Mark 4:35-5:43:

The Kingdom in deeds;

The revelation of Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life

1. Jesus calms the storm on the Sea of Galilee (Mk 4:35-41)

 The event causes the disciples to ask “Who is this?” (Mk 4:41)

 The event itself already gives a clue to the answer to this question: Jesus is the one
who has power over the chaotic forces--here “personified” by the raging sea--that
threaten our lives. Meaning: He’s the one who has power over death.

 Perhaps we’re meant to think of Jonah sleeping in the ship during the storm. And of
what happened to Jonah: his being thrown into the sea, swallowed by the whale, and
spit up again on the third day. If so, then the Jonah connection would make us aware
that Jesus’ ultimate act of power over death is going to coincide with his own dying,
his own “trampling down of death by death.”

2. The healing of the Gadarene demoniac (Mk 5:1-20)

 First foray into Gentile territory, indicating the scope of the mission Jesus will
entrust to the Church he is founding on the Twleve

 Jesus reveals himself as the one who binds the “strong man” (cf. Mk 5:3), who “has
death in his power” (Heb 2:14)

 Jesus performs this revelation in a context that looks ahead to his descent into the
underworld (cf. Mk 5:3), which is an act of saving liberation

3. The healing of the woman with the flow of blood (Mk 5:25-34)

 Mark sets this episode within the story of Jairus’ daughter for two reasons. First, it
really happened that way.

 Second, healing the woman with the flow of blood is a run-up to the raising of Jairus’
daughter; the draining away of blood is a draining away of life, a subjection to the
power of death, which power Jesus has come to break. Note that Mark connects the
woman with Jairus’ daughter in another way: the woman has had the blood flow for
12 years, which is the daughter’s exact age

 Does the woman with the flow of blood also stand for faithful Israel, which Jesus
doesn’t kick aside when founding his Church, but uses as a the basis on which to
found it?

4. The raising of Jairus’ daughter (Mk 5:21-24; 35-43)

 Completes the trajectory begun in Mk 4:35-41: Jesus doesn’t just have power over an
image of death--the raging sea--but over death itself, as he shows by raising Jairus’
daughter from death

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  Note the verbs in 41 and 42, which connect Jesus’ raising of Jairus’ daughter with his
own Resurrection. In rising from the dead, he raises the dead with him; he “takes
them by the hand” and lifts them from death

5. So “who is this?”

 Jesus himself answers this question during another sea-crossing, which parallels the
one recounted in Mk 4:35-41: “I am” (Mk 6:50). This is the name God gave himself
when he spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Note that, in Mk 12, Jesus says that
the One who says “I am” in the burning bush is “not a God of dead people, but of
living ones” (Mk 12:26).

 But even before Jesus says “I am,” and even before he explains that to be “I am” is
to be a God of the living--even before any of that, Jesus shows himself to be the “I
am” who is the God of the living. He does this, for example, already in Mk 4:35-
5:43--where he displays his power over death and reveals himself as the one who
raises the dead.

 But note: Jesus identifies himself as the one who raises the dead--as the Resurrection
and the life--in a context that makes it clear how he’s going to give life to the dead,
namely, by “trampling down death by his death,” going to the underworld, and rising
again on the third day (see above).