Low, I am with You

Seeing how Jesus is with us in all life circumstances

06/30/2024

Mk 5:21-43 or 5:21-24, 35b-43 One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward. Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying, "My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live." He went off with him. There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She said, "If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured." Immediately her flow of blood dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him, turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who has touched my clothes?" The woman, realizing what had happened to her, approached in fear and trembling. She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction." While he was still speaking, people from the synagogue official's house arrived and said, "Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?" Disregarding the message that was reported, Jesus said to the synagogue official, "Do not be afraid; just have faith." He took along the child's father and mother and those who were with him and entered the room where the child was. He took the child by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum," which means, "Little girl, I say to you, arise!" The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around. At that they were utterly astounded.

I was discussing recently with a friend named Bill how I hate to fly. I shared with him how I once I drove all the way to Seattle, WA for three days to give a retreat just to avoid flying. So, Bill send me this brief email back, saying: “Several years ago, I had an African American friend I met in seminary come to speak at our church. We were going to pay for his air faire, but he wanted to drive because he had a fear of flying. Bill said, “Mack, where is your faith?” His response was that Jesus said, ‘Lo[w], I am with you.’” Get it, “low” I am with you, not “high.”

But I would suggest to you that Mack’s answer is a lot truer and more profound than we might think at first sight. Why? Well, isn’t it usually when we are “low” – down in the dumps, laid low because of illness, earning a low income – rather than when we are “flying high” that we want Jesus to feel like he is more fully present with us?

Have you ever noticed how our stained-glass windows are deliberately designed to inspire the lowly? What do I mean? When the sun is high in the sky and the light is bright outside in the world, what do the stained-glass windows look like to the people driving by on Garrison Avenue? They just look like dull, dark glass.

That is, when we are feeling high like the sun in the sky, the stained-glass teaches us nothing. But when the sun is down and it is dark outside, symbolizing our spiritual lowliness, the stained-glass bursts into brilliant colors because the light of faith inside shines through them. It is as if through the stained-glass windows Jesus tell us symbolically, “Low, I am with you.”

In the longer form of the gospel today, Jesus draws very close to two people who are feeling especially low. The first person is Jairus’ daughter who ends up dying before Jesus arrives. And the second person is an anonymous woman with a hemorrhage, bleeding for 12 years. These two people feel extremely low, alone, exhausted, desperate, on the brink of death, abandoned by God. But Jesus breaks into their lives at their lowest points, heals their sickness, raises them from the death, and declares in effect: “When you are low, I am with you!”

This experience of Jesus’ healing and holy presence in our lowliness is theologically called “the divine condescension.” God lowers himself, he accommodates himself, to our child-like level to show us his tender love. Let me give you an example. When Pope John Paul II was still the archbishop of Krakow, he visited a family for dinner. When he entered the house, the little 2 year-old boy ran and to hide under the dining room table out of fear.

Unable to persuade the frightened toddler to come out, the future pope said, “If you will not come out to play with the archbishop, then the archbishop will come in to play with you.” Then the archbishop proceeded to get down on his hands and knees, crawled under the table to play with the little boy, who was now beaming with delight. The pope was saying like Jesus in the gospel: I will humble myself, and when you are literally “Low – under the table low – I am with you!”

My friends, sooner or later, we all eventually stop “flying high” and begin to feel very low, due to illness, death, a lost job a broken relationship, or as Shakespeare said: “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” Stuff just happens. And I am convinced that just like Jesus did in today’s gospel to Jairus’ daughter and the hemorrhaging woman, so he says to us in our sadness: “Are you feeling, low, I am with you!” How so?

Well, we encounter Jesus’ “divine condescension”, his utter humility, in each of the seven sacraments, but most especially in the Holy Eucharist, at Mass. Blessed Fulton Sheen once made a startling comparison for Holy Communion I will never forget. He said that theologians often compare God becoming man to how humbling it would be for a man to become a dog. We can imagine how hard it would be to think like a person but only be able to bark, to want to stand erect and walk and eat with our hands, but as a dog only lap up water with our tongue and swallow kibbles and bits. It would be very humbling for a human to become a dog.

But Sheen added that was not the correct comparison for the Incarnation of Christ. Rather Jesus being like a man who becomes a dog, Jesus goes so far as to become a dog biscuit when he becomes Bread and Wine in the Eucharist. Talk about how low can you go?? In other words, Jesus doesn’t just want to hang out with us like a human being, talking, eating, suffering, and finally dying for us.

No, his humility drives him to become our very Food. My friends we will only begin to grasp the true miracle of the Eucharist, the condescending love of God, when we hear Jesus say in that little white Wafer when we come up for Holy Communion, “This is how low I will go so I can be with you.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!