes unto the hills from where shall my help come, my help comes from the Lord who has made heaven and earth.’ Walking down the street today, it is so easy to bump into people who have their heads glued to their phones. This is like some kind of metaphor for a downward looking insular world, the world of the one and of the individual. This disengagement can be felt in the voluntary sector in churches, in politics, Local and National, in relationships, and in family gatherings where people can easily be distracted by the smartphone.
In a sense we get the government that we voted and didn't vote for. God calls us to lift up our heads to the wider world around us. Christ teaches and encourages us to be fully engaged with life, for Christ's ways are the ways of love and love is expressed through reliability, responsibility, commitment, faithfulness, and engagement with the lives of the people, and the natural world around us especially in times of suffering. For some Christians, this engagement will be expressed by their support of one political party and for someone sitting next to us in the pew through support of the opposite Political party but at least they are not indifferent. The opposite of love is not hate, as most people think but cold indifference. Heated political debates show that the people involved care about things; the NHS, the state of our rivers, our public finances and taxation etc. Hopefully, we can still live in a political world where engagement, debate, and argument lead to intelligent decisions rather than people being shut down and de-platformed because of the illiberal intolerance of others. Engaging in public life can even be dangerous in today's world.
May our prayers this month be with all those who stand for public office and represent us in Parliament. The responsibilities of this are indeed onerous, and the cost to them and their families is not inconsequential.
Matthew Hughes
Reflection
Welcome to this month's Bulletin and to a powerful and dramatic Gospel reading from St Mark. The main theme of the reading is the desperation of two people and the way in which they find Jesus and place their hope in him.
The first person we read about is a Synagogue ruler called Jairus. What was a Synagogue ruler? The Jewish place of worship is called a Synagogue and the origins of the word is from the Greek word 'Synagein' which means to ‘bring together’ or ‘a place of assembly’. In Jesus’s day most towns and villages would have a Synagogue, a place where Jews would come together to hear their Holy Scriptures and to meet for prayer and worship just as we would in a church. The running of the Synagogue was entrusted to a Synagogue Ruler who was responsible for the conduct of the services and the allocation of duties, he would also be the president of the board of elders. A Synagogue ruler was not responsible for the taking of services, but for the overall management of the Synagogue. Typically a Synagogue ruler was one of the most important and respected people in any given community. In contrast, Jesus was not highly thought of or respected by the religious rulers of his day, if anything they treated him with suspicion and hostility. In the above reading the two men encounter each other, Jairus is desperate and this highly respected man throws himself down at Jesus’s feet because his twelve year old daughter is sick and close to death. In his panic and worry Jairus lays aside any prejudice he might have had towards Jesus and is prepared to forget his public standing in a desperate bid for help. Jesus's response is immediate, he goes with Jairus. All of this is being played out in the view of a growing crowd who surround and crush Jesus as he tries to make his way to Jairus’s house.
We then have a story within a story, for as Jesus is struggling his way through the crowd another desperate person, this time a woman, reaches out to touch Jesus so that she also might be healed. What was wrong with this woman? Mark tells us that the women suffered from haemorrhages, these were probably gynaecological in nature and thus accompanied by much embarrassment and shame. Indeed in the Jewish law an unstopped flow of blood from any part of the body rendered a person unclean and shut them off from attending the Synagogue and being part of the community. So here was a woman full of embarrassment and shame, lonely and cut off from the life around her. Mark also tells us that she had spent all her money on many doctors to no avail. (Interestingly when Luke, who was a doctor himself, comes to record this event in his Gospel he conveniently omits this detail!). No wonder she felt that she could only reach out to Jesus anonymously. What is really interesting here is that Jesus was hemmed in with people touching him from every side and yet there was something about the touch of this woman that made Jesus realise that healing power had gone out of him. Rather than moving on Jesus stops and like Jairus the woman comes and throws herself down at Jesus’s feet. How easy it would have been for Jesus to have just moved on and to have allowed the women to remain hidden and cut off. Jesus stops and looks for the women who touched him and in the face of all the people who had rejected her he praises her faith and restores her self-worth and dignity. Notice that he calls her ‘Daughter’, not someone to be written off, but a loved and precious daughter of God. Not only is the woman cured of her issue of blood, but her self-worth is restored as well.
As Jesus then goes on to make his way to Jairus house he is informed that he is now too late as the little girl has died. Jesus's response is calm and hopeful, ‘Don’t be afraid only believing’. Jesus continues on with his inner band of disciples, Peter, James and John and when he arrives at Jairus’s house he is confronted with a scene of great trauma, loss and grief. Having emptied the room Jesus says to the little girl 'arise', or 'Talitha Cum. These words are Aramaic and very rare in the Gospels that were written in Greek. Obviously these words had stuck in Peter's mind and memory, (Peter gave Mark the details he needed for his Gospel account), clearly he was unable to think of the scene without them. The conclusion of Jesus's visit is that the girl is restored to life, and given something to eat.
What are we to make of this remarkable passage and course of events? We must start with who Jesus is, for Christians Jesus is the Son of God, God incarnate who embraces human life in order to show us the very love and nature of God. We are mortal, vulnerable and ultimately powerless over sickness and death, but Jesus has authority over both. In both encounters the people are full of worry and despair, in contrast Jesus is calm and full of hope. There is much like the woman that can make us feel lonely, shameful and cut off, we do not even feel worthy to speak to Christ but reach out with faint touches through our hesitant prayers. Christ feels our touch and reassures us with his love and healing. The pain of death and the loss that we feel when someone close to us dies is unbearable. In this passage Christ gives us a foretaste of his ultimate victory over human death and suffering, that victory awaits all of us on the other side of the grave, when we trust Jesus, like Jairus and the anonymous woman did. Through our prayers, our desperation, our worship, our service of Christ, we in our mortality and frailty reach out and our touch finds the love of Christ who is full of life and hope.
Matthew Hughes