Among those who harm Jesus are officials of the synagogue. One day, one of those officials, Jairus, “fell at Jesus’ feet and pleaded,” “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” Jesus went to Jairus’ home 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!” She “arose immediately.”
Commentaries on Jairus’ encounter with Jesus sometimes explain Jesus’ response as an act of charity. Charity is defined as helping someone in need. Some people, however, question charity, especially when extended to officials, such as Jairus. As a synagogue official, Jairus benefitted financially from the capitalist system in place. It provided officials with a privileged life from a dominant position as they contrived for others to live a vulnerable life from a subordinate position. Officials’ charity tends to be rare and capricious, their injustice routine and dependable. Capricious charity is thus paraded in capitalist cultures to divert from their routine social injustices. Capricious charity is on the rise in the unjust capitalist empire of Communist China. Human Rights Watch cites China for the injustices of denying political freedom and economic equality, developing high-tech surveillance and sophisticated internet censorship system to monitor and silence internal critics, combined with growing economic clout to silence external critics. Dozens of new millionaire and billionaire officials promoting charity surfaced there specifically during Covid owing to these injustices. So too in the U.S. capitalist Empire, similar political and social injustices exist with similar charity lauding millionaire and billionaire officials surfacing here during Covid. For example, political officials like Richard Burr, Dianne Feinstein, and Jim Inhofe all promoted charities while they benefitted financially from the stock market’s Covid induced crash. Also, financial officials like Jeff Bezos contributed to the Feeding America charity while he benefited financially from opposing unions and suppressing just wages for Amazon’s workers. Also, Mark Zuckerberg contributed to racial justice and freedom of expression charities while he benefited financially from online racists and fascists. Furthermore, religious officials like Paula White, the previous president’s spiritual advisor, contributed to no charities during Covid but is a charity, benefiting financially from daily requests for cash to her personal church corporation. It provides her personal luxury through tax-exempt ministry funds paying for a million dollar waterfront mansion, million dollar family salaries, and a million dollar jet. Even Augustine said, “Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.” We can laud the charity while calling for greater conversion, deeper healing.
Howard Waitzkin, author of Rinky-Dink Revolution: Moving Beyond Capitalism, offers help, perhaps even healing, for capitalism, its capricious charity and its unjust officials. He notes rulers condition us to support capitalism, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of our economic system.” (Frederic Jameson). Capitalism is God-like in its status. We are made timid so that we barely “confront effects” of capitalism – poverty, prejudices, pollution, prisons, and weaponry: from guns to nuclear – let alone heal them. We are timid about confronting capitalism itself – the injustices of plundering officials who devise, on the social scale, supremacy over communion, financial benefit over love, and harm over healing. We live in “Mouseland, where mice vote for black cats or white cats but never for mice” (Tommy Douglass). But we mice, we commoners of the world, are the healing answer. Waitzkin notes studies showing a viable nonviolent revolution in the U.S. needs about 7 to 11 million ‘mice,’ only about 3.5 to 5% of the population. That is but a small portion of those who are indigenous, young, minorities, unemployed or underemployed. We can revolutionize communities for love and healing among people who are vulnerable. We can encourage and receive the vulnerability of officials like Jairus, as episodic as that vulnerability may be, to join us.
Prayer: Spirit, guide me to be a healer.
Question: How am I forming communion with the precarious people of this world?
June 27, 2021 Gospel Mark 5: 21-43 Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time