Distance – Stay Away - Stay Safe – Don’t get infected – … -- The motive behind the Old Testament Purity Laws found in the book of Leviticus. – Ritual purity and cleanliness were of central importance to 1st Century Jewish life, it was necessary to stay ritually pure if one wanted participate in the religious life of the community. One essential element of maintaining ritual purity was avoiding touching anything or anyone who was unclean – If you did touch something or someone who was unclean or impure, you too would then be ritually unclean.
There is a clear logic to these purity laws found in Leviticus. If you mix a glass of pure clean water with a glass of impure dirty water, you don’t get two glasses of pure clear water, you get two glasses of impure dirty water. – And so it goes with almost everything, mix pure and impure, clean and unclean and you do not get something clean or pure, but something unclean and anything but pure.
And this is one thing makes Jesus actions in the Gospel so interesting. Under the Old Testament law in Leviticus, the women afflicted with hemorrhages would have been unclean, so her touching Jesus should have made him unclean. – Thus, explaining her fear and trembling coming forward to Jesus, her touch would make him ritually impure
So also, dead bodies were considered unclean. When Jesus went to the room of the daughter of the synagogue official, who had died, and took her hand – This should have made Jesus impure, yet there Jesus was doing it.
Yet in both cases, that is not what happened. With Christ there is something different. When woman afflicted with hemorrhages grabbed Jesus’ cloak, it was not Jesus that was made impure, but it was her who was healed, made clean and pure. – This is something different.
In a similar way, the dead body of the synagogue official’s daughter does not make Jesus impure, but at Jesus touch, as he holds her hand, and as he calls to her with words, she rises. In the encounter between Christ and the unclean, it is the unclean which is made clean.
Of particular note, Jesus’ healings, both of the woman who grabbed his cloak and of synagogue official’s daughter, happened through a physical encounter based in faith. – Indeed, almost all of Christ’s miracles involve some about of physical contact. – “if I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.” This may seem like a low bar, and in her situation not a lot of risk, - what’s the worst that could happen? – but think of all those who were sick and watched Jesus walk by but did not reach out. While none of the others reached out to touch Jesus’ cloak, she did. – not just a thought, not just a “spiritual thing” but physical action. And it was from this she was healed and made clean, the purity of Christ making clean that which was unclean.
And as for the synagogue official, he physically came to Jesus to ask him to come heal his daughter, he did not wait for Jesus to happen to come to him. And Jesus physically responds – Jesus’ came to his daughter and held her hand. Bring life to what was dead and raising the official’s daughter. – The physical encounter is of great importance.
The importance of physical encounter can be seen in many places in life, All else being equal, I don’t know many who would prefer a Zoom meeting over an in person meeting. In General, people do not want a Zoom coffee hour, or a Zoom happy hour. A Zoom date is usually not much of a date at all – there is something important about physically encountering someone and it is important in all parts of life – it is not less so in our faith.
Today there is great temptation to find a convenient way to approach Christ. “I like to pray at home” or “Or privately I can pray in a way that is more meaningful”. There is a temptation to prefer watching a livestreamed mass or a tv mass – that way one gets to watch their favorite homilist, or hear better music (though I’m not sure where would have better music than here)– there is nothing wrong with anything of these things – it is great to pray at home, and you should be, -- and watching a favorite homilist online can be great – tv mass and livestreamed masses can be a great lifeline for the homebound
But there is is something missing to these, ask any of the homebound and they will be the first to tell you there is something missing – just as many of you, based on you making the effect to come to Mass, would attest to there being something missing from just watching the Mass on a screen– what is missing is the absence of the physical, there is no physical encounter, just passive - watching at a distance.
So, just as the woman and the synagogue official went to Christ physically and in faith, we need to follow this example of coming to Christ physically and in faith, whatever challenges, sins, or impurities that we may have – We come to Christ physically and in faith, and Christ comes to us. This is most clear in the Mass itself. When we come to Mass, it is something physical. We first travel to the Church, then we stand, we sing, we make response to the dialogues, we sit, we kneel. Throughout the Mass we give our active participation - And the most physical of all, we physically encounter Christ who comes to us, physically, as we receive him in the Eucharist. And when we do – If we come to this physical encounter with Christ in faith, it is not us who makes Christ unclean, but Christ who makes us clean.