Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are a little more than three weeks away (5 March 2025) and the week began yesterday with the Fourth Sunday before Lent (9 February 2025).
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Scholastica (ca 543), sister of Saint Benedict and Abbess of Plombariola. Later this evening, I intend to be at Evensong in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 6: 53-56 (NRSVA):
53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.
Today’s Reflection:
Between now and Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025), we are in what the Church Calendar calls ‘Ordinary Time.’
Two striking emphases in Saint Mark’s Gospel are the stories of Christ healing about healing those on the margins and assuring those on the margins that they too are called into the Kingdom of God.
Those people on the margins include people who are seen as sinners, foreigners and unclean, especially women and children. The ways they are belittled is symbolised in our Gospel readings all last week:
• The healing of the ‘possessed’ man who lives among the tombs (Mark 5: 1-20, 3 February 2025);
• a dying girl who is only 12 years old and a woman unable to find help from doctors for 12 years (Mark 5: 21-43, 4 February 2025);
• Christ lays his hands on and curing sick people (Mark 6: 1-6, 5 February 2025);
• the disciples are sent out in all their vulnerability and poverty (Mark 6: 7-13, 6 February 2025);
• Herod’s fears and wicked response when he hears of these healings and miracles (Mark 6: 14-29, 7 February 2025);
• And then Jesus has compassion for the people who are neglected by their leaders and rulers (Mark 6: 30-34, 8 February 2025).
In today’s reading, Jesus seems to be trying to get away from all the demands and all the expectations that are being laid on his shoulders. The apostles have come back after being sent out two-by-two, and are telling him all they have done and all that has happened.
Now they need a break, and Jesus takes them on a boat and they head off to a quiet place. But there is no escaping the crowd, the people and their demands.
And they ‘bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was’. This happens wherever he goes – in villages and cities, farms and market places (Mark 6: 55-56). It is just enough for them to touch the fringe of his cloak and those who touch it are healed (verse 56).
What did they think they were doing by touching the ‘fringe of his cloak’?
This is not just an act of hope, hoping for healing, but an act of faith, claiming a place in the community of faith, reaching out for love.
Wearing a prayer shawl reminds the wearer and those who see this of all the 613 commandments in Jewish tradition, of the covenant with God.
In touching Christ’s cloak, the sick people are claiming their place at the heart of the community of faith. They are making Jesus ritually unclean, but those who touch him are healed. In touching Christ, they are ‘touched’ by God’s power, and Christ draws them into the Kingdom of God.
These people follow Jesus around everywhere. He has compassion on them because they are ‘like sheep without a shepherd.’ They need healing, not just in mind and body, but in their families and in their society, in political and religious society, in the economy and in the villages, cities, farms and marketplaces where they seek the healing that Christ offers.
Faith and healing come together.
These connections are made in a prayer or poem in the Service of the Heart, a prayer book I use regularly for my personal prayers and reflections. This poem or prayer ‘Lord God of test tube and blueprint’ is by Norman Corwin (1910-2011):
Lord God of test tube and blueprint,
Who jointed molecules of dust and shook them till their name was Adam,
Who taught worms and stars how they could live together,
Appear now among the parliaments of conquerors and give instruction to their schemes:
Measure out new liberties so none shall suffer from his father’s colour or the credo of his choice:
Post proofs that brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those who profit by postponing it pretend:
Sit at the treaty table and convoy the hopes of the little peoples through expected straits,
And press into the final seal a sign that peace will come for longer than posterities can see ahead,
That man unto his fellow man shall be a friend forever.
Norman Lewis Corwin once declared: ‘I believe in promise, just promise … any species that can weigh the very earth he’s standing on, that can receive and analyze light coming from a galaxy a billion light years distant from us, any species that can produce a Beethoven and a Mozart and a Shakespeare, and the extraordinary accomplishments of our species, scientifically and in medicine and in the humanities, there’s illimitable opportunity for promises to be delivered and met.’
I fell on the street in London on Friday afternoon and ended up in the A&E unit in University College London Hospital with a bruised and swollen face, eye and lips. There I was acutely aware of how hospital staff, medical researchers, scientists, doctors, nurses, porters, and cheerful receptions are all working with the ‘Lord God of test tube and blueprint’ and offering hope and healing to people of faith and of none.
Today’s Prayers (Monday 10 February 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Founders’ Day.’ USPG and SPCK are celebrating ‘Founders’ Day’ in Saint James’s Church, Picadilly, next week (Monday 17 February 2025). This theme was introduced yesterday with a Reflection by Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 10 February 2025) invites us to pray:
Lord, forgive us for the ways in which your Church has been complicit in systems of oppression and death. Shine your light upon the darkness of our past and lead us into true repentance and healing.
The Collect:
O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Go before us, Lord, in all we do
with your most gracious favour,
and guide us with your continual help,
that in all our works
begun, continued and ended in you,
we may glorify your holy name,
and finally by your mercy receive everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Lord of the hosts of heaven,
our salvation and our strength,
without you we are lost:
guard us from all that harms or hurts
and raise us when we fall;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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