Many
years ago, on one of my early birthdays, I was given a tricycle;
beautiful, dark blue with a real chrome bicycle bell! I practised
peddling on our driveway every weekday evening. The next weekend I was
ready to take my “machine for a spin”
during a family walk in a park. First I began cautiously, but soon I
was riding quite fast. Probably too fast, because after a small slope I
took a little too sharp a turn and rolled my tricycle. I ended up on
ground crying. Dad turned back my tricycle while mom wiped my tears,
cleaned few scratches on my knee with a wet corner of her handkerchief
and blew pain away. Soon I cycled again and all the way home, only with
newly discovered caution. Since then I have observed other moms, even
the mom of my kids, using a little saliva to clean some of their babies’
scratches, if only with just a licked finger. I guess it must be some
kind of a motherly instinct.
This Sunday’s Gospel reading opens with something similar. Jesus is reported using his saliva to bring healing to a blind man. The early church tried to eliminate any mention of this healing practice. Most likely Jesus healing with his saliva resembled some kind of magical pagan trick. Thankfully, three stories about this kind of healing survived (Mark 7:31-37; Mark 8:22-26 and John 9 - last two passages might be reworking of the same original story). I am convinced that deeper than any danger of pagan rituals is the loving archetype of instinctive, motherly divine care.
This Sunday I do not plan to spend much time on this technique of healing. We will be concentrating on different levels of sight, vision and insight. Yet I still find this healing technique fascinating, especially vis a vis certain breeds of orthodox and conservative Christians. They are famously preoccupied with the salvific BLOOD of Jesus (just how many Christian hymns there are bout blood!) But in the gospels, the first “body fluid” which brought healing and thus salvation, was not Jesus’ blood, but his saliva - and not a single hymn about it! ;-)
This Sunday’s Gospel reading opens with something similar. Jesus is reported using his saliva to bring healing to a blind man. The early church tried to eliminate any mention of this healing practice. Most likely Jesus healing with his saliva resembled some kind of magical pagan trick. Thankfully, three stories about this kind of healing survived (Mark 7:31-37; Mark 8:22-26 and John 9 - last two passages might be reworking of the same original story). I am convinced that deeper than any danger of pagan rituals is the loving archetype of instinctive, motherly divine care.
This Sunday I do not plan to spend much time on this technique of healing. We will be concentrating on different levels of sight, vision and insight. Yet I still find this healing technique fascinating, especially vis a vis certain breeds of orthodox and conservative Christians. They are famously preoccupied with the salvific BLOOD of Jesus (just how many Christian hymns there are bout blood!) But in the gospels, the first “body fluid” which brought healing and thus salvation, was not Jesus’ blood, but his saliva - and not a single hymn about it! ;-)
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| Colourful Princetonian tricycle - I took this picture early last autumn. |
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