Please turn to Mark 5.
This will be less of a sermon and more a running commentary. And we’ll leave some question unanswered.
Let’s read starting in v. 21:
And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, “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.” And he went with him.
And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” But overhearing[e] what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus[f] saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Jesus steps off the boat and a crowd almost immediately gathers. Jairus is a ruler of the synagogue – something like an executive pastor who is not heavily involved with the teaching but more with the operations. From what we’ve already read in Mark, we know that the rulers and religious leaders have started to look at Jesus with a cocked head – hmm, we’re not so sure. Distancing, distancing.
So it’s a surprise to see Jairus striding up to Jesus and then – wow – falling on the sand. “My little daughter…” He’s humbling himself, taking professional/ social risks, but…fathers and daughters. Now we understand Jairus.
Obviously Jairus has faith in Jesus’ ability. He must have heard stories about Jesus and found those testimonies compelling, so that in his moment of trouble he turns to Jesus. We’ll observe the same with the woman, who had heard the reports about Jesus and so shoved her way through the crowd.
One more thing about Jairus – his strange wording – “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” “Be made well, and live.” The point is not simply that she not be sick, but let her get back to living – reading, learning, obeying the commandments, skipping, birthday parties, games, eventually probably marriage, image-bearing vocation…
We don’t have Jesus’ response except that he starts on his way. The crowd throngs about him. You see famous people on TV walking from their car into the gala, and you’ll see a bunch of ropes to cordon off the throngs. If the cordons become impractical then you see bodyguards forming a wall. But here is Jesus with no buffers. The disciples aren’t bodyguards.
In the crowd is a desperate individual– an ill woman who remains nameless throughout, who’s decided to approach Jesus from behind and just touch his garment so that she can be healed.
For the past 12 years she’s been troubled, her life hampered, hadn’t been able to really live because she leaked blood. For 12 years doctors had taken her money and prescribed treatment, but she was only getting worse. She was almost certainly anemic and carried the constant feeling of being weak and sleepy. Waking up tired. Dizzy. Always a little out of it.
12 years of scheduling appointments, sitting in waiting rooms, awkwardly relating her problem, prodded with this and that instrument, given this and that foul-tasting concoction. Hoping, and yet no improvement. And now she was out of money. Her life is constricted and painful and heading south.
And of course there are social consequences to this sickness. But they weren’t just connected to embarrassment. The ancient laws of Israel rendered those who had bodily discharges religiously impure while they had those discharges. They should stay away from others so as not to stain them. So, she was compromising others just by being out and about.
After she touches Jesus’ clothes from behind there is no question about it – she’s healed! Can you imagine a 12-year worry or pain taken from you in a second?! Does she stop in the middle of the moving crowd as it sinks in? Ahh! Does she begin weeping for joy?
Well, Jesus stops – here’s where it gets mysterious. He turns around – knowing that someone has approached him from the back. He senses that his clothes were touched purposely. I believe this is the only time in the Gospels when we have a phrase like this – Jesus perceives in himself that power had gone out from him. Gone out from his head, his body, from where?
And the mystery deepens: Power leaves Jesus without his willing it. And goes to a destination of which Jesus isn’t aware. (Though notice Mark doesn’t say that Jesus was weakened by healing the woman. He’s not swaying back and forth and asking for avocados!)
Also, notice that what healed the woman is not that which was outside of Jesus that He had access to, but an energy in Jesus Himself. Humans don’t need something Jesus has access to, but Jesus Himself.
You could take a good 2-3 mile walk and mull this scene over the whole time.
Who touched my garments? And once again we get an idea of the disposition of Jesus by how his disciples answer. They take up the role of Captain Obvious. Oh, Teacher, you’re great for the teaching and miraculous stuff but you really don’t get how real life works.
How approachable Jesus must have been, so that his disciples can easily slip into patronizing him!
Imagine the whole setting: already made drowsy by the roll of the waves, Jesus disembarks from the boat and immediately is met by crowds, then thrust headlong into an emotional scene involving the synagogue president, then pushed along, now someone is taking advantage of you, your followers are treating you like a child, you know they’re wrong – aren’t you going to snap at them?
Well, Jesus doesn’t snap but ignores them… and keeps looking around the crowd. Now we’ve entered the scene’s dramatic moment. With a question: Will the woman take but not acknowledge the gift? Will she, out of timidity or pride, slink into the background and head back to her home?
And what does it matter now? She’s already healed… she can be privately grateful – won’t that be enough?
Or will she confess with her mouth, make a public statement of, the powerful working of Jesus?
Mark is the gospel sent to the Roman church, the same one to which Paul wrote – for with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
She comes forward, not triumphantly, but with fear and trembling, and like Jairus falls down before him.
How much detail is entailed in telling him the whole truth? Unknown, but we do know that her declaration came at a cost: He now knows that she has touched him and thereby exposed himself, and the crowd around her, to uncleanness.
His response is partly baffling. Your faith has made you well. What was her faith? That she had become convinced Jesus could heal her? Or that she acted on this conviction by pushing her way through the crowds? Or the public confession after the healing? And all God’s people answer: YES
Next, go in peace. Ok, that’s expected. But then: and be healed of your disease. Wait. If I were the woman, I’d look at Jesus for a couple of seconds after he said that. Like the way the taxi driver looks at you after he drops you off at the airport and tells you to have a good trip and you reply, ok, you too.
Jesus says, be healed of your disease and the woman thinks, well, yes, I have been. You’ve already done that. But Jesus doesn’t drop any empty words; no deceit was [ever] found in his mouth. Those words meant something – did He just mean that the disease wouldn’t return? Or did He point to a deeper malady which had also been healed by her faith in Jesus?
As Jesus concludes their exchange, messengers from the house of Jairus recall us to the original problem. Their announcement is gloomy and insensitive: Your daughter is dead – and then rather than thinking to console him, their first concern is for Jesus’ convenience – why trouble the Teacher any further?
The rudeness of their bleak question emphasizes the finality of the situation – there was hope but now it’s run out. So, re-allocate resources to other things now, things that can still be brought back to health.
In this shocking bleakness we don’t hear any exclamation from Jairus. We only hear Jesus. I can picture him beside Jairus grabbing the top of his arms – Do not fear, only believe.
Notice that Jesus orders the crowd to stay and takes only three disciples the rest of the way to Jairus’ house. Again, I’m struck by a detail: before he had seemed to be at the mercy of the crowd as they surround and jostle him. But now he tells them to stay away, and they comply.
As they draw near to his house, Jairus is following Jesus’ directions and trying to stave off fear, but it becomes much more difficult. They arrive to skilled mourners on the scene, further ingraining on Jairus’ mind the reality of death. Jesus’ bracing words vanish from his mind, sucked into the current of loss and grief.
Before Jesus does what He’s going to do, He stops to speak to the mourners. He challenges the whole system of mourning: why are you making a commotion…? Getting in the way of people’s grief – that takes guts! Jesus contra mundum!
The child is not dead but sleeping. Now we have another mystery. In Luke’s parallel account we hear that the child’s spirit had departed from her. So, we’ll take Jesus at his word that she wasn’t dead-dead, but she was dead. We don’t understand death. As we saw in last week’s sermon, there are specificities to death (and life) that we’re just not aware of. So that Jesus can say of the dead girl, she’s not dead.
Into the girl’s chamber go Jesus and the three disciples along with the girls’ mom and dad. No one else will see this miracle. We moderns always mistake the importance of publicity!
Again, Jesus exposes himself to impurity as he grabs the girl’s hand. Talitha Cumi – Peter who was on scene, years later recalled to Mark the exact words Jesus used. What probably engraved these words in his mind was their mundaneness – these aren’t beautiful words, certainly not mystical or magical. They are everyday words – or at least school day words. Liesel, wake up.
And the girl opens her eyes – imagine being called from death and opening your eyes to Jesus! – gets up, suddenly ready for the day, with not a trace of her illness to be found. Mark uses her getting up to inform us for the first time that the girl was old enough to walk. In fact, she was 12 years old.
12 years old… 12 years old…Hey wait! And with this reference to 12 years a connection is made with the nameless woman that Jesus had healed, almost accidentally. We are invited to compare and contrast the two situations.
The bleeding woman has endured long years of decline and sees her energy and resources coming to an end. Because of her illness, she is on the outskirts of society – Mark accentuates this by not giving her a name. Jairus and his daughter, on the other hand, have over these 12 years built up good memories. Jairus is a success, his daughter enjoys the fruits of that success, there is warmth and love – and then, to quote Job: what I feared the most has come upon me.
The solution to the basic human problems of decline toward death and life suddenly taken away? JESUS.
We’re left with a little bit of humor. No one is more practical than Jesus, and he remembers that the girl is hungry. When a child returns home from ice-skating, she wants sandwiches. How much more of an appetite do you work up when your spirit makes it way back to your body!
Mark wraps up the story with a nod toward privacy. For now, no one should know about this resurrection. Let people imagine that something less spectacular happened.
The church that reads this Gospel of Mark should recognize they’ve been in a parallel situation with the woman who pressed through the crowd. Something has been wrong with us…with me…something central that drained life out. And rendered us stained before God. The world…we…I…were in decline and nothing under the sun could fix us.
Only when I realize that I am deeply sick – the problem – the stain on the world before God – is not the libs or the corporations or the alt-right or the gays or the Trump supporters or the fill in the blank… the problem is in me…
But then I realize that Jesus has already gotten to the heart of the problem and already solved it: after Jesus made purification for sins he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…. On Jesus cross my guilt was laid onto Jesus’ body and I am clean!
And I acknowledge – make it my public identity – am fully immersed into the fact – that Jesus is the Lord who is able to and has in fact already rescued me from my deepest problem and that his Spirit has already began in me the great renewal that will sweep over this planet
When these things are true we hear the Spirit of Jesus speak authoritatively to us: Be healed of your dis-ease.
The Church that reads this gospel of Mark should recognize their parallel situation with Jairus as he walks closer to his house. As the years wear on and we march to the world to come, a Christian experiences disappointment after disappointment, sadness, tragedy. And yet we have Jesus’ words: Do not fear, only believe. Be of good courage.
I remember visiting an old woman who was sick and she encouraged me by quoting Isaiah: fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
But all the internal and external noise threatens to drown out the assurances. The mourners are present, in your face, loud. The voices of doubt and fear are in your head, alarming, harassing. But don’t despair. Don’t panic.
I like to think that Mark left the Aramaic untranslated because that’s exactly the sound the Church will one day hear. The bridegroom will whisper over his bride, Talitha Cumi, and the Church will rise from the dead.
An old Puritan advised preaching this way: “I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.” My fellow dying human, what is Jesus saying to you today?
Among other things, I hope you’re receiving the message, GET TO JESUS. Then, STAY WITH JESUS. YOU NEED JESUS. And, of course, that’s a little complicated because he isn’t physically present in our dimension. But then let me briefly respond by saying this fact is not anything like a crippling limitation. He’s left ways of opening the door to fellowship with him – really!: get baptized, join and partner with his Body the church, sit under his teaching, pray in his name, learn to observe all that he commanded, eat with him at his Supper… there is rich fellowship with HIM in all these.
What could keep you from him is pride. Learn from this nameless woman and Jairus: that life is valuable enough, uncleanness unto death is desperate enough, and Jesus is actually the answer…so that it makes sense to fall at his feet.
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