Monthly Archives: June 2024

Ceremonial Cleanliness

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This coming Sunday is the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  These miracles have to be understood as within the framework of ceremonial cleanliness. What is clear is that both the woman and the girl were not pure/clean in the Levitical sense because of illness/death. In Jewish thought uncleanness was infectious, a human being might incur it by contact with any unclean person or thing (Lev. 5:3); but the law regarded three forms of uncleanness as serious enough to exclude the infected person from society. These were leprosy, uncleanness caused by bodily discharges, and impurity resulting from contact with the dead (Num. 5:2-4). This is not a topic that is just being introduced in Mark 5. Recall the connection with the ending of Mark 4: the exorcism of the unclean spirits from the man living in the (unclean) tombs into the (unclean) pigs. Continue reading →

A series of miracles

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This coming Sunday is the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle B. Last Sunday, in the 12th Sunday’s gospel, Jesus begins teaching the disciples with the first in a series of miracles that demonstrate the extraordinary character of Jesus’ power

  • Calming the storm at sea — the disciples still have no faith (Mk 4:34-41)
  • Casting a demon from a man and the subsequent desire of the locals that  Jesus leave town even as the healed man becomes a witness (Mk 5:1-20)
  • Raising Jairus’ daughter – “don’t be afraid, only believe” (Mk 5:21-24, 35-43)
  • Healing the bleeding woman – her faith saved her (Mk 5:25-34)

Continue reading →

Working on it

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What’s as tall as a small office building, snaps large vessels in half and inspires a small tribe of surfers to launch themselves into an unholy maelstrom? Giant waves. The bigger the better — or worse — depending on who’s talking; better for extreme surfers, worse for seafarers. Until very recently giant waves lived only as lore. There was the story of the Tlingit Indian woman who returned from berry picking to find her entire village disappeared. The polar explorer Ernest Shackleton once reported narrowly surviving “a mighty upheaval of the ocean,” the biggest wave he’d seen in 26 years of seafaring. But witnesses of a 100-foot wave at close range rarely lived to tell, and experts dismissed stories about these waves because they seemingly violated basic principles of ocean physics. Continue reading →

Some Final Thoughts

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This coming Sunday is the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The scripture scholar Pheme Perkins raises some great points for reflection [581]. The long-ago story of the disciples’ experience of tribulation and suffering have lessons for us in this age. She asks questions about how we react to such times, especially in the way the times shape our thoughts about God – even if only temporarily. Continue reading →

Jesus Quiets the Storm

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This coming Sunday is the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Meanwhile in the gospel account: 38 Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  39 He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!” The wind ceased and there was great calm.

It is such a sparse telling of the story that it is not hard to imagine Jesus awaking, being somewhat chagrined (a good night’s sleep is hard to come by), glancing at the storm, wondering what all the commotion is about, and directing the sea to “Quiet! Be still!” (literally: “be muzzled”) As suddenly as the storm had come it had subsided, subdued by Jesus’ sovereign command. Continue reading →

The correct answer

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The question: at what temperature does water freeze? Today the outside temperature is in the mid-90s (degrees F) and so naturally one might begin to think about an ice-cooled drink. Which leads one to think about ice. If you don’t have an ice maker in your refrigerator and someone forgot to refill the ice cube tray (or even worse, returned it empty to the freezer), perhaps you wonder how long it will take until ice cubes are ready. Perhaps you are overly anxious about it and when you check the cubes are part solid-ice, part water, and part a thin layer of almost-ice crusting the top of the tray. What can you do to speed up the process…. apart from shut the freezer door and be patient? This is where it pays to be curious. Continue reading →

The Storm at Night

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This coming Sunday is the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Given the fact that at least four of the disciples were professional fishermen and must have experienced such storms before, their terror gives us a clue about the severity of the incident. The Sea of Galilee, surrounded by high mountains, is like a basin with the Golan Heights to the East and dry deserts to the south. Sudden violent storms on the sea are well known. Violent winds from the southwest enter the basin from the southern cleft and create a wave of storms and periods of calm that succeed rapidly follow one upon another. The text lailaps megalē anemou suggests a sudden tornado-like whirlwind descending from above. Continue reading →

The Star and Leviathan

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Years ago, I read a science fiction short story by Arthur C. Clark, “The Star.” I read it in a collection of short stories by Clark. “The Star” appeared in the inaugural issue of Infinity Magazine. The story is about a group of space explorers from Earth returning from an expedition to a remote star system, where they discovered the remnants of an advanced civilization destroyed when its star went supernova. The destroyed planet’s culture was very similar to Earth’s. Recognizing several generations in advance that their star would soon explode, and with no means of interstellar travel to save themselves, the doomed people spent their final years building a vault on the outermost planet in their solar system, whose Pluto-like orbit was distant enough to survive the supernova. Continue reading →

Getting Underway

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This coming Sunday is the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time. 35 On that day, as evening drew on, he said to them, “Let us cross to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. 38 Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.  Continue reading →

Ten Dollars

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An old farmer and his wife always went to the county fair. And, every year they saw the same pilot offering to take people up for a spin in his airplane for $10.00 a ride. Every year, the old farmer asked his wife to give him $10.00 so he could go up. Every year, the wife responded by getting very mad at him and saying that ten dollars was ten dollars and they couldn’t afford to be so frivolous with what little money they had. He told her that he was now 80 years old and if he didn’t go up this year, he never would. In a very angry voice, she repeated that ten dollars was ten dollars. At this point they got into an argument about it. Continue reading →