Attention to language is often something that people gently ridicule in others. When a person is regarded as paying too close attention to words and their meaning, they are said to be “splitting hairs.” Or it is dismissed with “oh, that’s just being semantic,” meaning, it is not necessary to pay such close attention to words: the meaning is about the same either way. Six, or one half dozen of the other, is something I grew up hearing, a lot. A person claiming “I did not yell at you, instead I spoke firmly with my voice raised,” might be demonstrating this. To which the other person might respond: yes, and that’s splitting hairs, because you should not have done that. So sometimes, we use a strategy of being very attentive to language, perhaps overly so, as a way to protect or defend ourselves against the accusations of others, or to hide from our behavior we know was inappropriate, even unholy.
Attention to language with respect to Holy Scripture, on the other hand, is always demanded, always required. This is one reason why the famous Collect about the Holy Scriptures has taken a special place in Anglican spirituality, with its key line: “Grant us so to hear the Sacred Scriptures, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.” To read and to mark, to learn and inwardly digest, means to be attentive to the words of a passage, even just one word—attentive through prayer, through silence that allows us to hear how the words echo in our mind, in our memories, in our soul, echoing from God.
The perfect example of the importance of attention to language in Scripture is the Eucharist. Of the bread and wine, Jesus said “Take, eat,” and “Take, drink,”—“Do this for the remembrance of e.” The word “remembrance” demands deep attention. Superficial attention might lead us to understand this word meaning a bare recollection of the past, like when we filled our car with gas and what we overpaid; and the bread and wine are mere reminding symbols of that simple memory. But closer attention to the word “remembrance” in the biblical Greek reveals something else entirely. “Remembrance” translates the Greek word “anamnesis,” which means “actually-making-present-again.” Therefore Jesus did not say, “Eat and drink as a symbol of me that you recollect.” Rather he commanded us to “Eat and drink for the actually-making-present-again of Me.” The ancient and catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist derives from close attention to the actual word Jesus Himself used, and our devotion unfolds from that doctrine. And thus attention to language gives us Gospel Joy, our heart joyful through our assurance that the consecrated bread and wine are truly the precious Body and Blood of Jesus.
Close attention to language opens up a key moment in our Gospel passage today from S. Mark. Jairus, the leader, had come to Jesus and said, “My little daughter is at the point of death.” To him, Jesus says, “Do not fear, only believe.” In part Jesus said this because Jewish beliefs at the time maintained that bodies at the time of death rendered anyone who touched it ritually unclean and therefore shunned from the worshiping community. People were scared of the bodies of the dead as well as almost dead. For Jesus to say, “Do not fear, only believe,” relieves the fear Jairus has.
The key moment is when Jesus addresses the dying girl by saying, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” This is embedded in the Aramaic phrase “Tal′itha cu′mi.” The word here for “arise” is the same word Mark uses to describe the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law in chapter 1, the healing of the paralytic in chapter 2, and, most importantly, in the resurrection of Jesus in chapter 16. Mark wants to teach us something important. Christ’s presence heals. Healing therefore is an important aspect of Christ’s Resurrection. Put the other way round, the Resurrection of Jesus heals us. His resurrection heals our brokenness, our disordered body, mind, and soul.
That His resurrection heals us is what it means to receive salvation and to be saved: both mean healing and health. And because we experience the Resurrection primarily through the Eucharist, Jesus gave us the Eucharist to heal us, because His presence heals. Without the Resurrected Jesus, proclaimed through the Gospel, there is no health in us. To be saved is to begin the process of healing that begins in this life and continues into the next. True health is entering heaven. Hence the holy words of our liturgy before receiving Holy Communion, “speak the word only, and my soul shall be healed.” Speak the word only, dear Lord, and my soul again is saved, is given health. To be saved is to be healthy: a joyful heart because of the Gospel.
It is important and necessary that we be spiritually healthy because as Christ spoke in Deuteronomy: “The poor will never cease out of the land . . . therefore I command you, you shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in the land.” The poor around us here in Volusia County suffer from a variety of kinds of poverty: from material poverty, to the poverty of loneliness, to the poverty from lack of relationship with Jesus Christ. But Christ expects us to serve the poor in this place. Christ expects us to imitate Him as best we are able, who did not avoid but rather sought out those suffering poverty of all kinds, and gave them His healing presence. Christ made Himself sacrifice that we might be filled with His Body and Blood, that we can bring His healing presence to those in poverty among us Indeed, that by the grace of God acting through us, they too might arise. Because He is actually present again in a real and true way in Holy Communion, we are filled with the joyful knowledge of our salvation, our health, that like Mary to Elisabeth, and we can share with all that we meet, and especially the poor, the presence of Christ Himself, Who lives and reigns with the Father and Holy Ghost, ever one God, unto the ages of ages. Amen.