“They’re so much in love with life!” is often heard at weddings. That phrase poses a challenge, because we sometimes do not regard God primarily as the God of life nor do we always regard our faith as something that makes us flourish.
The book of Wisdom was written near the time of Christ to encourage the community living in a culture that believed that life was only what you saw in front of you, to be seized and enjoyed now because it would soon end. The believing community, however, were called to believe that life had a hidden dimension. That hidden dimension could not be grabbed; it had to be given.
The Gospel of Mark is really about the same thing as the Book of Wisdom – life is a gift from God. Mark tells the story of two women in a kind of sandwich, beginning one story, interrupting it with a second, and then returning to the first to complete it. One woman is very young (a twelve-year-old girl) and the other is very old (twelve-year-old illness). What both woman lack is fullness of life–one is dead and the other is forced to live at the margin of society.
In the first story, the father of the twelve-year old girl asks Jesus to come to his daughter. As Jesus goes with him, the woman with the flow of blood touches his garment. She was accustomed to taking a back seat, for her disease was embarrassing to her and off-putting to others. She didn’t want any meeting; a physical touch was enough. Jesus, however, senses that someone touched him and insists on a face-to-face encounter, something the women is unused to and seems to dread. She hears his words, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. God in peace and be cured of your affliction,” and she returns to the community that has excluded her for twelve years. To live, in the Bible, normally, is to live with others. She now lives with others in a way she never did before.
Jesus resumes his journey to the little girl. The party arrives to the news that the child has died. But Jesus declares the girl is sleeping, not dead, and raises her to life. In a humane touch, he orders that she be given something to eat. The language of her being “saved” and “rising up” from death is the very language that will later be used of Jesus’ own resurrection. The girl is not resurrected, however, but restored to life for only a time; she will later die like any mortal. But what happens to both women is a foretaste and sign of what will happen to anyone who believes in Jesus as Lord.
Life is so profoundly a gift that one must let God give it. The old woman touched the garment and the young girl (the father spoke for her) was touched by Jesus. They did not grasp life as if it were theirs, they put their hope that God would give it to them.