Readings: Wisdom 1:13-15,; 2:23-24; Psalm 29; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43
'Talitha kum', 'little girl, arise'. It
is one of the places in the New Testament where we find Aramaic words.
There are a number of these places, especially in the gospels, and
particularly in Mark's gospel. It is believed that Aramaic was the
mother tongue of Jesus. It is a language still used today, for example by the Christian communities in Iraq.
We can speculate about why these words
and phrases survive in the New Testament. There seems to be no scholarly
consensus about why they are there, and why they appear at precisely
the places where we find them. The following seem like the three most
importance occurrences of Aramaic words in Mark's gospel: the passage we
read today in which Jesus says 'talitha kum' to the little girl, the
passage from Mark 14 which tells of Jesus' agony in the garden and where
he prays to his Father as 'Abba', and the words spoken by Jesus from
the cross as recorded by Mark, 'Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani'.
What is common to all three is death. In
all three moments Jesus is confronted with death. They are all times
when faith or trust in God is put to its most extreme test, when Jesus
engages with death, the final and ultimate enemy, the last weapon in the
arsenal of the kingdom of Satan. And death seems like the victory of
that kingdom. Having shown that he has power over illness and demons,
over sin and the forces of nature, what about death? What can the
Messiah do in the face of death? He proclaims that the kingdom of God is
at hand, a kingdom that is about life, the fulness of life, eternal
life. How does he fare in the battle with death? Will his kingdom be
able for that?
We can imagine that the Aramaic words survive because
these encounters with death are the most intense, emotionally, of Jesus'
ministry. We know from his reaction to the death of Lazarus how
profoundly moved he was at the power of death. It is easy to see that
Gethsemane and Golgotha are the most emotional moments for him
personally, the times of deepest struggle: will he remain faithful even
in this deepening darkness? Seeing a young girl dying, perhaps even dead, would touch even the hard-hearted and move them to compassion. All the more the One who is the source of life, who loves that little girl infinitely.
Here is a common factor, then, in what
seem like the most significant uses of Aramaic words in Mark's gospel:
they are recorded where Christ clashed with death. They are used in
times of high emotion in the face of death. As if for the witnesses who record these
encounters the experience was also deeply emotional, so that actual
words and phrases, in the Lord's mother tongue, were seared into their
hearts, minds and memories. Today's first reading reminds us that these encounters with death bring the Lord of Life face to face with the poison that was introduced into creation through the Devil's envy: 'God made the human being imperishable, in the image of God's own nature, and it was the devil's envy that brought death into the world'.
It is a speculation, a meditation, but
it is at least interesting. And perhaps a lot more than interesting,
because it raises the key question: how does faith fare in the face of
death? My faith? Your faith? The faithfulness of Jesus? Our trust in
him? Can we keep our balance in the face of death? Do we continue then to believe, and to hope, that with God all things
are possible?
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