Brief synopsis of the readings: We start in the Old Testament book of Wisdom: “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.” The author further states that we were formed to be imperishable and in God’s own nature. But death entered the world “by the envy of the devil.” In Mark’s Gospel Jesus again crossed the water. There were many people waiting for him but one person in particular caught Jesus’ attention. A synagogue official named Jarius begged Jesus to heal his daughter who was dying and Jesus went with him. At that point he encountered a woman who had been afflicted with a hemorrhage for the past 12 years. She believed if she could touch Jesus’ clothes she would be cured and she touched his cloak. The bleeding immediately stopped. Jesus felt power leave him and asked who had touched him; when the woman said it was her, Jesus complimented her faith. While they were speaking Jesus learned that Jarius’ daughter had died. Nevertheless Jesus went and heard people mourning over the girl’s death. Jesus went to her room and commanded her to rise, and she did. Jesus then told them to get her something to eat.

A few weeks ago we read about Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit and I suggested that eating the fruit allowed them (and us) to tell good from evil. But it also raised the question that has plagued us from that day to now: where does evil come from? Anyone who tells you this question has an easy answer is not someone who should be listening to. Some will say that God created both good and evil and that our life is a test to see if we’re worthy of salvation. Almost nobody will admit to this but it’s really the foundation of a great deal of what we call fire and brimstone. It’s anchored in the belief that God created evil to allow us to choose good but it places God in the role of spectator in his own competition. This is hardly a God who wishes the salvation of all.

Others will say that evil is not something on its own but is instead a lack of goodness. That sounds good but it just doesn’t hold up. Evil sometimes happens when we choose not to do good (we ignore a call for help) but there are times where evil is a deliberate choice; this is what motivates bullies. Regardless of its origin I think we’re all agreed that our purpose in life is to defeat evil by starving it and replacing it with love.

But while we may debate the origins of evil, our way forward in dealing with illness is clear. Apologies to the scholars who chose this week’s readings from Wisdom and Mark but I think they attempted to conflate evil and illness and I’m going to separate them. Illnesses are caused by living organisms (viruses, bacteria, cancer cells, etc.) that interfere with other living organisms and we are called to eradicate them. It’s only been in the last few hundred years that we’ve been able to do anything to eradicate diseases. Before then the only things we could do was pray and hope the body could heal itself. The “cures” back then either did nothing, like touching magic stones, or they caused more harm, like bloodletting.

In this context we can see the power of Jesus in healing. In today’s Gospel he didn’t just heal Jarius’ daughter, he brought her back from the dead. Today, because of incredible amounts of observation, thought, experimentation and cooperation we have learned how to cure or at least treat many diseases. It’s also worth noting that in all this we have never minimized the efficacy of prayer; Jesus often told those he healed that their faith cured them and I take great joy in the fact that we’ve never lost sight of that.

But sometimes we can also ignore our own behavior in how we see illness. I’ve spoken in the past about the woman with the hemorrhage and how she is essentially bleeding to death. I’ve spoken with several doctors about what this woman may have been suffering from and most confess that this puzzles them. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could have an untreated bleeding disorder for 12 years and still survive. Most assume it was some sort of menstrual spotting though even that sounds far fetched. That does make some sense because in the 15th chapter of Leviticus a woman on her period were thought to be unclean and couldn’t be touched for seven days after the end of her period.

But here’s what troubles me: this illness was not physical as much as social. The people of that time knew nothing about a woman’s cycle and they certainly knew nothing of ovulation. But they did noticed that a couple who refrained from intercourse for a time after her period ended often became pregnant. And they assumed that this interval of abstinence meant God blessed it. Eventually it became a mandate. But we also have to account for the fact that all this tends to gross out men, then and now.

I think we can all appreciate the courage it took for her to not ask for healing but to grab for it; as a matter of fact she violated the law by touching Jesus. But let’s also recognize that her 12 years of suffering didn’t come from the hemorrhage or the loss of blood but because they all agreed that she was unclean.

It’s good news that all Christians and even most Jews no longer treat women on their period as unclean or outcasts. But it bears noting that our quest to eradicate disease also calls us to stop excluding those who live with it. In the absence of a cure for something we sometimes make ourselves feel better by treating the sufferer as an outcast.

When we heal we cooperate with Jesus’ power to heal illness. But there are times when we can’t and we need to look at those times with humility and compassion. When we don’t know why someone is suffering we shouldn’t decide that the person deserves it, or has made themself an outcast. We don’t need to know the roots of evil to create good.