Mark 5:21-43
When Jesus had again crossed over by
boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he
was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and
when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him, “My
little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she
will be healed and live.” So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and
pressed around him. And a woman was
there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a
great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet
instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came
up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I
just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and
she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus
realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and
asked, “Who touched my clothes?” “You see the people crowding against you,” his
disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” But Jesus kept
looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had
happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him
the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in
peace and be freed from your suffering.” While Jesus was still speaking, some
people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is
dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?” Overhearing what they said,
Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” He did not let anyone follow
him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. When they came to the
home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and
wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and
wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. After he
put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who
were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and
said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”)
Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years
old). At this they were completely astonished. He gave strict orders not to let
anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Mark’s Gospel reads like a whirlwind: when I was a student,
Mark’s Gospel was one of our set texts and one of the things that sticks in my
mind from those lectures is Mark’s sense of urgency. His frequent use of the
word “immediately” sets up an almost frantic pace. Immediately such and such
happened and then immediately Jesus said or did this or that. And that sense of
constant activity is underlined at the start of this morning’s passage which
tells us that Jesus “again” crossed the lake: he’s been backwards and forwards
across the Sea of Galilee, teaching, preaching and healing and when I looked
back at the events that precede this passage I found the story of the man with
the unclean spirits who, when they came out possessed a herd of pigs. Before
that we have Jesus calming a storm at sea, having had to be woken first from a
deep sleep, both events suggesting huge emotional and physical effort. Then we
have Jesus teaching through parables and everywhere being mobbed by the crowds.
Add to that the relentless heat of Palestine which this week we’ve had a bit of
taster of and we have a picture of a man who must have lived on the edge of
constant exhaustion. Perhaps that’s why he so frequently took to boats: away
from the crowds, gently rocked by the waves he could rest at last and maybe his
fishermen disciples kept the boat in open water longer to allow more sleep
rather than crossing immediately to the other side. And what does Jesus find when they get to the
other side? “A great crowd gathered around him.” and he’s off again in that frantic
round of teaching, healing and preaching with people grabbing at him, shouting
and imploring him for help, pressing in on him at every side and we can picture
the disciples trying to carve a way through the crowd like bodyguards – and all
this, still quite early on in his ministry.
In this public chaos a woman is waiting her chance to
approach Jesus by stealth, but before she manages to pluck up her courage,
she’s beaten to it by an anxious father – presumably only two of many
clamouring for Jesus’ attention. Jairus, a man of faith as made clear by Mark
in his description of him as a leader of the synagogue, literally falls in
Jesus’ path and apart from the clear hint of supplication and worship in
someone throwing themselves down in front of you, Jesus can’t ignore the man:
he can’t get past him. He has to respond. “My little daughter is at the point
of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and
live.” Isn’t that an amazingly strong statement of faith in Jesus? There’s no preamble,
no sense that the man has doubts. He’s straight in: “You can do this. Please.”
And now, just to show both the nature of Jesus’ appeal and
growing reputation and the melee that surrounds him, Mark reintroduces the
second supplicant, the woman who’d been quietly waiting: not waiting to speak
to Jesus, though, just waiting to get close enough to touch him. She couldn’t
possibly have approached him directly because she was a woman alone, and social
norms would have prevented her from speaking to Jesus and because of the nature
of her illness, a longstanding gynaecological problem, she would have been
deemed to have been unclean and shouldn’t even have left her home to go out in
public. In spite of the invisible role in which society had placed her, she
summonses the courage to approach Jesus.
This woman’s faith may not be so obvious at first glance, but
subtle as it is, given what she’d been prepared to overcome to be there, her
faith must rank with that of the desperate father. Refusing to be powerless any
longer, she breaks through the social, cultural and religious barriers that
have relegated her to isolation.
In the midst of a hundred grasping hands, Jesus feels a powerful
connection with one person. The woman believes that if she simply touches his
cloak she’ll be healed. With everyone milling about, Jesus asks, "Who
touched me?" And in effect, the disciples respond, "Really? Are you
serious? Just look around.” The woman, however, instinctively knows that
something has changed and, nervous as she is, makes herself known to find no
condemnation, only compassion and healing. Reaching through the gender barrier,
stretching across the ritual purity boundaries, this woman displays
extraordinary faith, and Jesus recognizes it.
Unlike the other miracle stories, Jesus doesn’t pronounce any healing
words. He also doesn’t recoil or regard
himself as contaminated. Jesus does
nothing to bring the attention back to Him.
Instead, he overwhelms her with gentleness. He does nothing but acknowledge her. He simply calls her "daughter;" and
in so doing, he not only gives her the blessing that no one else was willing to
give, he acknowledges the power of female faith. In seeking the source of the healing, he
cites it as being her own faith. Her
courage to break through the conditioning of a lifetime, brings her a condition
she can barely remember: peace.
This whole incident must have taken mere minutes but in the
meantime Jairus’ daughter has died and Jesus is interrupted again, this time by
mourners who come to tell Jairus that his daughter has died and that there is
now no point in having Jesus come to heal her. When Jesus tells the crowd that
she’s not dead but sleeping, they laugh at him. In spite of their seeing his
miracles, in spite of the teachings they had heard, when Jesus tells them that
their mourning is premature, they laugh in his face. This is the nature of the crowd: a crowd is
easily swayed between extremes, in this case between adoration and ridicule and
perhaps this’ll help us to realise that Jesus was not always safe in the crowd
and that very often his very being with the crowd was not just motivated by
compassion but was a bravery motivated by compassion. Jesus may be a healer, but the girl is dead.
What can he do about death, the mourners scoffed? Well, they soon see because Jesus
goes to the house and restores the child to life.
At first glance, we might think that these two stories,
lumped together as one, are really unrelated until Mark adds at the end of the
story a kind of afterthought: oh, yes, by the way, the little girl was twelve
years old. Perhaps we might sense something more is going on here than two
stories simply sandwiched together. The woman had been sick for twelve years so
maybe there are other connections. Jesus addresses the woman, who would have
been considered unclean, as "daughter." By touching Jesus, the woman
threatens to spread her ritual uncleanliness to Jesus. When Jesus takes the
dead girl by the hand, he dares to make himself unclean because he transgresses
another boundary by touching the dead. The healing touch of Jesus makes them
well instead of making him unclean and he restores these two women to abundant
life. Two needy outsiders become daughters of God.
Both the woman and the father of the little girl take Jesus
seriously. Both believe that Jesus can restore their lives. Both kneel before
him. This two-part story shows us that Jesus is active in the world with divine
power to restore life, abundant life for everyone.
But this isn’t just a story about healing as you may well
have been picking up as we’ve gone along. In many respects the healing elements
are almost incidental: they’re simply the hook to hang a deeper understanding
on and what a shame it would have been, I think, if we’d concentrated on the
healing and missed the more subtle depths of these stories because if they’re about
anything, these stories are about faith and God’s grace challenging and
breaking through cultural and religious norms to reveal a new and deeper aspect
of that same grace.
The crowds weren’t expecting it; they weren’t really open to
it and all but a few probably didn’t even notice it. In that light, I think we
have to ask to what extent we’re truly open to God’s grace breaking through in
ways we didn’t expect; whether we’d be open to it – or would we stick with what
we’re used to and are familiar with? Would we be numbered amongst the few that
even recognise it or would we be with those who laugh and ridicule?
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