The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Little girl, I say to you, arise!” Mk 5:41
“I forgive you.”
These words were spoken by Nadine Collier as tears streamed down her face. She was speaking to the accused killer of her mother, Ethel Lance, gunned down as she studied the Bible in a famous Black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
She went on:
“You took something very precious away from me. I will never get to talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
After much sobbing, she managed to continue:
“You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. But God forgives you and I forgive you.”
Even more amazing, Nadine was not alone. One by one, the members of families who lost loved ones at the hand of the murdered at this church rose to do the same:
Forgive!
This was a day in which grace – amazing grace – won over hate. “Hate won’t win.” That was the promise spoken that day.
That is the same promise Mark gives us in today’s gospel.
Remarkable in itself, Mark’s story features two women. Women didn’t count in the society of his time. They were disposable and without any rights. But women did count to Jesus. Both women in the story hoped beyond hope that there was someone who would hear a desperate cry and answer it – someone who could feel an anguished touch and respond to it. That someone was Jesus.
Mark tells us in this story of miracles that the God we believe in through Jesus is a God that can be experienced in real life – right now.
Like in that church in Charleston.
Like in Pope Francis’ recent encyclical that begs us to see all creation as God-inspired and worthy of our utmost care.
Like in the everyday wonders of parenting, the healing that takes place in our medical centers, the birthing of children, the celebrations of life-long marriages, the recovery of addicts, the raising to new life of people imprisoned, the imparting of forgiveness in each of our own lives.
Mark is trying to help us see that grace is everywhere.
God is Emmanuel … with us, for us, among us.
And today’s gospel takes it a step further.
God is present especially to those most afflicted. And, because of that, God creates miracles every day – miracles of conversion and repentance and forgiveness.
It’s all a matter of our openness to see and our willingness to trust – trust that God will be there for us even in our darkest moments, even when we are ready to give up.
“The child is not dead, but asleep.”
And then the miracle happened:
“Little girl, I say to you, arise!”
We need to put our own names in the place of “little girl.” Because God is telling all of us to “arise” – arise out of our hatreds, arise out of our prejudices, arise out of our doubts and fears and smallness.
That’s what the members of Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church did on that day just a few years ago. They arose out of their anger and their hurt and their terrible sense of loss and were able to do the seemingly impossible:
Forgive.
Grace can win over hate. God is able to save each one of us – from hearts filled with revenge and rage and self-pity.
But only if we trust. Only if we follow the words of Jesus:
“Do not be afraid, just have faith.”
Trust. Allow the love of God to touch our hearts so deeply that we throw ourselves into his arms and let go of all our fears.
Then God will be able to touch each one of us just as he did that little girl – just as he did those members of that church in South Carolina – and lift us up into a whole new way of living.
“Little girl, I say to you, arise!”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
